My dad was number 14. He was once asked for advice by a man who had several children already and wanted more. My dad's advice?
"Stop."
My dad went on to explain that this guy was already neglecting his current children and that it was abuse to continue. Because there simply isn't enough time and resources available.
My oldest sister wanted to do the same. My brother in law got a vasectomy in secret after the 7th. Everything your dad said is exactly true.
Edit: I don't mean to imply that some women aren't forced into the position of having more kids than they want. But usually having a lot of kids requires two mentally unwell religious fundamentalists.
Oh you're totally right that there's people who willingly do this as well! Thankfully we have more choices when it comes to how many children we want these days.
And it's stupid how hard a vasectomy can be to get if you're younger and living in a red state where most of the hospitals are run by one or two catholic establishments.
Thankfully I managed it, but not until I was older.
Edit: Not discounting how difficult it is to get any kind of reproductive healthcare in this same situation. Just saying that it's not necessarily easier. I had a girlfriend who badly needed a hysterectomy, but she was 27 and MiGhT wAnT a KiD SomEdAy, this (female) doctor literally told me to get her pregnant and I said "Ma'am this isnt that kind of relationship, maybe you should consider doing your job" which she eventually did, but what's a few extra months of suffering, right?
Yeah it's still an issue now, but there are more options than back then.
It's very hard to hide birth control and it can be tampered with easily. I've heard of men microwaving their partner's birth control pills, poking holes in condoms, even forcing their partner to remove IUDs.
tell that to any woman in the use asking to be sterilized, crazy the hoops you have to jump through
That's entirely about finding the right doctor. I've known men who were refused a vasectomy because "you'll want kids later and it isn't always reversible" and were asked to get a consent form signed by their wife. Both are things that are common "hoops" women go through when trying to get a conservative doctor to do a hysterectomy or tubal ligation.
My wife actually brought me with her to the doctor's appointment where she asked for her hysterectomy "just in case" and the doctor asked why she brought me with her and I kind of sheepishly answered "moral support." She had seen every other gyno in the area and had problems with all of them, ranging from ignoring her issues to doing a uterine biopsy using a kevorkian punch (look it up, it's designed to be inserted, and then essentially a metal claw on the business end gouges out a piece of tissue to sample) with no pain relief of any kind on the grounds that "it's less painful than childbirth". Most of them were women (including the one that did the uterine biopsy), the one who did her hysterectomy was one of the only men.
Ya I had an exgf who had a kid with pretty severe ms. The poor little dude barely made his 9th birthday. Apparently she carries the gene, I'm not sure the exact details. But the risk that any other children she had would be afflicted was too high. She had to go to 6 Drs before she found one that would tie her tubes. Absolutely ridiculous
Maybe it's just cuz I've got a neurospicy bean who is AuDHD and PDA af, but I do not understand how people can have more than a couple kids. Hell, my wife is the oldest of 5 and it's crazy how much abuse I now see they all endured (both neglect and actual SA abuse of the youngest ones that wasn't brought to light until a few years ago).
Right? I've got one kid and I've got my hands full! I can't imagine having more kids than I wanted because of lack of access to contraception. Sounds like a nightmare.
The folks who have large numbers of kids typically start handing off childcare duties to the older ones as soon as they're physically capable of doing those tasks. Especially the girls - usually these sorts of families don't want boys doing child care unless there are no girls, but the boys start getting used for labor around the same age.
Yeah, I grew up catholic and that's how the big families I knew were. You had kids who were largely raised by their big sisters raising the younger siblings… And no, they weren't ok, they ranged from mad about it to excited to be the mom in such a dynamic
The folks who have large numbers of kids typically start handing off childcare duties to the older ones as soon as they’re physically capable of doing those tasks.
More than once I have heard of the eldest child in these situations running off as soon as they are 18 and going no-contact.
You see, it's simple -- once you've been going for 5 or 6 years, you make the older children take care of the younger ones. Parentification is fun and saves you lots of work!
No, some people get a thrill out of the power of making more people, of having a huge family, even if they don't take good care of them.
I personally don't get it. But I have a friend who is a really incompetent person - when we hang out, we have to make extra sure she doesn't do dangerous things like she is a child. She is a sweet person, but very oblivious in a way that is hard to put a pin on. She is married, and her husband takes care of her and has always seemed to kind of like the responsibility. To each their own. But they now have 2 kids and he is completely overwhelmed. But she wants more and keeps talking about trying to talk him into it or 'oops' getting pregnant again in a few years. We all yell at her when she says stuff like that.
It is the perfect flip-flop of the usual gender roles - where Dad has all the responsibility and doesn't want more, and Mom just sees it as some kind of power trip about her self image and is oblivious or just doesn't care that it would break her partner.
