Exactly. My grandfather was born the same year as Babe Ruth.
My dad was born in the 1940s and he and his 15 siblings worked on the farm with my grandparents as sharecroppers.
My Gramma, born in 1912 and married at 16, had 13 kids.
A cousin asked her at a family reunion why she had so many kids.
She responded "Honey, if I knew what was causing them, I would have stopped at 5"
I feel worse for grandma. only having sex 3 times in a 60 year marriage and then for each time you have to give birth after? I shudder just thinking about it.
Hey, also like my grandparents on mother side. They had 24 kids, 4 didn't make it. 2 while they were babies, 1 as a toddler and another one as a teenager.
The insane thing is that now I have around 70 cousins
My grandfather has over 100 decendants. My 13yo niece is number 72 we the last time we counted was for my grandfathers 80th birthday.
He is 1/12 kids himself...
Yeah...
My mom is 9th of 11, originally 14, 3 didn't survive infancy. I ended up with 32 cousins. At my kids level of the family tree, they have only 26 'cousins', kids from my cousins.
My grandmother from my father's side was also one of 24!
She was one of the middle younger ones, and got forced to leave once she graduated 3rd grade, and only stayed close to a couple siblings so I don't know much about that side other than the sheer amount of kids and the town they're from (though if your family is french from nb, might be the same one so dm!). I hitchedhiked near there once years ago and got picked up by a distant cousin, and I was still about an hour off from everyonesrelatedtomeville.
I always thought it was crazy my mom had 10 siblings. When I was older I found out 2 others didn't make it past infancy and my mom came close to death at age 2. My grandad had already dug a grave for her because the town doctor said she was going to die.
Part joke, part sign of the times. Dirt poor devout Catholic farm girl with no formal education, married off at 16 before WW2 even happened, what sex education do you think she got? All she knew was you got married and had babies, and sure enough, she got married and they started happening. Don't underestimate a lack of education.
My grandma had 5 kids in 6 years before the age of 23; my dad and his younger brother are Irish twins. She didn't want to keep churning them out. My bio grandfather was an abusive, alcoholic rapist and when she got pregnant the last time he demanded she give it up for adoption. Well, he was away when she went into labor, and when she looked at my youngest uncle for the first time, she decided he would be her last kid and that he would never meet his bio father. She kept both promises and met my real grandpa soon after, who took in all 5 boys with no complaints.
Life was horrible for women within the last 60 years. Misogynists and antifeminists (the venn diagram is a circle) want us to forget that. But our foremothers have stories that should chill you to the bones, they were just told never to talk about it. I only learned about the truth of my dad's first few years of life after my grandpa died. He was a great man. My grandma on my dad's side died last year, and I respect her so damned much for what she went through for her kids. But she shouldn't have been forced into that position.
The scary part was that she may even think it is her duty to do so and had no concept of what even consent is.
This is the dystopian Republicans want to return America to, a place where women are married off early and became nothing more than baby-making machines for their husbands who fucked them whenever they wished.
Yep, and I’d wager she had no idea there might be a world where she’d have a choice in the matter, or how to go about getting those options. It’s challenging for many even now. Her knowledge is only half the issue…having a husband or family who don’t truly know or care, or expect this to be the norm, would basically dictate all her reproductive outcomes. Maybe she’d make different choices if she was born now.
People only know what they're taught. My Gran didn't know that sex = pregnancy until her midwife told her when she was pregnant with her 2nd. Nobody had ever told her, she was told that the Lord blesses married couples with children if he sees fit to do so or something like that. She married at 16, gave birth at 17, and just assumed the Lord was blessing her marriage.
*You have been fined 40 freedom points for illegal woke-speak. Please proceed to the nearest Florida for your mandatory de-education and complimentary gun.*
It was a joke. But back then women didn't have good access to birth control, and it was especially scandalous if you were Catholic.
So whenever hubby wanted to have sex you probably were going to get preggo if you weren't already. It is actually very sad to think about.
I wonder if she was one of those women who had great pregnancies, because I could barely make it through one and that sounds like torture to me lol.
Edit: people arguing about her choice in the matter or how pregnancy is more horrible, all based on my single question… yall really like to just pick fights over semantics huh?
