It is easy for me to say that September 11, 2001 was one of the most profound days of my life. I remember getting up that morning to get ready for work and turning on the news. I lived in California at the time and it was really early in the morning. I watched as The Today Show hosts talked about what seemed to be a tragic accident in which an airplane crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. I then watched live as the second plane hit and knew everything was somehow different now. I instantly knew that something was very wrong.
My oldest son was only 19 months old on that day and I remember not wanting to drop him off at daycare. I wanted to take him back home with me and crawl into bed and hope that it was all a nightmare.
How do you explain a day like that to a young child? How do you explain such evil to anyone?
When Austin was six years old, his school was going to celebrate “Patriot Day” which prompted our conversation. It was the conversation I had been preparing for, yet dreading for 5 years.
Austin: Mom, what is National Patriot Day?
Me: Well, it is a day to remember what it is to be an American and to honor some special people.
Austin: So is it like the 4th of July?
Me: Sort of. The 4th of July is to celebrate our country’s birthday.
Austin: Oh, so what people do we honor on patriot day?
Me (realizing I need to just tell him about 9/11 before he hears it on the news and gets confused): Well, back on September 11, 2001 something happened. You were just a baby so you don’t remember it. Some very bad men took over some airplanes.
Austin: What do you mean, took over?
Me: They took control of the planes away from the pilots and started to fly them by themselves.
Austin: OK
Me: Those bad men then crashed the planes into two buildings in New York called the World Trade Center. They also crashed one into a building in Washington and another one crashed into a field.
Austin: Why would they do that?
Me (tears coming to my eyes): I don’t know Austin. I wish I did know. See these people don’t like America and they wanted to hurt us. The two towers fell down and a lot of people on the planes and in the buildings died. It was a very, very sad day.
Austin: So Patriot day is about honoring those people?
Me: Yes, it is about honoring those people and their families.
Austin: Then I guess I better pray for their families on Patriot day. I bet they miss them.
Me (about to completely lose it): I think that would be a very nice thing.
LaShawn blog about her family and her photography at Frazzled LaShawn.
I have been on pretty much all sides of the Mommy Wars. You know the Mommy Wars. The constant battle over who has it harder and who is in the right. Who is raising their children the right way and who is ruining their children forever. Yes, those Mommy Wars.
I began as the young mom. I married at 18 and had my first son at age 19. Then, I was a stay at home mom for the first 11 months of my oldest son’s life. After those 11 months I went back to work full time. So I was a working mom. I was also a military wife at the time. Anyone knows that being a mom within the military life is a different world all its own. Then I was the stay at home mom to two. Then back to work. THEN the big one….I was a single, full time working, part time student mom.
Are you still with me?
Then I was the stay at home mom again. Then we added son #3 and son #4. So now I am the stay at home, homeschooling mom of four.
All this to say, I understand where almost every woman is coming from. I understand the need to feel important to yourself and to the world as something other than “just a mom”. I understand that deep down desire to be the most important person in your child’s world. I understand the wanting to stay at home and be with your children as much as possible. I understand the need to have a life of your own outside your home. I understand that sometimes being a mom can be a drag. I also understand there is no more important job in the world. I also know, that no matter what stage of motherhood I have been in I have ALWAYS had terrible guilt about something. Guilt about dropping my kids off with strangers for nine hours a day. Guilt about not feeding them enough vegetables. Guilt about yelling too much or not paying enough attention. Guilt, it’s what we moms do.
So I am here to say that I know that 99.9% of moms are good moms that only want what is best for their children. I believe in my case that is to be a stay at home, homeschooling mom. What is best for you and your kids? I don’t have a clue. I don’t pretend to know. On the same note, no one outside God, me and my husband can dictate what being a good mom to MY kids looks like.
In the end…..my name is LaShawn. I am just a mom.
We’ve all experienced the Mommy Drive-By — unsolicited advice (or assvice, as the case may be) given by people who are positive they can parent your child better than you. But is there ever a time when butting in is the right thing to do?I think so.
ABC News has a segment called “What Would You Do?” and this week’s installment was on a topic most parents couldn’t ignore: Leaving a baby alone in a locked car.
The clip on the website is a little inflammatory, with passers-by confronting the actress who is pretending to be the mom of the baby (a very life-like doll). But what really infuriating is the way people respond — or don’t — to what appears to be a distressed baby trapped in a parked car on a hot day.
What would you do in that situation?
Me, I’d probably try the doors to see if they’re locked, scan the area looking for the parent, and then call the police. I don’t think I could just keep on walking by.