I used to work with a guy who was close to my age and had 12 children. He swore up and down that all of them got the same attention. I asked for the middle name of the fourth youngest and he couldn't answer.
I have just one kid living with me. (The other one is 26) I spend a lot of time and effort taking care of her, I don't see how I could adequately care for a double-digit number of kids.
Yeah definitely the elephant in the room when this comes up. Women didn’t have a choice and they were impregnated over and over even if it killed them.
And the "orphan train" already passed by, so it's not pictured either. Or the "for sale" signs when the children became too many. But the chimney sweep kids are "living it up", as they're learning an important trade!
But the chimney sweep kids are “living it up”, as they’re learning an important trade!
The cancers those chimney sweep kids got were horrific. Last Podcast on the Left recently did a deep dive into chimney sweeps and it was eye-opening. Highly recommend listening if you're into that kind of thing.
Sorry, sorry... that was sarcasm. It was mostly slavery of orphans, guised as trade-skills. As well as the cancers, they also had hellish injury/death, because ya know... 7 year olds are climbing chimneys
"Put their feet to the fire"... sometimes kids were too afraid to keep climbing, so they lit a fire under them. Sometimes, they became too grown and got stuck in the chimney, possibly dying. Hellish
Lmao, well damn I'm sorry again! That makes more sense, I misinterpreted cause I is a little dumb. I'll have to check it out because I am in fact, into those kinda things! Thank you
Oh wow, you dug a grave? Look at mister "thinks he's better than everybody else because he owns enough land to bury people". Why don't you just tie em up in a sack and toss em in the river like the rest of us?
Or they owned a farm, and 7 or 8 of those kids are already doing significant amounts of farm labor to earn their food. The economics of having tons of kids is radically different when they go from being a cost to a profit in 8ish years instead of from a cost to not a budget item in hopefully 22 if you're lucky.
The US school calendar was based on the realities of this. So was the election schedule, voting on a Tuesday aligns neatly with the schedules of farmers bringing goods to the nearest town for market.
The US school calendar was based on the realities of this.
No it wasn't. The US school calendar gives the biggest break times in the middle of summer and the middle of winter -- two times when farmers are the least busy. School is fully in session during a farmer's busiest times of spring planting and fall harvest.
I had the fortunate experience of growing up with great-grandparents living, as well as some of their siblings. I got to hear first-hand experiences from 3 generations of women (mother, grandmothers, and two great-grandmothers plus various aunts sprinkled in). It was invaluable for me. Knowing their life stories and the truth of what they endured has helped me navigate life in so many ways.
It also has been incredible armor against the flood of misplaced nostalgia and outright manipulation of history that seems so prevelant. My great-grandmother was born in 1908 and died in 2002. She left her abusive husband in the 1930s and raised her kids as a single mom in a time when it was exponentially more difficult to do so. Glad she got out when she did with 4 instead of 14...
When I hear of the women in the victorian times who worked as sex workers to get by, got hacked into pieces by Jack the Ripper and no one batted an eye when they heard a woman screaming as that's just what London was like at the time....
... I know there's a lot of unwritten history that wildly deviates from the conservative mindset, and always has.
This is a really important factor here that it wasn't exactly "Grandma's" choosing (not to make the meme unfunny but...) Yeah, more often than not it was "Grandpa" with no choice in the matter.
Her husband forced himself on her while she was still recovering from birth. There's no way there were so many children so close without that happening.
Y'all can disagree with me, but I'm right. There's no way this particular woman could've healed from birth enough to safely get pregnant again that many times. Marital rape wasn't even against the law back then. It was normalized.
Sex would not have been enjoyable for her immediately after birth.
~~You are most likely right, but given there are trad wife's now adays, it isn't impossible that some women wanted that. And unless there are more specific information from her family on her choices, chances are, we will never know. And as much as I don't want to deny past sexual violence, I also don't want to deny agency. ~~
After writing it I realize it is a shit opinion because even the most trad wifeliest today, with more resources and healthcare do not go for so many children. And I now agree with you fully.
My ex's best friend is one of.. 11? 12? I forgot. Probably more by now. Both parents of that family are weird but as far as I can tell it's mostly the mom who wants more but... I'm not entirely sure if she actually wants more children or she just likes getting parental pay which is 18 months in this country. On 12 kids that's 18 years that she hasn't had to go to work. Don't think the woman in the picture got 18 months
kind of both Irish twins are not rare among every society, but having to move my mouse pointer to count so many children so close together it.
Although I am willing to bet a photo with cousins too rather than just one set of siblings. because I don't want to belief that said family is even possible.
While doing genealogy research I found it quite common in rural norway in the 18th and 19th century for women to have a child every two years until their early to mid fifties. Sometimes they'd have as many as 18 children.
