<p>This is not a contest for moral superiority. :eek:</p>
<p>As others have said, it is an individual choice!</p>
<p>Wis75, you just seem to come up with some outrageous remarks sometimes! Most parents that I know, whether or not they work outside the home, view child rearing as an intensely intellectual and creative endeavor. If your view of parenting is to just drop a kid at daycare for 12 hours a day, I can see where you are coming from. I viewed raising kids as an opportunity to apply theories of child development. </p>
<p>Few jobs are thrilling 100% of the time. For a pediatrician, would the tenth ear infection of the day be suitably stimulating? The researcher who spends ten years pursuing a fruitless line of inquiry might not think it’s very intellectual. How about a lawyer or engineer? Do you think their days are filled with enlightenment? With your one comment, you’ve put down teachers (how thrilling can it be to actually teach CHILDREN?), nurses (they don’t do that much anyway, right?), ministers (taking care of people’s spiritual needs is pretty repetitive) and almost any other “helping” professions. You’ve said on other threads that you are a medical doctor. I’m happy to say that my many M.D. friends – some of whom chose to stay home with their kids for a period of time – don’t view having children as a waste of their intellectual abilities.</p>
<p>“As others have said, it is an individual choice!”<br>
Well, sortof. That choice affects the rest of society. Others are being called upon to spend many thousands of dollars per year per child for the costs of public school education.</p>
<p>I’d venture a guess that most super-sized families either homeschool or attend Catholic schools so they may be paying school taxes without using those services.</p>
<p>As for the intellectual aspects of being a mother, if you do it right, they’re myriad. From the joyous curiousity of how things work as a preschooler to the finer points of etymology discussions with my teens, I’m often inspired intellectually. Being there for those spontaneous moments is priceless to me. They make me smarter. Would I want ten? No way, but I wouldn’t criticize someone who does.</p>
<p>I seriously doubt it. Homeschooling is pretty rare. Who could afford to pay tuition for a boatload of kids to go to Catholic school? In this area, Catholic secondary schools are $6000+/year.</p>
<p>Edad, the population of the US is growing at less than 1% – most statistics I’ve seen have the birthrate at replacement levels only. The population is expected to decrease as baby-boomers die. I don’t think the fairly rare circumstance of large families in this country is a huge burden. All civilized nations must educate their young people – even non-parents or those who no longer have children in the home subsidize education. Your point is not valid. We’ve paid for public education on top of private school tuition for almost 20 years – it’s part of being a member of a community.</p>
<p>
This certainly trips the willful bigotry meter.
Do you have any other comments on ethnic groups and the races you’d like to share on the world-wide web–just so as to affirm your status with your kindred spirits?</p>
<p>As I recall, the leader of the Third Reich was very progressive on the matter; in his wisdom he chose to have no offspring at all…giving birth to a plethora of bad novels on secretly conceived 'Little Hitlers."</p>
<p>-I say, only in spirit.