What would you do if you came across a child who seemed to be lost? Would you stop and try to help him? Locate an official or an officer and point the child out to her? Keep walking?
A few months ago, I was visiting a museum with four of our kids in tow. My husband and our oldest daughter were out shopping — it was just me and the rest of our crew. Our youngest, then about 1 1/2, was strapped into his stroller and very pissed off about it. Our 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son were paired up, experimenting with a hands-on exhibit in an adjoining room. Our 4-year-old was sitting just a few feet away from me — or so I thought, until I looked over at her and, all of a sudden, she was gone.
My heart stopped.
I called her name. No answer. I looked around — couldn’t see her at all in the suddenly way-too-crowded room. I pushed the stroller closer to where my older kids were, just in case she had wandered over to her siblings. She hadn’t.
Just as I was looking around for someone — anyone — who looked like the worked there, I heard my name being called, loudly and by a strange voice. An adult’s voice. And there was my girl, holding a young woman’s hand. The woman was calling my name, and she looked furious. Like I’d left my child alone on purpose.
My little girl had the presence of mind to look for “another mommy” and ask her to help find me, using my “grown-up name.” Yell “Mama!” in a crowded museum and at least half of the room turns around, but there aren’t very many “Lylah”s out there.
The whole episode lasted, at most, for about three minutes. But it was long enough to see the merit in those baby leashes. And to promise that I’d always, always butt in.
What do you think? When is it OK to butt in?
Lylah is a full-time working mom and step mom to five kids who range in age from teenager to toddler. She writes about work-life balance, frugal living, and parenthood at The 36-Hour Day and blogs about writing at Write. Edit. Repeat. When she’s not at the office, glued to the computer, or solving a kid-related crisis, she’s cooking, doing laundry, or, occasionally, asleep. This post origingally appeared at The 36-Hour Day.
When I was talking to the New York Times reporter a couple of weeks ago, we were discussing the differences between the portrayal of large families on TV now as opposed to twenty or thirty years ago. Jon and Kate plus 8, the Duggar family, other TLC shows featuring larger-than-average families in very unusual situations…love ‘em or hate ‘em, they just don’t reflect family life as the vast majority of us know it. People look at the Duggars who are having far more children than most people ever would and whose reasoning puts them firmly in a category many find totally unthinkable, and Jon & Kate who had far more babies at once than most people ever would or could, and get the idea that people have big families only as a medical anomaly or for bizarre reasons (that’s not to say, by the way, that I think having lots of kids for religious reasons is bizarre, but many people definitely do). The fact is that there are very few (perhaps zero) shows featuring larger-than-average families living normal, average family lives most of the audience can relate to (whether or not they have large families themselves).
“Where’s our Cosby show?” I asked the reporter. “Where’s our Eight is Enough?” Heck, even Family Ties, one of my childhood favorites, featured a family of four kids (by the time the youngun came around). If there’s a show out there now like that, I don’t know of it.
But then it occurred to me that it’s not just normal large-family life that’s missing from prime time these days: it’s ANY normal family life. Is there even such a thing as a family sitcom anymore? You remember, the sort you’d gather with your parents and siblings to watch at 8 PM on Thursday, the kind where your mom and dad never had to cringe or cover your eyes/ears and nobody had to clear their throats in embarrassment because the subject matter wasn’t really suited to a mixed audience? Nowadays, there are hardly any sitcoms left anyway, and what there are have been firmly relegated to one audience or the other. You’ve got your preteen/teen shows and your grownup shows. The grownup shows are usually far too mature in content for kids to watch and the preteen/teen shows are an insufferable excuse for entertainment that I’d rather nobody in my family watched, least of all my kids. Then there are the reality shows like American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that many families have begun tuning into on weekday evenings. That’s fine, if you like reality shows, but I am not a huge fan. I’d much rather have a TV family to get invested in again, to laugh with and watch go through normal family problems and issues with my kids just like my parents and siblings watched with me.
TV networks: I promise you, if you bring back the family sitcom, I will watch. Sure, it may not be as consistently good as the Cosby show (those are big shoes to fill) and it likely won’t feature a big family, but at this point, I’m not picky. Forget Family Ties, I’d even take a Growing Pains. Heck maybe even a Diff’rent Strokes. The point is, I want something relatively wholesome I can watch WITH my kids, where the point is people living their lives rather than losing weight, becoming a star, or winning a bunch of money. I want to laugh with the foibles of a normal, loveable, imperfect but completely (okay, almost completely) believable family again.
Surely I can’t be the only one?
–When Meagan Francis isn’t mourning the loss of the Huxtables and hunting for reruns on Nick at Nite, she’s blogging about life as an author with soon-to-be-five kids on her blog.