You’re most likely right. Though, she is holding twins in the picture I think. Depending on genetics, it’s possible that a few of the other siblings are also twins. But that’s still a hell of a lot of pregnancies, and twin pregnancies are generally harder and riskier than singles, so… yeah that’s not really any consolation.
That seems like an extreme place to go that would only seem justified if you can’t imagine wanting a seemingly ridiculous number of kids. So I’ll offer my perspective.
I grew up with an unusually large number of women in my extended family and heard them talk a lot about enjoying or wanting big families. Many of my cousins went on to have as many kids as they had hoped for originally, and they continue to have children, as if it’s a competition. I don’t get this, because I never wanted children of my own. But all I have ever heard is the woman’s side.
My impression in every case is that, if one of them is setting the agenda on the child front, it’s invariably my cousins. I’m not sure how that conversation goes, but these women are all conventionally attractive, and I would guess it doesn’t take much convincing to get unprotected sex from their guy if that’s what they want.
Long short, I’m not too worried about my cousins being tricked into pregnancy. I do sometimes worry that maybe the men (who have meek personalities by comparison, and look more tired each time I see them) might feel like they weren’t given much say, which could lead to relationship problems later, but it’s not really my business.
I didn’t address the point because a lot of my family’s old photos look like this. Twins become more common later. But also i expect the actual age gaps represented in this photo might not be so close. The children on the right are likely not children at all.
Also genetics has to play some part here. Women in my family have relatively few complications in childbirth, and recover more quickly than usual along with their libido apparently, so just a few months between birth and pregnancy is common.
I’m just trying to offer a plausible alternative explanation that I can vouch for so you don’t have to imagine this nightmare.
I fully agree with you re: most of your points, and don’t necessarily disagree otherwise, just trying to not expect the worst of people I don’t know based on a photo <3
Being fair to women back then, most of them didn't know how sex and babies worked, lacked any sort of formal education besides knowing how to read and write, and were raised that disagreeing with your husband or saying no to him in the bedroom was how to wind up an old spinster, the worst fate for any woman.
"Honey, if I knew what was causing it, I would never have had more than two."
She lived on the farm, but she didn't work it; that's what the male children were for. Her "place" was in the house.
She told me she would ask sometimes, but all anybody would ever tell her was some variation of, "Birds fly. Fish swim. Women have babies. That's just what they do/That's just the way it is."
She finally found out from her doctor while discussing her hysterectomy, but only after confirming her husband was already dead.
Not until after menopause. She was born in the rural US American south some time in the 1920s (the date is known, I just forget). She grew up during the great depression, never went to school, only knew what she learned from her mother, who lived the same way, and only socialized with other women at church, who also lived and grew up the same way. She could read and count well enough to follow a recipe and write enough to leave her husband a note, but that was about it. She was raised to believe that if she said no to her husband in the bedroom, he would divorce her, word would spread around town that she wasn't a "good woman" and she would end up an old spinster, the worst thing a woman could possibly be.
That's what happens when a wife is not allowed to say no and birth control doesn't exist. Could also represent having sex only 15 times over 16 years and getting pregnant every time. My grandmother swore all my grandfather needed to do was look at her and she was pregnant yet again.
Was literally thinking this while making coffee this morning. It's Saturday. I didn't have a good sleep. But now I can play video games all day and maybe have a nap later. Then going out at 8pm, until whenever I feel like.
None of this would be possible with kids.
I came from a big family like that. My mother had 13 children and 11 of us survived long enough to get married and start our own families. Lost one sister to fibroids and another to gang violence.
My grandmother had her first child out of wedlock at the age of 14, her second child (my mom) out of wedlock with a different father at the age of 16, and her third child out of wedlock with yet another different father at the age of 17. And this was all in the 1930s. I strongly suspect grandma really enjoyed the sex -- otherwise, why go through all the social approbation and abandonment by her family that went along with it?
I'm convinced that's why "wash behind your ears" was such a big deal. It feels great getting kissed/licked there, and no one wants to do that if you're gross.
Dunno, but if I remember correctly, in the 19th and early 20th centuries child mortality was very high in some places, especially where there is little access to medical services, and certain vaccines have yet to be developed. That's why some impoverished families became large because survival was on top of the list, and nearly all the children had to find work early on.
Big difference. They have sex only once or twice a year. And it happens to impregnate them. Rinse and repeats to get 10. 12 or 15. Could go from 18 or 20 years old to 35 or 40 years old. Then menopause. And the father is like 60 or 70 years old.