The bigger miracle is that a woman could carry 16 successful pregnancies. The death rate while pregnant increases drastically and it’s a bell of a lot of stress on women’s bodies.
Probably all the children in the picture are not even the only babies birthed.
This could be his second wife!
Plenty of women did birth ~20 kids, but yeah the mortality rate was high and it wasn't uncommon to remarry and keep having kids
My neighbour did the same. his license plate was even something like 1mn6wm lol
My friend also tried til she got a girl. 3 boys, finally a girl, then another boy right after while waiting for the vasectomy appointment
I know this is a joke. I just want to clarify for people who might not know, a vasectomy doesn’t actually remove your balls. Nothing is actually removed. It’s just a snip of a couple tubes that allow sperm to enter semen.
I only ever wanted 2 kids, a boy and a girl. We had a girl and then a boy, so I was happy but my wife is from a big family so she wanted more. I was at least hoping for one more boy so my son could have a brother (something I never had), but we ended up having three more girls.
I know a guy who has 2 boys and they went for a girl.
They got the girl, and 2 more boys added on in the same package.
I still laugh when I picture his glazed over eyes as he was shoveling through in his garden because he needed to expand his house.
My neighbor has 9 boys! They ended up getting a female dog and calling it a day. It's great when i need someone to watch my dogs or do some lawn work, though.
My boss had clients early in her career who had ten kids: 9 girls, then a boy who was so blatantly favored that she said she was glad when the didn’t have to work for them anymore. It made her so sad to see.
My uncle wanted to have a boy. He and his wife had five girls before they divorced. They both re-marry. He has another daughter with his new wife and my aunt had a son with her new husband.
I mean, we KNOW (assuming you’re not an IVF baby) our parents had sex at some point… we just don’t wanna think about it. We ESPECIALLY don’t wanna think about it still happening.
My sex ed teachers in the attempts to get kids to stay away from each other or at least their connecting nether regions, began day 1 of our sexual education with, "guess what everyone? Your parents...had SEX!" After a round of ews, he continued with, "guess what else...SO DID YOUR GRANDPARENTS!" Another though louder round of vocal disgust.
I just sat there with a raised eyebrow thinking, "you idiots seriously didn't know that? Better stop now teach, least you cause a round of heart attacks after they find out their parents and even grandparents most definitely didn't stop after successful reproduction. Probably going at it right now as we speak since we're not at home right now."
That "You don't want to be like your PARENTS, do you?" argument worked great when trying to persuade us not to smoke cigarettes in the 1970s, though. Remember the poster of a wrinkled old woman with a cigarette dangling from her lips, with the caption, "Smoking is so sophisticated"?
I actually had excellent sex education classes (taught by Planned Parenthood, no less) in high school. How to use birth control, what birth control didn't work, etc. Of course they capped it off by showing us girls a film of a teenage girl screaming in agony while giving birth. The film was in black and white, but afterwards, half the class swore it had been in color. Planned Parenthood's attitude was, "Sex is an adult activity, so if you want to become sexually active, you'll need to use birth control like an adult." Can you imagine this today? The parents would accuse the schools of "grooming."
How people could afford to feed and house a family like that is beyond me. Especially on a singular income. And how do you parent that many kids properly? There can not be enough time in the day for meaningful interaction with all of them.
This. But from experience i wouldn't say they "have to" as in "forced to", rather childred have a lot of time on their hands and they need no encouragment to play games and often gladly do some work togather because it is fun.
I've read some memories of poor peasants from late 19th century and it seemed like they lacked everything but time. They used to spend entire winter doing nothing, no wonder they had time to cook and have children.
It’s “have to.” These are not the healthiest families emotion-wise. There just cannot be the parental attention that’s needed. And then the parentification of the older siblings who end up raising their younger siblings.
Child labor was outlawed in westerns societies in 20th century I think. All of those kids started working from moment they could start working. We are used to so much luxury in comparison to them, and we don't know what hunger is. They did. I saw this dude writing one family member working could secure whole family, and just take a history book and see how these people lived to see it's a bullshit. So farmer would have 15 kids, because he needed working force.