I’ve gotten a couple media requests in the last few days from journalists looking to speak to parents from big families. Here they are:
- A reporter for the Phila Inquirer is looking to talk to a parent of 9+ children in the Philadelphia area (including south Jersey). E-mail lkadaba@phillynews.com
- A journalist is looking for a family with 10 or more children that prefers a large family for religious reasons, for a story in Redbook. e-mail lambhoch@aol.com
I’ve been thinking for several days about the single mom of 6 children who recently gave birth to octuplets, bringing her total to 14 children under the age of 8. Since I have ten kids myself, some might think my reaction would be yeah, cool, whatever. But I suspect that my reaction to the news was typical of people with much smaller families.
I was initially amazed at the miracle of the healthy birth of eight babies at once. My ‘wow’ turned to concern when I learned that the mother already had 6 young children. When I learned she was a single mom, I became even more dismayed. My feelings were based on experience. I know first hand that parenting large numbers of children is challenging, even when they are different ages, even when you have a partner.
However, as I have mulled over it, I keep coming back to one conclusion. Whether or not this woman and her doctors were wise, at this stage of the game I see no benefit in going down the judgment road. It seems to me that the focus now should be on support.
These babies are here, and needy. Her other kids also need care. The best thing we can do for these children is to support their momma. Like any mom, she’s going to have moments (years?) where she’s going to wonder how she got herself into this. Having everyone and their dog weighing in on the state of her mental health will benefit neither her nor the children.
These children deserve to have a good life. Most likely this momma is going to need help to make that happen.
Most of us are not in the position to physically help her. But I hope that enough people in her life will step forward and give her the kind of assistance she needs. Not TV cameras and news stories and hyper-analysis, but casseroles and diapers and hands and arms and hearts.
The people not willing or able to offer her these things should just step away and get on with their own lives.
Or pray for her. I personally doubt these babies could have arrived safely without a whole boatload of grace. I hope that the people who have the opportunity to touch the lives of these babies and their mother will show them that grace as well.
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Mary is the mother to ten children, six of whom arrived via adoption. Her kids range in age from 4 to 21. She blogs at Owlhaven.
When I started largerfamilies.com back in 2006, I specifically wanted to create a diverse & welcoming home for people of all different backgrounds and belief systems who just happen to have bigger-than-average families. I didn’t want us to ever write as though we assumed our readers were Christian, married, leaned a certain way politically, or had any specific beliefs.
That said, people make choices for a reason, and it’s my guess that most of our bloggers and readers didn’t wind up with large families by accident (even if the timing and circumstances of each and every pregnancy were not necessarily planned). Just going by a quick scan of blogs written by people with big families, it’s a pretty safe bet that many of our bloggers, readers, and commenters share certain traits. I’m guessing, for example, that many of the people who participate here are politically conservative. It would stand to reason that a lot of us are either pro-life or at least personally uncomfortable with the idea of abortion. We likely have positive experiences with large families, either having grown up happily in them, or watched them wistfully as we grew up in smaller families. We don’t all match every single large-family stereotype, but in nearly every stereotype there is an element of truth.
And that’s okay, right?
But it’s still always been my goal to be a moderate voice in the larger-family world. I want this site to embrace big families without criticizing smaller families. I want people who don’t fit any of the usual stereotypes to feel as comfortable here as those who fit them all. And I also want people who don’t have big families but are just curious about them to feel comfortable and welcome here. So I hope that we are doing a good job in supporting and celebrating big families without sounding critical of smaller families or like we are somehow more virtuous or selfless or happy.
The truth is that everything in life has some tradeoffs. I’m fully willing to admit that there are things my kids will miss out on because there are more of them. There are things they’ll gain that kids in smaller families can’t, too. Sure, I had an “only child” for two years, but that doesn’t really mean I can understand what it’s like to raise an only child to adulthood, or what someone’s possible motives or reasons might be for doing that. Just like they can’t really understand what it’s like to raise my particular children or why I might have made the choices I did. It’s no more selfish for somebody to stop at 2 kids because they’d really like to travel again one day or resume their careers than it is for me to stop at 5 for the same reasons just like it’s no more selfish for me to try to split my time between five than it is for somebody else to lavish all their parental attention on one child. Neither choice is necessarily more responsible, selfless, virtuous or right. We all have different circumstances, we all have different values, we all have different threshholds of patience and tolerance for noise, and we’re all operating on different clocks too.