In the United States, the term "Black Irish" was initially used in the 19th century to derogatorily describe Irish refugees of the Great Famine.[1] It later shifted into a term used to describe people of Irish descent who have black or dark-colored hair, blue or dark eyes, or otherwise dark coloring.[2][3] This meaning is not commonly used in Ireland,[1] where "Black Irish" more refers to Irish people of sub-Saharan African descent.[4]
The most common use of the term "Black Irish" is tied to the myth that they were descended from Spanish sailors shipwrecked during the Spanish Armada of 1588.[5][6][7][8][9][10] However, no anthropological, historical, or genetic research supports this story. Some theorists assert that the term was adopted in some cases by Irish Americans who wanted to conceal interracial unions with African Americans, paralleling the phrase "Black Dutch" which was also used in the United States to hide racial identity.[11][12][13] Likewise, the concept of "Black Irish" was also used by some Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders to racially pass themselves into Australian society.[14] In the earlier parts of the 19th century, "Black Irish" was sometimes used in the United States to describe biracial people of African and Irish descent.[9][10]
By the 20th century, "Black Irish" had become an identity played out by Irish-American authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Robert E. Howard. In 21st-century Ireland Black Irish is used primarily to refer to Irish nationals of African descent, and the alternative meaning is not commonly used.
There are Irish people with darker complexions than the stereotypical pale with red hair image you might be thinking.
Maybe the prevalence of adult media in the last 75 years has helped spur this trend, and the availability in vasectomies? Men needed to get their rocks off somehow
Um? I assume your comment was made tongue-in-cheek but seriously: Being pregnant (and raising the kid afterwards) is by far the most expensive contraceptive.
167 replies
I don’t think most women wanted to be pregnant back to back like that then.
My grandmother had 16 children. It destroyed her.
I'm a tenth child and my mom did it of her own volition. It was like being a dog that nobody wanted to take care of.
I'm sorry you were forced to be in that position.
My dad was number 14. He was once asked for advice by a man who had several children already and wanted more. My dad's advice?
"Stop."
My dad went on to explain that this guy was already neglecting his current children and that it was abuse to continue. Because there simply isn't enough time and resources available.
My oldest sister wanted to do the same. My brother in law got a vasectomy in secret after the 7th. Everything your dad said is exactly true.
Edit: I don't mean to imply that some women aren't forced into the position of having more kids than they want. But usually having a lot of kids requires two mentally unwell religious fundamentalists.
Oh you're totally right that there's people who willingly do this as well! Thankfully we have more choices when it comes to how many children we want these days.
tell that to any woman in the use asking to be sterilized, crazy the hoops you have to jump through, our outlook is so ass backwards
and I imagine in a controlling relationship, birth control would be hard to hide
It is fucked how much easier it is to get a vasectomy than a tubal litigation.
yep the doc wanted my permission for her op like wtf
And it's stupid how hard a vasectomy can be to get if you're younger and living in a red state where most of the hospitals are run by one or two catholic establishments.
Thankfully I managed it, but not until I was older.
Edit: Not discounting how difficult it is to get any kind of reproductive healthcare in this same situation. Just saying that it's not necessarily easier. I had a girlfriend who badly needed a hysterectomy, but she was 27 and MiGhT wAnT a KiD SomEdAy, this (female) doctor literally told me to get her pregnant and I said "Ma'am this isnt that kind of relationship, maybe you should consider doing your job" which she eventually did, but what's a few extra months of suffering, right?
Yeah it's still an issue now, but there are more options than back then.
It's very hard to hide birth control and it can be tampered with easily. I've heard of men microwaving their partner's birth control pills, poking holes in condoms, even forcing their partner to remove IUDs.
:( that’s crazy
That's entirely about finding the right doctor. I've known men who were refused a vasectomy because "you'll want kids later and it isn't always reversible" and were asked to get a consent form signed by their wife. Both are things that are common "hoops" women go through when trying to get a conservative doctor to do a hysterectomy or tubal ligation.
My wife actually brought me with her to the doctor's appointment where she asked for her hysterectomy "just in case" and the doctor asked why she brought me with her and I kind of sheepishly answered "moral support." She had seen every other gyno in the area and had problems with all of them, ranging from ignoring her issues to doing a uterine biopsy using a kevorkian punch (look it up, it's designed to be inserted, and then essentially a metal claw on the business end gouges out a piece of tissue to sample) with no pain relief of any kind on the grounds that "it's less painful than childbirth". Most of them were women (including the one that did the uterine biopsy), the one who did her hysterectomy was one of the only men.
Ya I had an exgf who had a kid with pretty severe ms. The poor little dude barely made his 9th birthday. Apparently she carries the gene, I'm not sure the exact details. But the risk that any other children she had would be afflicted was too high. She had to go to 6 Drs before she found one that would tie her tubes. Absolutely ridiculous
yep pretty much this
Maybe it's just cuz I've got a neurospicy bean who is AuDHD and PDA af, but I do not understand how people can have more than a couple kids. Hell, my wife is the oldest of 5 and it's crazy how much abuse I now see they all endured (both neglect and actual SA abuse of the youngest ones that wasn't brought to light until a few years ago).