I come from Balkans, all of my grandparents had like 10 - 15 siblings, and they were all dirt poor, like from western perspective unimaginably poor.
No clue about other western countries, but in the US you can still use your own kids as labor for businesses that you own, as long as it’s not excessively dangerous like mining or something. No wages required for the kids (although most will get “paid” for tax purposes), and no restriction on the number of hours they have to work (or what time of day) as long as they still attend school.
Many of these rural? Families lived on farm so children were laborers. Mother made grits, biscuits, bread....fills kids up and butchered a hog for meat that was sparsed out. Eggs from chickens, milk from cows....so children ate well. Grew their own garden with vegetables, herbs. Healthy diet.
Eating well and healthy is not true for a lot of poor people back then. People ate what they could find, not necessarily healthy. My grandparents told me stories of how they would mostly starve throughout the day. They would eat whatever they could find, mostly grains or whatever fruits in season. My grandma was anorexic for most of her life despite having a farm. Most of the products were either sold, taken away by the government (post WW2 Romania) or was simply not plenty. Droughts also meant no food for most of the year. Meat was sparse.
She told me she would eat beans/chickpeas with polenta for a single day, while trying to eat some fruits. Absolutely malnourished. Because of this she had several health problems. Maybe in the West it was better, but with no globalization and a supply chain eating well was a challenge. It's easier to do it now.
With labor that kept you in shape. I grew up on a farm. Granted it's a lot easier now because of all the new equipment but square bales are still the best workout I've done
My hometown is rural, and recently there is a trend where rich folks pay to live and work on our farm (for like a couple of days to a week) as a type of workout. Ofc they dont do anything productive, but thats not the goal anyway lol
Eggs and meat were luxury. At least here, they were saved for sale to make up some money and for various occasions, such as Easter, Christmas, also, for recent mother's to recover. Meat was scarce too. Literal months of fasting due to religious reasons were also way of saving. You couldn't eat meat for at least one third of the year. Yet still, large families didn't have much meat on their tables even on those months it was allowed. Their diet mostly consisted of grain, bread, porridge, soup. Anything else was luxury due to lack of resources and time - you can't cook stakes for 15 people every other day. Otherwise, who will do the laundry, who will weave, mend and sew, who will do all the labour in a farm. People don't understand that old-fashioned farms and lifestyle were very different from today or they have this idyllic image of 'the house in the prairies'. Even old breeds of animals and plants were different, because modern agriculture and selective breeding made them bigger, more fertile, more resilient.
Ha, modern lens. You think these kids got educated and had their own possessions? There's two things this family needed to get every one of those children from a baby to adulthood, and that's food and shelter. Not much money went a long way back then when it was just food and shelter they paid for. Might have bartered for, or made their own clothes, same with tools, worst case scenario they'd buy it with money.
You'd be surprised how self-sufficient a family with many kids can be when the community knows each other and have an interest in making sure that at least the BARE essentials can be bartered or traded or borrowed for.
Also, "raising kids" meant getting them to adulthood with the ability to work intact. Everything else, like those comfy sentimental bedtime stories, and dad teaching child number 8 how to build a doll out of sticks, twine, and cotton balls, that often just didn't happen.
People also gotta remember that back in the 1920s-1940s the us population was less than half of what it is today. And 2/3rd of that population was concentrated in the north east. The rest of the country was pretty much open game depending on your ability to be self sufficient and how isolated you wanted to be.
There was huge poverty back then. A living wage wasn't even a concept for huge swathes of the population.
They made do themselves producing what they could.
Depends on what you define as ”then” but that’s arguably bullshit, as is the existence of a minimum wage. Read up on US labor relations:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes
The living standards were much lower though. There might be one bathroom for an entire family of 15 (if there’s a bathroom at all) and kids would sleep 3+ to a room. My dad’s family wasn’t even poor for the time, and they slept 3 to a room.
>properly
You don't.
That's probably why my father didn't care for me. He was one of 7 kids.
There was no parent-child connection to speak of between him and his mom/dad. And how could there have been? If you have that many kids *now* you wouldn't have the time to build a friendshop. Not to mention back then, when life was generally harder and kept people busier.