My feeling is that people who hate on large families mostly do so out of ignorance, poor logic skills (again, with the “I knew a family with six kids who ____ so that means all families with 6 kids are ____”), or as Suburban Correspondent said in the comments below, a scarcity mindset that makes them bitter and fearful toward people who seem to be taking a bigger “piece of the pie”. I also believe that there are some people who secretly want more kids and feel it’s unfair that they don’t or can’t have them while somebody who seems less deserving/wealthy can or does. But while I believe that a relatively small handful of big-family-haters are motivated by selfishness, fear, jealousy or ignorance, I also know that there are many, many more people out there raising their one or two kids (or even having zero kids) who really don’t give a flying fig about how many children I have. Sure, they may be curious, or make flippant comments, and they probably are really glad not to be in my shoes, but when it comes right down to it, they are too busy raising their own families to worry very much about the size of mine. They may be very happy to be have their own smaller-family life, and that’s fine as long as they can recognize that my life is the right one for me. We can all acknowledge that we’re satisfied with the choices we’ve made without having to criticize anyone else’s choices. And I know people get it on all sides of the equation: I hear all the time from people without kids, or people with only children, that they hear near-constant criticism about their family size. It seems like only people with two kids, preferably one boy and one girl, can get away without comments and critics in the US. (heck, maybe even those people take flak for the spacing or the names they’ve picked or some other detail).
So if you’re reading this as a parent of a smaller family, I hope you feel welcome here, and understand that we’re reacting to haters, not everybody in the world who doesn’t have a big family. The way I see it, we all make lots of choices as parents, and all those choices have upsides and downsides. How many kids we have is just one more choice. And I’m totally happy with your choice to have one or two or zero kids…just so long as you don’t knock my soon-to-be-five.
And if you ever want to know what it’s really like to have a bigger family, I invite you to borrow mine for a day. Who knows? It may not be nearly as bad as you are likely secretly thinking 
Meagan Francis is the author of Table for Eight and also blogs about her family, life, and work here.
There has been a lot on the news about the octuplets that were recently born in California. I want to start by saying that I am amazed how far we have come with fertility medicine. Not to mention, the amazing ability we now have to care for TINY newborns.
As the mom of more than the average 2 kids, I can appreciate any person’s desire to have a large family. I am one of those that never thought I would have more than two kids, but somehow found myself surrounded by little munchkins. If all things were perfect I would have a few more. I obviously have no issues with big families. I think you should have as many children as you like….
That is…as many as you can truly support and take care of. The mother of the octuplets said (in what little of the Ann Curry interview I have seen so far) that people are upset because she did this as a single mom. Let me just come right out and say that I do not think THAT is the major issue here. Most people I have talked to have the same issues I do.
She already had six small children that she could not support alone. Before people harpoon me by saying that she has said she never has been on welfare. OK….so she has never been on GOVERNMENT assistance. However, she lives with her parents. She stated that she will get by with help from friends, family and her church. So, because she decided that six children was not enough she willingly took the risk to have multiples and is leaving it up to those around her to “help her out”. We all get help from time to time from friends and family. We get help with babysitting on occasion or a small loan to help us out from a parent. But is it OK to continue to knowingly have children that you can not afford? Is it OK to expect that others will help you out on a continual basis because you chose to do this? Not only that, but to take such a huge risk as to have multiples that could possibly require extensive care that, based on what has been released about this mother, she can not afford?
Here is the one thing I can applaud her for…not turning to selective abortion once she found out she was carrying multiples.
Having 14 kids is a great thing if you can support them and take care of them yourself. But, having them for selfish reasons and then relying on others is not something I can support.
LaShawn also blogs about her family and photgraphy at Frazzled LaShawn
Otherwise Titled: Now You Know Why I Don’t Do Holiday Photo Cards.
When I got a call from the NYTimes last Tuesday asking whether I’d be willing to have my family photographed for a story they’d interviewed me for about larger-than-average families, I had a moment of hesitation. After all, they’d need the picture within a day, in the middle of the week, competing with basketball practices and homework and job schedules and the like.
“It would be a huge hassle to pull this off,” I said to a group of my friends. “Do you think I should do it?”
I was also a little worried about how the photo would turn out. See, we usually can’t make it through a photo session without something like this happening:
Or this:
But when I asked my friends whether I should do the shoot in spite of the hassle and my kids’ proclivity toward goofing off whenever a camera comes out, the reply was pretty much: Um, duh. It’s the New York Times, you idiot. Need you even ask?
So I started working out the details. For one thing, we are currently in a commuter family arrangement, meaning my husband works in the city during the week (and stays in his own little bachelor pad at night), while the kids and I homestead a couple hours away. His day doesn’t end until 6:00 or 6:30, sometimes later, and that’s Central time…meaning there’s no way he could make it home to meet a photographer until 9:30 or 10:00 Eastern time.