Right? I've got one kid and I've got my hands full! I can't imagine having more kids than I wanted because of lack of access to contraception. Sounds like a nightmare.
My mother wanted two, got two at once, went "DONE NOW" and it was for the best.
Bro I've got my hands full with two cats.
The folks who have large numbers of kids typically start handing off childcare duties to the older ones as soon as they're physically capable of doing those tasks. Especially the girls - usually these sorts of families don't want boys doing child care unless there are no girls, but the boys start getting used for labor around the same age.
My eldest aunts ended up being pregnant the same time my grandmother was often.
There's a lot of resentment and grudges in my family tree.
Sounds like there might be more grudges than branches.
Yeah, I grew up catholic and that's how the big families I knew were. You had kids who were largely raised by their big sisters raising the younger siblings… And no, they weren't ok, they ranged from mad about it to excited to be the mom in such a dynamic
More than once I have heard of the eldest child in these situations running off as soon as they are 18 and going no-contact.
You see, it's simple -- once you've been going for 5 or 6 years, you make the older children take care of the younger ones. Parentification is fun and saves you lots of work!
often it's just the lack of contraception and/or appropriate education.
No, some people get a thrill out of the power of making more people, of having a huge family, even if they don't take good care of them.
I personally don't get it. But I have a friend who is a really incompetent person - when we hang out, we have to make extra sure she doesn't do dangerous things like she is a child. She is a sweet person, but very oblivious in a way that is hard to put a pin on. She is married, and her husband takes care of her and has always seemed to kind of like the responsibility. To each their own. But they now have 2 kids and he is completely overwhelmed. But she wants more and keeps talking about trying to talk him into it or 'oops' getting pregnant again in a few years. We all yell at her when she says stuff like that.
It is the perfect flip-flop of the usual gender roles - where Dad has all the responsibility and doesn't want more, and Mom just sees it as some kind of power trip about her self image and is oblivious or just doesn't care that it would break her partner.
There are certainly people who choose to do this. But in the time period pictured, it is more likely that this woman had no other choice.
Oh absolutely. Women were basically property then and no one had any concept of 'spousal rape'.
I was more addressing the mentality when people do it now - that it shouldn't be assumed to be ignorance about birth control
I used to work with a guy who was close to my age and had 12 children. He swore up and down that all of them got the same attention. I asked for the middle name of the fourth youngest and he couldn't answer.
I have just one kid living with me. (The other one is 26) I spend a lot of time and effort taking care of her, I don't see how I could adequately care for a double-digit number of kids.
Your mom is a POS
Yeah definitely the elephant in the room when this comes up. Women didn’t have a choice and they were impregnated over and over even if it killed them.
You always have a choice. I see a lot of women applauding for feminism... But I never see them at the rally's.
Take some responsibility. If you're getting married and constantly plowed because you can't think for yourself, that's on you.
Having said that, humans are going to be human, so it's nothing particularlt unnatural.
At what kind of rally's are you? All protests I go to are full of women fighting for theirs and others rights.
My grandparents had 8 children. 7 came after everyone moved out and 8 came because they didn't want 7 to be lonely.
Now double it for this woman and my grandmother. It’s insane.
They needed workers. Not pictured is the shallow grave out back for the 4 that got the rickets
And the "orphan train" already passed by, so it's not pictured either. Or the "for sale" signs when the children became too many. But the chimney sweep kids are "living it up", as they're learning an important trade!
The cancers those chimney sweep kids got were horrific. Last Podcast on the Left recently did a deep dive into chimney sweeps and it was eye-opening. Highly recommend listening if you're into that kind of thing.
I was just recommending a podcast episode lol
Sorry, sorry... that was sarcasm. It was mostly slavery of orphans, guised as trade-skills. As well as the cancers, they also had hellish injury/death, because ya know... 7 year olds are climbing chimneys
"Put their feet to the fire"... sometimes kids were too afraid to keep climbing, so they lit a fire under them. Sometimes, they became too grown and got stuck in the chimney, possibly dying. Hellish
I wasn't correcting you, I just have ADHD and saw your line about chimney sweeps which reminded me of that podcast episode so I recommended it hahaha
I'm sorry I didn't make it clear that I was just conversing with you.
Lmao, well damn I'm sorry again! That makes more sense, I misinterpreted cause I is a little dumb. I'll have to check it out because I am in fact, into those kinda things! Thank you
No problem :)
Tone can be so hard to convey on text and then further complicated with neurodivergence haha
Chimney sweeps, podcasts, cancer, or open eyes?
Learning more about fucked up things lol
Do you have a link to the podcast “the Left” or related doesn’t show clear results, thanks.
Oh yes! The show is called "The Last Podcast on the Left" and here's a link to their site.
