5 still fits in a minivan.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a friend who lived your fear. She had two and decided to go for the third only to have triplets! It ended up working out well for them. All of the kids are wonderful. Travel wise, they mostly stuck to domestic everyone got a solo 16th birthday trip to the world city of their choice.

This just happened to someone I know. For a couple months they had 5 under 4!

I also know a family with two singletons and then triplets. They lived in N Arlington until recently, then moved further out.

I have five kids. We are a close family. Dinners can be hectic but my kids are thriving. It is also fun to see the relationships among all the kids. My husband and I both work full time and we have a nanny.

With 5 kids, the parents tend to demand a lot of babysitting from the oldest kids, particularly the oldest daughter
This brings it's own set of issues. If the family goes through unemployment or primary wage earner is disabled, it is aweful.
Finances are very important as kids cost a ton of money. It is not romantic, don't pretend these families are constantly happy. Some 5 kid families even divorce

We have 5. I’m an atheist, we don’t go to church or homeschool. I do stay at home and DH is a public servant. We don’t take lavish vacations, but everyone is healthy and happy. During this time of being quarantined, having 5 kids has been wonderful - everyone has a friend and no one is lonely.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real talk. 3 is enough. Nobody needs 4 kids these days. Kids don’t die in infancy and early childhood the way they used to.

Eh. Probably some people should have as many kids as they can handle, and some people shouldn’t have kids at all.

That bears no relationship to my comment.

Anonymous wrote:Real talk. 3 is enough. Nobody needs 4 kids these days. Kids don’t die in infancy and early childhood the way they used to.

Eh. Probably some people should have as many kids as they can handle, and some people shouldn’t have kids at all.

Real talk. 3 is enough. Nobody needs 4 kids these days. Kids don’t die in infancy and early childhood the way they used to.

Anonymous wrote:

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

Wrong. The Catholic “idiots” gave up huge families in the 1960’s, Grandma.

The average size Catholic family were I grew up in the 70s was 5. My best friends' families ranged from 5-13 kids. So no, Allison, Catholics did not give up huge families in the 60s.

I have several friends back home that have 4-6 kids right now.

We have 5. It's very busy, but no busier than 4, I imagine. And having to stay home has been so easy because they still have 4 other kids to hang out with. No one is lonely.

He works. I'm home. It's not a big deal. Just busy.

Anonymous wrote:I have a friend who lived your fear. She had two and decided to go for the third only to have triplets! It ended up working out well for them. All of the kids are wonderful. Travel wise, they mostly stuck to domestic everyone got a solo 16th birthday trip to the world city of their choice.

This just happened to someone I know. For a couple months they had 5 under 4!

I have 4 and have several friends with five or more. I have actually heard from them that the big transition happens at six kids. That’s when you can’t fit in a minivan anymore, and it gets hard to even get the kids out of the house.

I don’t know that my friends are environmentalists, but I have to say that they seem to live in ways that are fairly environmentally friendly. They don’t waste food and tend to grow and can quite a bit of their own, cloth diaper, wear hand me downs instead of buying new clothes, don’t use airline travel much, have fewer toys, renovate their homes less often (or almost never), etc. I think it’s generally because they are just not the type to care much about keeping up with the Jones’s.

I don’t work full time with four, but I stopped working full time when I had my first. I don’t know anyone who works full time with five, but I can’t think of any reason that you couldn’t. Once you have designed your work life around childcare, it seems to me that it doesn’t matter much how many children you have. If you have to leave work every day by 5:00pm to get kids at daycare/aftercare before it closes, it doesn’t much matter whether you are picking up one child or five as far as work is concerned. You will probably need more help with laundry and cooking if you can’t get it done during the day, but that’s a separate issue.

Travel: We were 5 kids stuffed in to an un- air conditioned station wagon in the 1970s. No religious affiliation. Best years of our lives , we all agree. Grand Canyon, National Parks, etc etc for 2+ weeks at a time in summers. I have only 3 kids , but we had an air- conditioned minivan and also did long road trips in summers (2 teachers here). The tradition lives on in my own kids, thank goodness.

I have a friend who lived your fear. She had two and decided to go for the third only to have triplets! It ended up working out well for them. All of the kids are wonderful. Travel wise, they mostly stuck to domestic everyone got a solo 16th birthday trip to the world city of their choice.

Anonymous wrote:Nancy Pelosi has 5 kids

She’s Catholic enough to have told Diane Sawyer she doesn’t personally believe in birth control