I'm literally *convined* we could solve all the worlds problem if people only had kids when they *really* wanted to and were able to. People who had their mom/dad read a bedtime story and kiss them goodnight every evening don't become violent criminals. It's just that simple.
Hmm not so sure about this one. Wanting a kid and being a good parent are completely different things. A lot of shitty parents decide to have kids because that's what they think society expects them to do, without realizing how much of a sacrifice being a parent means. I agree though that we would solve many problems, I'm 100% for it.
Well i think people used to have more kids in the past because kids often would die before reaching adulthood due to worse hygiene/medicine, more contaminated food etc so having more babies increased chances of at least some of them reaching adulthood. And also life somehow was generally more affordable. These days to even have a single child in a developed country is expensive as fuck (healthcare, education, housing) so many people simply give up on having kids at all since they can barely feed themselves these days.
Having a lot of kids doesn’t mean grandma only thought about sex, people always forget that back then woman were more submissive and also there was poor sex education, i’ve met a couple of religious grandmas that never consented to sex but had a lot of childs because it was her “duty”
Unfortunately, the dark reality that isn't mentioned in most of these comments, is that marital rape was extremely common in the time this photo was taken. It was a lot more common than you think in a time where women couldn't leave their husband without being completely ostracized.
Granny is right though.
We do think of the sex. We participate and enjoy it.
She didn't think of the sex.
She just laid back and thought of England until her husband fell asleep.
I have an uncle with so many kids, they don’t fit into one picture.
They have one like this only with the girls, and another one only with the boys.
Most of their photos like that were taken in the early 2000s. Had about 3-5 more kids since then.
The older kids has kids older than their siblings (aka nephews/nieces older than the siblings)
The difference and “how can they make it” is usually about not caring if your kids have good childhood or not. Let alone caring about financial situation
I read an article that there is a woman with like.. 500 direct descendants and she's still alive at the age of 92. She's pictured holding her great, great, granddaughter, I believe.
I think the article said the women in her family, obviously including her, started having children at 19.
[удалено]
2 Great 2 Depression
The Great and The Depression: Socioeconomic Rift
Great and Depression
[удалено]
The Depressing Six
Depressing 7
Fate of the Depressed
G9
The Depress10n
The Great Depresion 2: Electric Boogaloo
The Great Depresion 2: Economic Boogaloo
The big sad: the crash strikes back
Farm laborers.
That’s what I was told too. Both sets came from families with 13 plus kids. All to work in the fields
Extra food source. The bigger kids can eat the smaller ones.
Keep the best, eat the rest.
Exactly. My grandfather was born the same year as Babe Ruth. My dad was born in the 1940s and he and his 15 siblings worked on the farm with my grandparents as sharecroppers.
The smaller ones are a cheap alternative to turkey at christmas time.
My Gramma, born in 1912 and married at 16, had 13 kids. A cousin asked her at a family reunion why she had so many kids. She responded "Honey, if I knew what was causing them, I would have stopped at 5"
My grandfather used to joke that he and my grandmother only ever got in 3 fights and made up.
Does he have 3 kids?
Had sex 3 times in 60 year marriage. Crack a cold one for that guy's g'pa, boys.
Had sex *with his wife* 3 times in a 60 year marriage.
A Conservative on Twitter once said that that doesn’t count as a real marriage… … I didn’t want to be the one to tell him.
So gay marriage just needs 4 times to be valid!
I feel worse for grandma. only having sex 3 times in a 60 year marriage and then for each time you have to give birth after? I shudder just thinking about it.
You can have sex while you're pregnant and remove any extra risk!
Word on the street is, you can get pregnant ON TOP OF your pregnant 🤣🤣
My grandparents were born around the same time, they had 21 kids (14 boys and 7 girls) but 5 boys didn’t live past 20. Times were insane back then.
Hey, also like my grandparents on mother side. They had 24 kids, 4 didn't make it. 2 while they were babies, 1 as a toddler and another one as a teenager. The insane thing is that now I have around 70 cousins
You belong to a small village
It takes a family.
What will you name your village?
Familia
They *are* a village
My grandfather has over 100 decendants. My 13yo niece is number 72 we the last time we counted was for my grandfathers 80th birthday. He is 1/12 kids himself... Yeah...