It seemed easier for the kids and I to drive to Chicago and meet him. But then where would we take the picture? Certainly his small, cramped, and decidedly cluttered apartment wouldn’t do. (It’s sort of a holding place for a lot of the stuff we haven’t decided what to do with yet). So we arranged to borrow an apartment from our friends Jeff and Lisa. (Lisa’s mother would like you to know that she made the sofa pillows scattered through the picture). Luckily they are neat people with good taste.
But that still left re-arranging my Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning schedule. My 35-week prenatal visit had to be moved up a day; a day in which I had no time to spare, but somehow managed to squeeze in getting weighed and blood-pressure-cuffed and Dopplered and palpated and all that.) Tuesday night was makeover central. My two oldest boys desperately needed haircuts, having been trying (and mostly failing) at growing that “cool, floppy Jonas Brothers ‘do” that is all the range among older kids right now. But having been burned by walk-in haircut joints before, I was too afraid to risk it, so my sister-in-law took up the scissors herself. (She’s untrained, but her hands are much steadier than mine…I apparently flunked cutting in Kindergarten). Neither the boys nor I cried at the results, so I’d say her efforts were a success.
On Wednesday I agonized over–and finally packed up–two outfits for each of us, threw every bit of hair product and makeup I own into a bag, and grabbed my children (plus my brother, who coincidentally needed a ride to Chicago that day), and we hit the road. Three hours later, we were scrambling to get scrubbed, dressed, brushed and pressed into something resembling presentable-ness. Finally, the photographer arrived…and fifteen minutes later, it was all over. She was cool as a cucumber dealing with our group, but I felt like I could sleep for about a year when it was all over.
There’s still the question of WHY my boys look so sweet in the Times photo. I believe it’s due to the chorus of threats that came their way just prior to the shoot.
“Now, what are we NOT going to do while the photographer is here?” I’d prompted. They broke into a chorus of unacceptables:
“Make bunny ears?”
“Stick out tongues.”
“Jump on the sofas!”
“Screw around.”
“Act like animals!”
“Make you embarrassed to admit you are our mother?” (That came from the eldest. To be clear, I have never actually said they made me embarrassed to be their mother, but I may have implied it at one point or another along the way.)
“Good, good,” I praised. “Now what ARE we going to do while the photographer is here?”
Another chorus:
“Behave ourselves!”
“Sit quietly.”
“Smile and look at the camera?”
“Do whatever she says.”
“Act like real human beings!”
“Yes, yes, that’s it!” I exclaimed. “Now, what’s going to happen if we DON’T behave ourselves?”
Blank stares.
“Um…what?” ventured one son.
“I haven’t even decided yet,” I said, my voice dropping into a low and serious range. “But it’ll be bad.”
My desperate threat worked a little too well. In the picture, I’m actually pleading the kids to show some signs of life. “Quit looking so GOOD! Slouch or something!” I pleaded, but it was no use: they remained sitting straight as pins, hands folded in laps, serene (and somewhat dim-looking) smiles plastered on their faces. I half-wished one of them would throw up a set of bunny ears, just to be normal. But no such luck. As it turns out, readers of the New York Times will end up under the false impression that my oldest sons made parenthood so easy (or creepy?) that I couldn’t wait to have two more. (Notice that my younger two aren’t nearly as cooperative, with Owen looking in the wrong direction, and William practically shooting laser beams out of his eyes at the photographer. Trust me, that’s a lot more normal in our house.)
That was just a few days ago, and the article is already done, (the print version appears in Feb 8’s Sunday Styles section). Somewhere along the line I misplaced the bag with all of my makeup and hair product in it, so I’ve been walking around looking much less attractive ever since. And due to my post-photo exhaustion, my kids went off to school on Friday with bedhead and wrinkled clothes. So no matter what readers far away may think of my nice, neat-looking boys? Everyone who sees this photo that knows me in real life–or who’s suffered through a photo shoot with my usually wise-cracking boys–will know the true story.
And honestly, that’s OK with me. I’ve realized that I like them better when they’re real (and I think from now on, we will send that holiday photo card, no matter how goofy it turns out.)
Meagan Francis is the author of Table for Eight: Raising a Large Family in a Small-Family World. She also writes about life with her four (soon to be five) kids at her website.
Lylah, one of our largerfamilies.com contributors, also writes the Child Caring blog at the Boston Globe, and she interviewed me for a post she wrote on raising big families. There’s a great discussion going on in the comments section–why not head over and weigh in?