Does anyone have 5 kids these days? What’s it like raising them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Your oldest is probably helping more than you'd admit. And, its sad you aren't going to pay for college relying on the state to cover it and if the state does not, then what? And, you mention you spending time with your spouse, but not your kids 1-1.

This is such a dumb response. Classic DCUM.
"Kids should help around the house and do chores! Except that definitely does not include a teenager supervising her siblings watching TV for an hour."
"College should be affordable! In-state college should be cheap/free! Oh, except for people with 5 kids."

[Anonymous]

I'm a high school teacher and I have to agree with a PP that nearly all the families in my school with 5+ are Hispanic families. There are often large age gaps (oldest 17, youngest an infant). And yes, the oldest girl is often expected to leave school to care for younger siblings. Sometimes this is informal, where the teenage girl has a high absentee rate. This is a major hurdle for us teachers and counselors to convince the families to allow the oldest daughter to finish school. We are not always successful. In Maryland students must go to school til 18 now, so that has helped somewhat.

[Anonymous]

Don't ALL kids have chores? I can't imagine not having chores no matter what size the family. This is part of teaching you how to run hour household later in life.

I remember Marie Osmond saying in an interview one time:"I don't have cleaning help in my house. I have 8 kids! That's a lot of cleaning help already." I was one of 5 and my mom always said the same thing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure if OP is asking a legitimate question or just felt like it was time for another round of DCUM's favorite game: Bash families with more kids than you have. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and answer. I'd also encourage OP to ignore 90% of the responses, since they come from people who do not have 1st hand experience with large families.

Anyway, I am a mom of 5. My kids' ages are 13, 11, 9, 6, and 3. I'd say that age range is the key to what type of experience you have. The stresses I experience are different from the stresses of my cousin, who also has 5, ages 7, 5, 3, and 1 year old twins. I very briefly had 2 in diapers at the same time, but only for a few months. She had 3 in diapers for over almost two years. On the flip side, her kids are developmentally closer and are more likely to enjoy similar activities, books, movies, etc. She will not be the mom at high school orientation with a 3 year old in tow. So think about what your age spread would be and how that would impact your life.

Our logistics:
I worked part-time after the first 2, then went back to school after #3 to change careers and become a nurse. Between pre-reqs and nursing school, that took about 3 years. I worked full time night shift until #5 was about 8 months old. I mostly worked Fri-Sat-Sun nights so that one of us was always available to be here for the kids. It was not fun or easy, but we got through it. (We have a strong marriage, so that helped a lot!) Now I work part time, 1 night shift per week. Still often on the weekend, but not always. We have been able to minimize childcare costs this way and really only occasionally use sitters.

We live off of DH's income- always have- and my income is savings for college, emergencies, etc. We do not live in the DC area, so COL is much lower. Our state also offers full-tuition scholarships for state schools, so that will likely be where several or all of them go. But we would be able to help a decent amount with our savings / investments if they choose to go out of state. We do road trips for most of our vacations- to the Midwest to see DH's family, or to beach / mountain weekends. We love camping, hiking, biking, etc. However, I am originally from Europe and have 2 sisters plus extended family there. We go about 1x every 2-3 years, mostly on FF miles. It's still a lot for rental cars (we get 2) and lodging, but our kids have gotten to see a lot of Western Europe, and it's worth it to us.


We decided to leave the DC area after #3 to move back to my home state. We live about 45 minutes away from my parents, who both still work. They occasionally will take 1-2 kids for a night at their house on a weekend, or they'll come help with getting kids to soccer games or something on a weekend if the schedules totally overlap. They jumped in when I had to have emergency surgery a couple of years ago, so it's nice to have that back up / safety net.

Our kids do plenty of activities-- soccer, gymnastics, swim team, basketball, piano, etc. Not everyone does everything, and most of it is at the rec level, so no crazy travel or insane practice schedules. Oldest DD does a more competitive soccer league, with games up to 3 hours away on some weekends. We carpool with other families, so lining up driving schedules makes those logistics work out.

Our oldest DD is not "raising" her siblings, but we do leave her in charge during screen time once a week or so while we go on a walk around the neighborhood. Everyone has chores- emptying the dishwasher, taking out trash, cleaning a bathroom, helping with laundry, taking care of their pets (gerbils & fish), etc. Nothing too arduous, and it amounts to maybe 30-45 minutes at a time, 3-4 times a week. Our kids fight like any siblings, but they are mostly happy, healthy, and glad for a rotation of playmates. We love our family and are grateful.

That's just our experience. . . hope that helps answer some of your questions / allay some of your fears!

Good luck with your decision, OP!

Your oldest is probably helping more than you'd admit. And, its sad you aren't going to pay for college relying on the state to cover it and if the state does not, then what? And, you mention you spending time with your spouse, but not your kids 1-1.