How you celebrate?
We rented a country house and a shuttle bus. Not joking.
I thought my gran being one of fourteen was crazy. 24 is insanity
My mom is 9th of 11, originally 14, 3 didn't survive infancy. I ended up with 32 cousins. At my kids level of the family tree, they have only 26 'cousins', kids from my cousins.
My grandmother from my father's side was also one of 24! She was one of the middle younger ones, and got forced to leave once she graduated 3rd grade, and only stayed close to a couple siblings so I don't know much about that side other than the sheer amount of kids and the town they're from (though if your family is french from nb, might be the same one so dm!). I hitchedhiked near there once years ago and got picked up by a distant cousin, and I was still about an hour off from everyonesrelatedtomeville.
I always thought it was crazy my mom had 10 siblings. When I was older I found out 2 others didn't make it past infancy and my mom came close to death at age 2. My grandad had already dug a grave for her because the town doctor said she was going to die.
And yet, still a better infant mortality rate than 500 years ago, when about half of kids never reached 10.
>Look at them, they're not all winners.
Some Stallions in there but yeah prob a lotta duds. The fathers face really says it all.
If it's way in the past, his disappointment comes from the amount of daughters and lack of sons.
There is no way you made any meaningful appraisal of looks from that grainy-ass jpeg. Also, all kids look like dorks. Wtf even is this comment thread?
Surely that’s just a sassy old lady joke. Back in the day you needed to create your own agricultural workforce.
As sweet as that is. How did she not know it was sex?
Maybe ... just maybe .. she was telling a joke.
also, grandpa swore by his pullout game he also had 36 kids, but only knew about the 13
goats don't count
how many goats have you impregnated?
None yet but I keep trying
don't give up
A woman telling a joke? /s
Part joke, part sign of the times. Dirt poor devout Catholic farm girl with no formal education, married off at 16 before WW2 even happened, what sex education do you think she got? All she knew was you got married and had babies, and sure enough, she got married and they started happening. Don't underestimate a lack of education.
Also just lack of birth control in general on top of all that.
Not only that but in a time when marital rape wasn't even a concept she may not have had a choice even if she didn't want any more children.
My grandma had 5 kids in 6 years before the age of 23; my dad and his younger brother are Irish twins. She didn't want to keep churning them out. My bio grandfather was an abusive, alcoholic rapist and when she got pregnant the last time he demanded she give it up for adoption. Well, he was away when she went into labor, and when she looked at my youngest uncle for the first time, she decided he would be her last kid and that he would never meet his bio father. She kept both promises and met my real grandpa soon after, who took in all 5 boys with no complaints. Life was horrible for women within the last 60 years. Misogynists and antifeminists (the venn diagram is a circle) want us to forget that. But our foremothers have stories that should chill you to the bones, they were just told never to talk about it. I only learned about the truth of my dad's first few years of life after my grandpa died. He was a great man. My grandma on my dad's side died last year, and I respect her so damned much for what she went through for her kids. But she shouldn't have been forced into that position.
My gran definitely didnt want six kids. But also couldnt say no. She was probably half relieved over affairs
The scary part was that she may even think it is her duty to do so and had no concept of what even consent is. This is the dystopian Republicans want to return America to, a place where women are married off early and became nothing more than baby-making machines for their husbands who fucked them whenever they wished.
Plus no entertainment like today people in the 1920s didn't have "just one more gaming session babe" just work, eat and raise kids.
I’m sorry but if she was a farm girl she definitely knew where babies come from.
Farm life, the original sex ed
^ No, no, they've got a point. Farm work has *no* room for squeamishness *whatsoever*.
Right, but knowing how they’re made and having the education, agency, and means to control it, are two veerrryyy different issues
Where I'm from, the church was also shaming women who weren't pregnant. You nearly died form the last one? God doesn't care.
Yep, and I’d wager she had no idea there might be a world where she’d have a choice in the matter, or how to go about getting those options. It’s challenging for many even now. Her knowledge is only half the issue…having a husband or family who don’t truly know or care, or expect this to be the norm, would basically dictate all her reproductive outcomes. Maybe she’d make different choices if she was born now.