And here is the episode on chimney sweeps!
Ah material to drift off to sleep on to. 😄 - Some of them at least. Will give it a go!
I don't listen to much true crime anymore, but these guys stole my heart haha
Chim, chimney
Chim, chimney
Chim, chim, cher-ee
A sweep is full of cancer
As full of cancer as you can be.
It's a very suspicious ratio of pants to dresses
Young boys and girls used to wear the same outfits and they were passed down. Look closely at the photo.
Oh wow, you dug a grave? Look at mister "thinks he's better than everybody else because he owns enough land to bury people". Why don't you just tie em up in a sack and toss em in the river like the rest of us?
The food bill for those kids today would be pretty close to the median gross income in USA.
Good thing that the father has a stable job at the gas station to support his family.
Or they owned a farm, and 7 or 8 of those kids are already doing significant amounts of farm labor to earn their food. The economics of having tons of kids is radically different when they go from being a cost to a profit in 8ish years instead of from a cost to not a budget item in hopefully 22 if you're lucky.
The US school calendar was based on the realities of this. So was the election schedule, voting on a Tuesday aligns neatly with the schedules of farmers bringing goods to the nearest town for market.
No it wasn't. The US school calendar gives the biggest break times in the middle of summer and the middle of winter -- two times when farmers are the least busy. School is fully in session during a farmer's busiest times of spring planting and fall harvest.
Don't worry, all those kids were being put to work to supplement the family income.
I had the fortunate experience of growing up with great-grandparents living, as well as some of their siblings. I got to hear first-hand experiences from 3 generations of women (mother, grandmothers, and two great-grandmothers plus various aunts sprinkled in). It was invaluable for me. Knowing their life stories and the truth of what they endured has helped me navigate life in so many ways.
It also has been incredible armor against the flood of misplaced nostalgia and outright manipulation of history that seems so prevelant. My great-grandmother was born in 1908 and died in 2002. She left her abusive husband in the 1930s and raised her kids as a single mom in a time when it was exponentially more difficult to do so. Glad she got out when she did with 4 instead of 14...
When I hear of the women in the victorian times who worked as sex workers to get by, got hacked into pieces by Jack the Ripper and no one batted an eye when they heard a woman screaming as that's just what London was like at the time....
... I know there's a lot of unwritten history that wildly deviates from the conservative mindset, and always has.
If you're interested, I highly recommend "The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper" by Hallie Rubenhold!
If you teach women about their bodies and give them the choice, they will have fewer children.
This is why conservatives are anti-sex ed and anti-abortion.
True, but they also have more options for birth control. And a family needs two working parents to have a children nowadays as well.
Also, until recently, childhood vaccines prevented a lot of the deaths that made having tons of kids a necessity.
That's the choice that yesman is talking about. Birth control and abortion.
Ah, I was thinking more along the lines of emancipation
Before modern medicine, often people would have a ton of kids because they would frequently die.
Before modern medicine, birth control and abortions were much harder to come by, too.
Also, women didn't really get much of a say in the matter.
God forbid you point that out though, there's a bunch of people who think this was all consensual.
This is a really important factor here that it wasn't exactly "Grandma's" choosing (not to make the meme unfunny but...) Yeah, more often than not it was "Grandpa" with no choice in the matter.
It's ok to not laugh at a meme like this.
Rather than attributing this to the lack of modern medicine, I would attribute this to the lack of television and the internet. 🤣
100%
What else if there to but fuck?
God that poor woman. That's so many kids.
Her husband forced himself on her while she was still recovering from birth. There's no way there were so many children so close without that happening.
Y'all can disagree with me, but I'm right. There's no way this particular woman could've healed from birth enough to safely get pregnant again that many times. Marital rape wasn't even against the law back then. It was normalized.
Sex would not have been enjoyable for her immediately after birth.
~~You are most likely right, but given there are trad wife's now adays, it isn't impossible that some women wanted that. And unless there are more specific information from her family on her choices, chances are, we will never know. And as much as I don't want to deny past sexual violence, I also don't want to deny agency. ~~
After writing it I realize it is a shit opinion because even the most trad wifeliest today, with more resources and healthcare do not go for so many children. And I now agree with you fully.
My ex's best friend is one of.. 11? 12? I forgot. Probably more by now. Both parents of that family are weird but as far as I can tell it's mostly the mom who wants more but... I'm not entirely sure if she actually wants more children or she just likes getting parental pay which is 18 months in this country. On 12 kids that's 18 years that she hasn't had to go to work. Don't think the woman in the picture got 18 months
Not sure if she can stay employed so long. I am not sure if you can Irish twins your parental leave indefinitely,
I couldn't imagine an employer paying her for 18 years of parental leave.
In Germany parental leave is paid by the state and you can receive it instead of unemployment money. Probably true for other countries as well.