.</p>
<p>"I feel sorry for those women; the mothers whose only role is bearing and raising children may as well be rabbits or some other prolific species. No praise from me for those whose lives are spent in such an unintellectually challenging manner. "</p>
<p>I guess this is where the lack of respect for those who make another choice comes in. Some women choose motherhood (no matter how many kids) for the joy and fulfillment of it and who are you to say it’s not intellectually challenging? Motherhood is a completely valid CHOICE.</p>
<p>I think just about all of us can agree on this one.</p>
<p>“may as well be rabbits. . .” LOL</p>
<p>Guilty as charged. (Making rabbit noises, but you probably can’t hear them. . .)</p>
<p>I know a lot of large families–we tend to hang out together because other people can’t stand us 
Most are homeschoolers. I’ve been homeschooling for 11 years, though some of my children have attended public schools part-time, on and off. We pay taxes. BTW, I have a graduate degree and find homeschooling very intellectually challenging. H is actually jealous because I get to stay home and have a lot more freedom than he does. </p>
<p>No matter what you do–I hope you love it. Staying home with kids is a choice and a luxury that many people don’t have, and I’m happy that I’ve had that choice. (Though I do feel sorry for third world women who have no options. . .)</p>
<p>Sybbie: I LOVE your description of your family life. I’m there–with the BIG pots of food and the TV/popcorn “movie nights.” </p>
<p>P.S. Thank you all for your salutes and condolences.</p>
<p>atomom</p>
<p>I came from a family of three kids all about 2 & 1/2 years apart which seemed to be the average in my suburban neighborhood, where every house had kids- although there were also many families of two, and several with four children.</p>
<p>I didn’t know many parents who stayed home with the kids once the youngest was in school, during the 60s and 70s, many women were drawn to the workforce, even though at that time you could still support a family on one income. I didn’t really know many large families growing up, although my grandmother had come from a family of 10 girls,( midwest farming community) she had only one child, most of her sisters had only two, and of her two sisters, who she joined out here in Wa, one had one daughter and the other didn’t have any kids.</p>
<p>So not really any cousins, as my father only had two 1/2 sisters, ( his mother had a child with his stepfather and his dad had a child with his step mother) and neither of them had any children as one became a missionary in India as soon as she graduated college,and the other suffered brain damage at birth.</p>
<p>I romanticised cousins, like “brothers and sisters without the bother” one kid quipped to me. But although my kids have a good amount of cousins,( one on H side and eight on mine we* very rarely* see any of them-) which I sometimes regret, but since it generally would mean seeing relatives that are overly stressful, I don’t regret too much</p>
<p>I don’t think we are in any danger of running out of children- global population is about 6.5 billion and US population is about 5% of that or 300 million. ( although we consume 25% of global energy and fuel resources )</p>
<p>Now most families I know only have one or two kids, although I do work with some kids from much larger families, where it is more common for women to begin giving birth at 15, and may have 12 or 15 children.
That obviously is a job in itself, and while I wouldn’t chose to do it, I wouldn’t necessarily assume they feel they have no choice.</p>
<p>However in my own family, I do see the stresses of a large family. My sister has five children, encouraged ( required? ) by her religious beliefs, and temprament wise IMO, she should have stopped after two. She and her husband over the years have required lots of help from others, financially, emotionally and logistically to raise their kids, but even with all the extra supports, their home is still a very stressed out place.
Exposure to that has possibly contributed to both of my girls being quite adamant that they don’t want * any* children.</p>
<p>Which makes me sad but I respect it. My 16 yr old has said that if I want grandchildren, I will have to have another child in the hopes that * they* will want children- ( since her dad has had surgery- that may be tricky)
;)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>haha, cough, oops, I just choked on my carrot when I ready your reply, atomom.</p>
<p>Bunnies are so cute, soft, furry and adorable! Who wouldn’t want to be one?</p>
<p>A co-worker of my H gives his young friends a speech, only half in jest, to the effect that the world is full of non-taxpayers reproducing like rabbits, so they have a <em>responsibility</em> to produce many TAXPAYERS. </p>
<p>I tend to agree–if you are well-off, intelligent, healthy, and like kids, don’t just have one! Have lots, as long as things are going well. </p>
<p>What bugs me are doctors who will prescribe fertility drugs to people who already have one (or more) very young, special-needs child(ren.) It’s not very responsible to have more than you can care for. An acquaintance of mine already had problems with the first child, no money (worried about where the next payment on their 2nd-hand car was coming from), and was undergoing fertility treatment to have more kids! Baffling, to me.</p>
<p>I didnt think you could even call yourself parents until you were “outnumbered”</p>
<p>Things certainly have changed with the generations. Both of my parents came from large families, particularly mom, who was born and raised on a farm in the south. Mother always speaks of pleasant memories about being one of 11 kids growing up in the 1940s-1950s. Also, I got to know my grandmother quite well before she left this earth and I never heard any regrets from her about her children or the “strenuous” life she endured trying to provide for them.</p>