You have no clue what her life looks like. It’s just an automatic response on DCUM to find fault with anything and everything you don’t agree with.
She sounds like a great mom and you sound awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't ALL kids have chores? I can't imagine not having chores no matter what size the family. This is part of teaching you how to run hour household later in life.

I remember Marie Osmond saying in an interview one time:"I don't have cleaning help in my house. I have 8 kids! That's a lot of cleaning help already." I was one of 5 and my mom always said the same thing

It is one thing to do chores when every child in the family does some
It is completely another to make a teenager play part time mini-mom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't ALL kids have chores? I can't imagine not having chores no matter what size the family. This is part of teaching you how to run hour household later in life.

I remember Marie Osmond saying in an interview one time:"I don't have cleaning help in my house. I have 8 kids! That's a lot of cleaning help already." I was one of 5 and my mom always said the same thing

It is one thing to do chores when every child in the family does some
It is completely another to make a teenager play part time mini-mom.

Yeah my 10 yo’s chores are clean your room, laundry, help load dishwasher. Not “give your 1 year old sibling a bath and put them to bed.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Large families are gross. Neglected kids, piles of wasted money, giant SUVs, giant wasteful houses, consume consume consume. Have one. Maybe two. You don’t need a damn football team in the house to have a happy family.

Oh but it’s “a lot of fun” to have 5!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Large families are gross. Neglected kids, piles of wasted money, giant SUVs, giant wasteful houses, consume consume consume. Have one. Maybe two. You don’t need a damn football team in the house to have a happy family.

Oh but it’s “a lot of fun” to have 5!

“They’re such good moms! It’s great they have 5!”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't ALL kids have chores? I can't imagine not having chores no matter what size the family. This is part of teaching you how to run hour household later in life.

I remember Marie Osmond saying in an interview one time:"I don't have cleaning help in my house. I have 8 kids! That's a lot of cleaning help already." I was one of 5 and my mom always said the same thing

It is one thing to do chores when every child in the family does some
It is completely another to make a teenager play part time mini-mom.

Yeah my 10 yo’s chores are clean your room, laundry, help load dishwasher. Not “give your 1 year old sibling a bath and put them to bed.”

and you know for a fact that that this is a chore PP's daughter is having?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Large families are gross. Neglected kids, piles of wasted money, giant SUVs, giant wasteful houses, consume consume consume. Have one. Maybe two. You don’t need a damn football team in the house to have a happy family.

Large families consume less per person than most smaller families, from what I’ve seen. Even with wealthy parents, there is only so much money to go around. The “piles of wasted money” is an interesting judgement.
I see much more consumption and waste from smaller families. They are also driving giant SUVs and living in large houses and not even utilizing them. And certainly travel more than large families.
As a whole do large families consume more? Perhaps more of the essentials but not as much of the non essentials.

[Anonymous]

My friend does. It’s not the type of parenting I would do. I’ll leave it there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People with five kids now are Mormons or catholic idiots.

This. Or poor and mentally ill and don’t know how birth control works. Also, some poor think government will take care of their kids. Terrible cycle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My neighbors have five, one set of twins. They are all grade school age. Both parents have professional jobs, one switched to no travel when the kids were born. They have a nanny who probably works 45 or 50 hours a week. They seem great. The parents spend 100 percent of their time with the family, no girls night out/guys poker night kind of things.

Glad I don’t live next to them. So noisy!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My neighbors have five, one set of twins. They are all grade school age. Both parents have professional jobs, one switched to no travel when the kids were born. They have a nanny who probably works 45 or 50 hours a week. They seem great. The parents spend 100 percent of their time with the family, no girls night out/guys poker night kind of things.

Glad I don’t live next to them. So noisy!

Wtf would it be noisy? Are the kids up at all hours screaming outside? Does your house not have good insulation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't ALL kids have chores? I can't imagine not having chores no matter what size the family. This is part of teaching you how to run hour household later in life.

I remember Marie Osmond saying in an interview one time:"I don't have cleaning help in my house. I have 8 kids! That's a lot of cleaning help already." I was one of 5 and my mom always said the same thing

It is one thing to do chores when every child in the family does some
It is completely another to make a teenager play part time mini-mom.

Yeah my 10 yo’s chores are clean your room, laundry, help load dishwasher. Not “give your 1 year old sibling a bath and put them to bed.”

Well, that was one of my older sisters' chores when she was growing up. (My mom often worked nights and my older sister that was 9 when I was born usually did my bath and bedtime -- although maybe not starting when I was one, probably more like when I was 3 or 4.) We're both grown women now, and seem to be fine. We have good relationships with our parents, families of our own, etc. And I gave plenty of baths to her kids when they were little. I'm not sure why "give your little sibling a bath and put them to bed" is such an awful chore. Way better than scrub the toilets!