Parents and childless adults can probably all agree that whatever reproductive decisions you make, other people will have opinions on them and questions about them. Someone will weigh in whether you have no children, an only child, or a houseful.
Then again, there’s a reason that large families land reality shows. Parents who have experienced the hard work (and expense) of raising one or two children will look at a larger family and wonder how it’s possible.
While large families used to be more common, changes like access to contraceptives, lower childhood mortality, and less normalization of children as labor on the family farm have all contributed to a society where the birth rate continues to drop.
So, one Redditor asked parents with large families why they decided to have so many kids.
Kids Are Really Awesome
This reason gets phrased in a lot of ways. Parents cite “just wan[ting] to cuddle another one,” or loving babies, or “feeling fulfilled.” One Redditor describes their grandma having nine children and never wanting to do anything else because “children were her world.”
Some parents say they’d have many more kids if they could afford both the financial obligation and the additional time to spend on them.
Quite a few describe “forgetting” how hard the first few months are, looking at their sweet, precious, wonderful growing toddler or preschooler, and making the decision to have just one more!
Grew Up In A Large Family
Some parents say that they came from large families themselves, and after spending their lives with five, seven, or twelve siblings, having more than four kids just seemed normal to them.
One, for instance, said, “We have 5 which seems towards the reasonable side but I have 8 siblings and my dad was one of 13 and my mom one of 8 so my perspective is pretty skewed.”
On the other hand, one Redditor describes an acquaintance who had a large family in response to being an only child herself.
Religious Beliefs
Religious beliefs factor in for many people with big families. Parents from several religious traditions say that they don’t believe in birth control or in terminating a pregnancy, so pregnancies are frequent and regular occurrences. In this post, specific religions cited include Catholic, Mormon, and traditional Buddhism.
Even among religious groups that encourage large families and discourage contraceptives, though, birth rates are falling. Many of the Redditors who cite religion as a factor refer to their parents or grandparents, with a smaller number referring to younger families who are still having kids today.
Contraceptive Fails
While some religious traditions oppose contraceptives, there are also plenty that may be okay with contraception but oppose terminating a pregnancy if it happens. Some individuals may be pro-choice but wouldn’t make that particular choice for themselves.
With that in mind, many parents say that their large family resulted from multiple failures of birth control. Some even share that a pregnancy came after a tubal ligation or vasectomy! One person described a pregnancy despite two birth control methods, and others cite incompatibility with hormonal birth control due to medical issues.
Fertility treatments
A familiar story is of the couple who wanted a child and was struggling to conceive, so they turned to fertility treatments and ended up with twins, triplets, or more. In some families, this experience happened more than once, which means a large family with only a few pregnancies.
One dad says that he and his wife thought they’d engage in fertility treatments to have a third kid and found out his wife was pregnant with twins, doubling their number of offspring in a single pregnancy. Believing they were done, he went for surgical sterilization — only to learn that his wife was already pregnant with number 5!
Multiples
Even without fertility treatment, surprise twins or triplets can quickly grow a family!
One Redditor describes a situation in which a parent who already had a few kids adopted a few more and then had a surprise twin pregnancy! Another says she was on birth control when she became pregnant with the first set of twins and then proceeded to have a second twin pregnancy, as well as a single pregnancy! Yet another knows someone whose third and final pregnancy was with triplets.
How Many Boys Can You Have, Anyway?
Sometimes, a family keeps growing because of having at least one child of each sex. Redditors describe families where there are six or even eight kids, all the same sex, until finally, the youngest turns out to be the opposite sex.
One described their extended family this way:
“I’ve got aunts and uncles who won’t stop popping new babies who happened to be girls, until they get a son who would carry the family name for another generation. On the the other hand, there are also those who kept popping 5 sons in hopes of getting a daughter.”
Fostering & Adoption
Sometimes, families grow by surprise. Parents describe thinking their family was complete until they encounter a child or children who need them.
One Redditor describes his dad “accidentally” adopting two additional children after having four already. Another describes a family member whose kids were in their teens when a 6-year-old he knew lost her parents. Yet another couple was already carrying out the adoption process when the mother learned she was pregnant with twins.
Another describes how they ended up with so many siblings:
“I have 10 permanent siblings and 4 temporary. My dad didnt have the strength to say no to a foster placement. Most kids ended up being permanent.”
Blended Families
The Brady Bunch may have hit television in the late ’60s, but the fictional family was neither the beginning nor the end of families growing large through remarriage.
Most of the time, this doesn’t reach the level of Frank and Helen Beardsley’s family, the real-life couple that inspired the 1968 movie Yours, Mine, And Ours. In that true story, the widow and widower were each raising a large family already—10 for him, 8 for her—when they fell in love, married, and had two more children together.
Still, Redditors describe many marriages between parents who already had two or three or four kids each, resulting in a large blended family with many step-siblings and half-siblings.
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