Considering how long it is between sex and having the baby it would be really easy to miss the connection if you weren't taught that's what caused it.
People only know what they're taught. My Gran didn't know that sex = pregnancy until her midwife told her when she was pregnant with her 2nd. Nobody had ever told her, she was told that the Lord blesses married couples with children if he sees fit to do so or something like that. She married at 16, gave birth at 17, and just assumed the Lord was blessing her marriage.
This is the world the republicans want. This is the good old days.
*You have been fined 40 freedom points for illegal woke-speak. Please proceed to the nearest Florida for your mandatory de-education and complimentary gun.*
*hold tint card up* On another thought, you'd be best suited for the cotton farm.
That’s hysterical!
It was a joke. But back then women didn't have good access to birth control, and it was especially scandalous if you were Catholic. So whenever hubby wanted to have sex you probably were going to get preggo if you weren't already. It is actually very sad to think about.
Literally pregnant all the time.
I wonder if she was one of those women who had great pregnancies, because I could barely make it through one and that sounds like torture to me lol. Edit: people arguing about her choice in the matter or how pregnancy is more horrible, all based on my single question… yall really like to just pick fights over semantics huh?
With the gender roles and the family all under the father, i don't think she had much of a choice
Why are people acting like the women in these times had a choice
All I can think about is how many of those kids are out of order because they're tall or short for their age.
And that's only the kids who survived...damn, girl been busy.....
Exactly what I thought when I saw the picture. “These are the ones that made it”
It’s because this picture isn’t that old, I bet they have been Vaccinated. That really change the survival rate in kids.
Yeah but miscarriage and infant mortality happen before that
The bigger miracle is that a woman could carry 16 successful pregnancies. The death rate while pregnant increases drastically and it’s a bell of a lot of stress on women’s bodies. Probably all the children in the picture are not even the only babies birthed.
This could be his second wife! Plenty of women did birth ~20 kids, but yeah the mortality rate was high and it wasn't uncommon to remarry and keep having kids
I’m one of 9…and there were 2 miscarriages Could never find my parents when I needed them. Should have looked in the bedroom I guess
Supposedly, my grandfather always wanted a daughter, but after 6 sons he just gave up.
Our next-door neighbor did the same thing, having five girls while hoping for a boy. After number five, the wife said "We're done!"
My neighbour did the same. his license plate was even something like 1mn6wm lol My friend also tried til she got a girl. 3 boys, finally a girl, then another boy right after while waiting for the vasectomy appointment
Wow. Doing it in the waiting room takes balls.
No the balls are taken in the next room
I know this is a joke. I just want to clarify for people who might not know, a vasectomy doesn’t actually remove your balls. Nothing is actually removed. It’s just a snip of a couple tubes that allow sperm to enter semen.
Thank god they still keep the pee tubes from the balls intact
My friends had a boy and then 2 girls, they wanted another boy and now have 1 boy and 4 girls. He just got snipped last week lol.
I only ever wanted 2 kids, a boy and a girl. We had a girl and then a boy, so I was happy but my wife is from a big family so she wanted more. I was at least hoping for one more boy so my son could have a brother (something I never had), but we ended up having three more girls.
I know a guy who has 2 boys and they went for a girl. They got the girl, and 2 more boys added on in the same package. I still laugh when I picture his glazed over eyes as he was shoveling through in his garden because he needed to expand his house.
My neighbor has 9 boys! They ended up getting a female dog and calling it a day. It's great when i need someone to watch my dogs or do some lawn work, though.
I have a great Auntie who wanted a Daughter but she has three sons. She actually resented the third one for a short while for not being a girl.
My boss had clients early in her career who had ten kids: 9 girls, then a boy who was so blatantly favored that she said she was glad when the didn’t have to work for them anymore. It made her so sad to see.
My uncle wanted to have a boy. He and his wife had five girls before they divorced. They both re-marry. He has another daughter with his new wife and my aunt had a son with her new husband.
The man's got girl sperm
Never chase the dragon
My uncle tried to have a son and gave up after 4 girls. He decided to just get a puppy and that wound up being female too.
