So many children.....

                                                      

How many is too many?  Children I mean.   Big families used to be the common place.  My paternal grandmother had 13 children, my maternal grandmother had 6 children survive of the 9 she gave birth to.  Skip ahead only one generation to my parents and average number of children their siblings had was 2.6  for both sides.  In my generation there is an average of 1.2 children per family amongst my 34 cousins on my fathers side and 1.4 children per family on my mothers side with half of my 16 maternal cousins having no children, yet all are of child rearing age.  Even with fertility issues seeming to be on the rise that is a significant drop over 3 generations.

Since the time when girls imagine what their families will look like I envisioned myself with a big family, minus the few years in my early twenties when having children seemed undesirable.   I wanted 4 children at least, Chris wanted 2 children.  Eoin surprised us and we met in the middle.  With 3 boys in 3 years we jointly decided that we were done.  Now we are jointly deciding that maybe we are not done.  Our choice to change that if we do will be through adoption.

The world we live in though is not built for big families, we have a hard time finding accommodations as the boys grow bigger, most places make provisions for two parents, two children.  We have even had to pay for our "extra" child while camping once.  What will it be like when we have 5 or 6 children?  It is not easy to find a vehicle that fits 8 people, trust me I have tried.  There are not even many minivans who fit more than 7.

It is not uncommon when we are out to be asked "are they all yours" and I only have 3. I see big families and smile, some people see big families and condemn.  When 19 Kids and Counting first aired it was like someone had introduced the world to a family of oddities.  Granted it is rare in 2011 to have family with 19 children but go back 50 years to when my Memere was birthing the last of her 13 children, and those are her pregnancies that came to term.    She was not the exception but rather the norm.

I have no plan on matching the Dugger family in their family size or even to meet my Memere's number by half but I may be close.  Can I handle 6 children? Do I want to handle 6 children?  I think so and in time I may have that opportunity, and I will proudly say "Yes they are all mine".