16 children!!! I'm fascinated! (page 3)

OUTLAW

My wifes family had 10 kids..I ended up looking after 5 of them before I was 30..Plus my own...OUTLAW

It is just plain selfishness on the parents parts to be breeding like rabbits. There is no way they can give each child the individual attention they deserve never mind some kind of finanicial inheritence to fall back on in their later years.

Someone aught to set up some kind of court order and give that arrogant man an enforced vasectomy. HIs poor wife is probably requiring some sort of corrective surgery by now and liberating!

There was a JW couple in the cong we used to go to that had ten children. According to the wife the husband refused to use condoms and she was unable to take the pill because of very high blood pressure. Whenever she was pregnant she was ill and stuck in bed or in hospital with severe blood pressure problems. Her consultant, on several occassions called the husband an arrogant bastard and this caused a big hoo haa on a couple of occassions at the hospital The wife was given a cervical cap, but as she said, sometimes she just didn't get it in, in time. Every pregnancy her life was threatened and she always had 10 to 11 lb babies.

I remember her tearfully 'joking' that she was going to get bunk beds and if he tried to climb up to her she was going to kick him down!!

They only stopped copulating when HE became ill. As far as I'm concerned he deserves every bit of pain and illness he gets.

Did I also point out that he would not allow his wife and daughters to shave their legs and armpits and they were not allowed to wear trousers!

Freak!!

Fe2O3Girl

I agonised about whether I could cop it as a parent before I had one child. Now I am agonising over how we would give enough care and attention to both if we have another child.

I am obviously completely overestimating what is involved in raising a child.

Gill

Fe203Girl - No! You're just being sensible.

We have five children, though well spaced out. I have had to devote my last 23 years to looking after these children and have only been able to go out to work for half of those years. Children require attention, help, consideration, respect, care and above all love and DEVOTION. They are not pets! They are people in their own right who deserve the same opportunities as a single child.

Sixteen children, basically just shows that the parents are stupid and selfish! They are not wearing a 'badge of honour' if that's what they think, but a 'badge of shame'. The shame is NOT the children, they deserve respect for having to grow up with such ignorant and foolish parents!

Fe2O3Girl

The Daily Mail reported yesterday on a large British family:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=437656&in_page_id=1770

"After having nine children in as many years, you might think Rayna and Malcolm Warriner's brood is complete.

But, with one seat spare in the family minibus, the couple feel they still have a gap to fill."

lonelysheep

Sir Nose!

I think it's unfair & selfish for the kids to have to raise the other kids.

anewme

I knew a happy witness woman and her hardworking happy husband who had 9 children. Seven boys, two girls. All the children were loved, healthy, stunningly beautiful and very well adjusted. One by one they learned their father's profession or their mother's talents and left home and married and now are having children of their own. They are the epitome of the happy JW family in my opinion. I still think of them often.

They all lived very modestly in a small ever-enlarging house. Their bedrooms were cutely divided rooms and the boys had bunkbeds out in a converted workshop. I remember they had a really long old pine kitchen table with 4 extensions that seated 14 people. The family had book study in their home. It was apparent sitting in this happy woman's cheerful kitchen that this large family was very planned and part of their vision of paradise.

Anewme

JWdaughter

At the risk of being thought a freak myself, I used to want 14 kids! Then I had one:) They are a lot of work. I don't condemn the Duggars or think they can't love them enough. If they can do it, more power to them.

I think that giving children responsibilities is a good thing. Many kids are taught to be children . . .not just when they are little, but they expect to be parented forever. I think learning that they are important and counted on is a good thing. And kids helping raise the rest. . .that happens in all kinds of families, big and small for various reasons. My grandparents died when my mom was a brand new mom of twins, and at the age of 24 she had responsibility for 6 children, two of them her own, the rest siblings. It wasn't a cruelty, it was life-and she was the eldest of 6 children, so she had been a part of it and was better prepared than some might be-but things happen, health, death, and other issues will suddenly grow families (under one roof) Everyone can be loved adequately and even extravagently if the love is there to start. This is my opinion, but I have seen very large, very loving families. The most messed up family I know is my uncles, and he wasn't involved with the physical resp. after my grammas death. Maybe he/my mom/grandma knew his limitations of character even then.

On another note-the bathing suits are hysterical. I am all for modesty-I think its underrated, but that extreme.

truthsearcher

There have been some pretty harsh words here towards the idea of having a large family! Don't forget that it is only in this last century that women have had the luxury of limiting their offspring. So for most of human history, many children flocked around the average family hearth. The type of mothering practices that were adopted (specifically breastfeeding every couple of hours, and through the night, with no use of a pacifier or supplemental bottles) had a natural effect on feritility to suppress ovulation for over a year, typically. Cultures that have continued this pattern until more recently tended to have babies every 21/2 to 3 years. I have always thought of this as God's way of protecting the new baby and also giving the mother a bit of a rest between births. Of course, there was also the extended family and community close by to give additional help and support.

I suspect that this family in question are part of the "Quiverfull"movement. This is based on the verse in proverbs about having a quiverfull of children, and also the command to be fruitful and multiply in Genesis. Quiverfulls are a loosely organized Protestant subculture that rejects family planning in all its forms. Even the rhythm method is considered too interventionist. Children are considered a blessing from God, and so they welcome as many babies as God sends them (aka "open womb" policy).

"Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice," write the Hesses. Or, as Mary Pride, in another of the movement's founding texts, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, puts it, "My body is not my own." This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate. Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They're domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women's liberation... Instead of picketing clinics, Pride writes, Christians should fight abortion by demonstrating that children are an "unqualified blessing" by having as many as God gives them. Only a determination among Christian women to take up their submissive, motherly roles with a "military air" and become "maternal missionaries" will lead the Christian army to victory.

Some Quiverfulls have their sterilizations reversed. Blessed Arrows a sterilization reversal ministry pools the money of the faithful to fund reversals for those who can't afford the procedures--so that the "beneficiaries" can have as many children as the Ultimate Birth Controller sees fit.

Pride's book The Way Home made its way around my circle of friends about 11 years ago...we all decided to add one more to the quiver! One friend had 7 children,but her doctor told her that her life was at risk for another pregnancy, and she had to have some major bladder/uterine repair work done. They realized that despite their "open womb" leanings, they should be wise and stop.

I am not comfortable judging others for their choices in this matter. The large families that I know are close and well-cared for. The mothers do see these children as blessings and put alot of effort into nurturing them. If this is the path they chose, then the beauty of living in a democratic nation is that they are free to follow it. I prefer that over the limited family size and forced abortions that take place in some countries (China for an example)

It is a bit of a change from the number of JWs I have met who have NO children--why bring children into this world, when the system is about to end??? That makes me sad to think that they will miss out on the joy of parenting as a result of waiting for that fairytale. But again, it is their choice and I will not judge them.

truthsearcher

The wife was given a cervical cap, but as she said, sometimes she just didn't get it in, in time.
I remember her tearfully 'joking' that she was going to get bunk beds and if he tried to climb up to her she was going to kick him down!!

Hmmm, I have never heard of the "bunkbed method of family planning"! Sounds like it could be effective in certain circumstances!

16 children!!! I'm fascinated!

Share this