What is a LARGE Family?

Graph created by Kate Daneluk. All rights reserved.

Recently, an interesting question came up on a Facebook group: What constitutes a “large” family? I was surprised how varied the answers were. Reasons given ranged from simply being larger than the national or regional average, to feeling overwhelmed, to needing to purchase specialty vehicles.

I never would consider 3 children a large family. I grew up with 2 sisters. Most of the families in our area had two to four children, so that seemed average to me. My dad’s brother and sister each had 8, so that is what a “large family” looked like to me. I babysat for a family with 7 and everyone talked about them being a large family, so that affected my perception too.

What I learned from the Facebook discussion is that so many parts of our life are subjective. Look back a few generations and larger families are more common. Not only was abortion, birth control and even natural family planning fairly unknown and unavailable, but large families were more desired, particularly in agricultural areas. Most women married much younger, opening a bigger childbirth window. So those who were able to have many children usually did.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter if you have a “large” family or not. As Catholics we agree to be “accept children lovingly” into our new family in the Sacrament of Marriage. Being open to life is examined beautifully in Humanae Vitae, but it doesn’t mean everyone is called to or given the ability to have a certain number of children. So while I didn’t consider my family “large” until we had 5, I was surprised that some people thought anything over the average 2.3 pushed into the large category and that so many thought 4 was a large family. Many of the reasons given included the struggles of coping with more children in a world that no longer supports this.

[tweet "Large is a relative term. @PrayingTwice's observations regarding family size."]

Equally surprising, a few moms didn’t think anything less than 8-9 children was enough to hit the large sphere. These moms thought it was because they aren’t “overwhelmed enough” to think of their families as large. So is there an automatic implication that a “large” family is one where parents must be overwhelmed? Large is a relative term. A large beverage can be anywhere from 16-48 ounces depending on where you are. This thought inspired this:

You may be a large family IF you have:

ONE

• Your whole world just changed. Nothing will ever be larger than this!

TWO

• The children’s lives and schedules begin to dictate your schedule in a way you never thought possible.
• Their stuff starts to take over every room of your house.

THREE

• No more man-to-man defense. It is always zone.
• The “family” deals at hotels and restaurants no longer apply to you.
• You will need to adjust recipes to feed more than four.

FOUR

• If you haven’t pulled the trigger yet: Minivan!
• Oh, and you may be seriously considering moving.
• You start storing clothes for hand-me-downs with military precision, but still manage to miss items you had in storage while your youngest wears shoes no one noticed were 2 sizes too small.
• It’s getting harder and harder to find a spot to sit in a restaurant.

FIVE

• You find yourself googling “large family hacks” online at least once a week.
• You have to get 2 rooms to legally stay in a hotel. See ya tomorrow, honey!
• Suddenly, one set of dishes/glasses/flatware is not enough to get through one day.
• Costco is your regular grocery store.
• You read a recipe promising to make enough chicken for 4 meals and realize that you can’t fit enough chicken in your jumbo crockpot to do that for your brood.

SIX

• You are afraid your washing machine may sue you for unfair working conditions since it hasn’t had a day off since . . .
• Your babies know all the lyrics to the top 40 because they spend so much time with teenagers and never watch Sesame Street.
• MINIvan? Ha! You have been driving a passenger van with an “I used to be cool” sticker on it for a year.
• Airbnb or Winnebago are the only way you can go on vacation without spending a year’s salary.
• You make a good living but haven’t paid federal taxes in years because you have so many dependents.
• The government doesn’t believe you when you file your taxes with yet another dependent and demands further proof that your children actually exist. (Yes, this actually happened to us.)

SEVEN

• Figuring out where all the kids should sleep reminds you of doing the seating chart at your wedding.
• You don’t always notice when friends or neighbors are at your table or in your car.
• You count heads. Several times a day.
• You don’t think about it so much anymore but there is a system and a chart for everything in your house.
• You are considering applying for a CDL so you can drive a bus.
• You have 3 refrigerators or freezers scattered around your house.
• You have to do math to fill out all the birthdays on the school and medical forms.

What do you think constitutes a “large” family?

Copyright 2017 Kate Daneluk