Nice, sounds good.
Yeah it's not even so much how many children she has here (even though that's an issue all on it's own obviously), it's how close they are in age.
kind of both Irish twins are not rare among every society, but having to move my mouse pointer to count so many children so close together it.
Although I am willing to bet a photo with cousins too rather than just one set of siblings. because I don't want to belief that said family is even possible.
My grandmother had 16 children. It’s very possible and way more common back then.
While doing genealogy research I found it quite common in rural norway in the 18th and 19th century for women to have a child every two years until their early to mid fifties. Sometimes they'd have as many as 18 children.
Damn, the amount of people here who don't understand where the phrase "keep em barefoot and pregnant" comes from...
Literally "if you keep them pregnant constantly, they will have no need for shoes because they will never leave the home."
There's a lot of people who are uncomfortable with examining their long-held beliefs and biases.
Like that women like this wanted to have that many babies and that husbands have a right to sex with their wives no matter what.
You’re most likely right. Though, she is holding twins in the picture I think. Depending on genetics, it’s possible that a few of the other siblings are also twins. But that’s still a hell of a lot of pregnancies, and twin pregnancies are generally harder and riskier than singles, so… yeah that’s not really any consolation.
That seems like an extreme place to go that would only seem justified if you can’t imagine wanting a seemingly ridiculous number of kids. So I’ll offer my perspective.
I grew up with an unusually large number of women in my extended family and heard them talk a lot about enjoying or wanting big families. Many of my cousins went on to have as many kids as they had hoped for originally, and they continue to have children, as if it’s a competition. I don’t get this, because I never wanted children of my own. But all I have ever heard is the woman’s side.
My impression in every case is that, if one of them is setting the agenda on the child front, it’s invariably my cousins. I’m not sure how that conversation goes, but these women are all conventionally attractive, and I would guess it doesn’t take much convincing to get unprotected sex from their guy if that’s what they want.
Long short, I’m not too worried about my cousins being tricked into pregnancy. I do sometimes worry that maybe the men (who have meek personalities by comparison, and look more tired each time I see them) might feel like they weren’t given much say, which could lead to relationship problems later, but it’s not really my business.
You completely missed the point about the children being so close in age.
It was dangerous and painful for this woman.
I didn’t address the point because a lot of my family’s old photos look like this. Twins become more common later. But also i expect the actual age gaps represented in this photo might not be so close. The children on the right are likely not children at all.
Also genetics has to play some part here. Women in my family have relatively few complications in childbirth, and recover more quickly than usual along with their libido apparently, so just a few months between birth and pregnancy is common.
I’m just trying to offer a plausible alternative explanation that I can vouch for so you don’t have to imagine this nightmare.
My father was the fourteenth child out of sixteen siblings. I’m very familiar with this type of family setup.
Regardless of women who want big families, 16 children is abuse. Both of the mother’s body and of the children as human beings.
I’ve given birth before as well. It is dangerous to have pregnancies back to back.
Women didn’t have nearly as much choice back then.
I fully agree with you re: most of your points, and don’t necessarily disagree otherwise, just trying to not expect the worst of people I don’t know based on a photo <3
That’s fair and sorry to be blunt. Your intent was to see the good and I do appreciate that.
Being fair to women back then, most of them didn't know how sex and babies worked, lacked any sort of formal education besides knowing how to read and write, and were raised that disagreeing with your husband or saying no to him in the bedroom was how to wind up an old spinster, the worst fate for any woman.
"Honey, if I knew what was causing it, I would never have had more than two."
-My great grandma, mother of 12
They legitimately didn't understand that sex resulted in pregnancy?
That seems unlikely to be true unless they were raised very religious and not in any proximity to farm animals or pets.
Religious, yes. But very much on a farm.
So she knew if the farm animals had sex they'd become pregnant?
She lived on the farm, but she didn't work it; that's what the male children were for. Her "place" was in the house.
She told me she would ask sometimes, but all anybody would ever tell her was some variation of, "Birds fly. Fish swim. Women have babies. That's just what they do/That's just the way it is."
She finally found out from her doctor while discussing her hysterectomy, but only after confirming her husband was already dead.
Not until after menopause. She was born in the rural US American south some time in the 1920s (the date is known, I just forget). She grew up during the great depression, never went to school, only knew what she learned from her mother, who lived the same way, and only socialized with other women at church, who also lived and grew up the same way. She could read and count well enough to follow a recipe and write enough to leave her husband a note, but that was about it. She was raised to believe that if she said no to her husband in the bedroom, he would divorce her, word would spread around town that she wasn't a "good woman" and she would end up an old spinster, the worst thing a woman could possibly be.
Yeah, that was only discovered in the 1990s.
I mean, if you can't figure out a pattern after birth 3... You might be mentally underdeveloped.
That's what happens when a wife is not allowed to say no and birth control doesn't exist. Could also represent having sex only 15 times over 16 years and getting pregnant every time. My grandmother swore all my grandfather needed to do was look at her and she was pregnant yet again.
They didn't think about it they just did it.
How many of those old kids were acting as parents because the folks were too busy fucking?
The two oldest, seated in front, are tending two newborn babies. Presumably the parents are off somewhere else, fucking.
I love being childless.
I love children ... in 15 minute doses. That's why being a childless school bus driver is so great.
*childfree!
Definitely not free, little fuckers are expensive AF :D
A 20 year credit card you can never pay off.
Was literally thinking this while making coffee this morning. It's Saturday. I didn't have a good sleep. But now I can play video games all day and maybe have a nap later. Then going out at 8pm, until whenever I feel like. None of this would be possible with kids.
I came from a big family like that. My mother had 13 children and 11 of us survived long enough to get married and start our own families. Lost one sister to fibroids and another to gang violence.
My mum have 6 children, she call us her pension plan
Please stop. The planet is overcrowded as it is.
Dude. They just said two of their siblings died. How about you stop?
The planet is not overcrowded, the West just exploits it with sheer arrogance and greed till it fucking implodes.
Based and factual.
Its not, but this is still a shitty reason to make a person exist and bitch deserves to hang if its not entirely a joke.
That’s like 2 decades of pushing out kids.
Grandma wasn’t thinking about sex, she was having it.
Whether she felt like it or not.
My dad is 70 and he was the youngest of 14 kids…
To be fair, I don't think grandma pumped out 252 children because she enjoyed the sex.
My grandmother had her first child out of wedlock at the age of 14, her second child (my mom) out of wedlock with a different father at the age of 16, and her third child out of wedlock with yet another different father at the age of 17. And this was all in the 1930s. I strongly suspect grandma really enjoyed the sex -- otherwise, why go through all the social approbation and abandonment by her family that went along with it?
Yea she definitely loved that D.
Nobody asks to get kicked in the nuts twice do they?
Can't have been that bad.
Societal pressure to produce children as woman has definitely been a big thing back then. Hell, it is still a thing today, just not as much.
Grandma, you know better. Everyone was just as horny and kinky back then as they are today. You're STILL horny and kinky Grandma!
I'm convinced that's why "wash behind your ears" was such a big deal. It feels great getting kissed/licked there, and no one wants to do that if you're gross.
You might be right!
Dunno, but if I remember correctly, in the 19th and early 20th centuries child mortality was very high in some places, especially where there is little access to medical services, and certain vaccines have yet to be developed. That's why some impoverished families became large because survival was on top of the list, and nearly all the children had to find work early on.
That and in combination with very little access to contraception and abortion. Women had as many babies as came from being married and having sex.
Bros gotta start pulling out
or butt-secks
Or maybe they could even consider taking a break from sex altogether
No
Government minder here wants more meat for the wars
I expect my wife to have more sex with me than once every 10 months
Big difference. They have sex only once or twice a year. And it happens to impregnate them. Rinse and repeats to get 10. 12 or 15. Could go from 18 or 20 years old to 35 or 40 years old. Then menopause. And the father is like 60 or 70 years old.
pretty sure that's an Italian family. those two fucked every single day.
what's worse, their house was a one bedroom flat.
Could easily be Irish Catholics, too.
Really any kind of catholic except the german kind, they only switch from sadomasochism to try for a kid /s
those kids are far too tan to be Irish 😂
There are Irish people with darker complexions than the stereotypical pale with red hair image you might be thinking.
hey look at that. we're both wrong. but..you were more wrong.
Haha I’m not wrong about dark complexion Irish people existing which is the only fact I pointed out.
Thanks for digging up more info on the pic!
I'm absolutely sure that husband did not give his wife breaks at all.
People with mad game don't need to front it.
To be fair grandma was not thinking about sex for any of this. The female orgasm hadn't yet made it to straight women.
Maybe the prevalence of adult media in the last 75 years has helped spur this trend, and the availability in vasectomies? Men needed to get their rocks off somehow
Being pregnant is the cheapest contraceptive after all.
Um? I assume your comment was made tongue-in-cheek but seriously: Being pregnant (and raising the kid afterwards) is by far the most expensive contraceptive.
It's not like either of them enjoyed it, especially after the fourth or fifth one.
I bet he enjoyed it more than her.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. You're right.
I annoy some on Lemmy because of my feminist views. Doesn't bother me, but thank you for your comment!
https://youtu.be/CAklf8EqDTo
Do or do not. There is no try.
Geez lady, is a vagina not a clown car
How is this a meme? SMH
Isn't it funny to laugh at women in tough situations through very little choice of their own?
Peak comedy, right?