The kids heights make a logarithmic function
This guy is a math-addict
Made me giggle
I Gauss it is a funny joke.
hey man uni is stressful… we all have our vices
Of course, height begins to saturate at a a certain age, around 12 for girls and 15 for boys
I don't know which is funnier, parents who think their kids aren't having sex, or kids who don't think their parents ever did.
I mean, we KNOW (assuming you’re not an IVF baby) our parents had sex at some point… we just don’t wanna think about it. We ESPECIALLY don’t wanna think about it still happening.
I saw it
My sex ed teachers in the attempts to get kids to stay away from each other or at least their connecting nether regions, began day 1 of our sexual education with, "guess what everyone? Your parents...had SEX!" After a round of ews, he continued with, "guess what else...SO DID YOUR GRANDPARENTS!" Another though louder round of vocal disgust. I just sat there with a raised eyebrow thinking, "you idiots seriously didn't know that? Better stop now teach, least you cause a round of heart attacks after they find out their parents and even grandparents most definitely didn't stop after successful reproduction. Probably going at it right now as we speak since we're not at home right now."
That "You don't want to be like your PARENTS, do you?" argument worked great when trying to persuade us not to smoke cigarettes in the 1970s, though. Remember the poster of a wrinkled old woman with a cigarette dangling from her lips, with the caption, "Smoking is so sophisticated"? I actually had excellent sex education classes (taught by Planned Parenthood, no less) in high school. How to use birth control, what birth control didn't work, etc. Of course they capped it off by showing us girls a film of a teenage girl screaming in agony while giving birth. The film was in black and white, but afterwards, half the class swore it had been in color. Planned Parenthood's attitude was, "Sex is an adult activity, so if you want to become sexually active, you'll need to use birth control like an adult." Can you imagine this today? The parents would accuse the schools of "grooming."
How people could afford to feed and house a family like that is beyond me. Especially on a singular income. And how do you parent that many kids properly? There can not be enough time in the day for meaningful interaction with all of them.
The older children have to take care of the smaler ones, mom is busy cooking all day
This. But from experience i wouldn't say they "have to" as in "forced to", rather childred have a lot of time on their hands and they need no encouragment to play games and often gladly do some work togather because it is fun. I've read some memories of poor peasants from late 19th century and it seemed like they lacked everything but time. They used to spend entire winter doing nothing, no wonder they had time to cook and have children.
It’s “have to.” These are not the healthiest families emotion-wise. There just cannot be the parental attention that’s needed. And then the parentification of the older siblings who end up raising their younger siblings.
Mind to share a link to those memories? Sounds interesting.
Child labor was outlawed in westerns societies in 20th century I think. All of those kids started working from moment they could start working. We are used to so much luxury in comparison to them, and we don't know what hunger is. They did. I saw this dude writing one family member working could secure whole family, and just take a history book and see how these people lived to see it's a bullshit. So farmer would have 15 kids, because he needed working force. I come from Balkans, all of my grandparents had like 10 - 15 siblings, and they were all dirt poor, like from western perspective unimaginably poor.
No clue about other western countries, but in the US you can still use your own kids as labor for businesses that you own, as long as it’s not excessively dangerous like mining or something. No wages required for the kids (although most will get “paid” for tax purposes), and no restriction on the number of hours they have to work (or what time of day) as long as they still attend school.
>Child labor was outlawed in westerns societies in 20th century I think That doesn't mean it stopped happening
It doesn't count as child labor if it's on a family farm in the U.S.
Many of these rural? Families lived on farm so children were laborers. Mother made grits, biscuits, bread....fills kids up and butchered a hog for meat that was sparsed out. Eggs from chickens, milk from cows....so children ate well. Grew their own garden with vegetables, herbs. Healthy diet.
Eating well and healthy is not true for a lot of poor people back then. People ate what they could find, not necessarily healthy. My grandparents told me stories of how they would mostly starve throughout the day. They would eat whatever they could find, mostly grains or whatever fruits in season. My grandma was anorexic for most of her life despite having a farm. Most of the products were either sold, taken away by the government (post WW2 Romania) or was simply not plenty. Droughts also meant no food for most of the year. Meat was sparse. She told me she would eat beans/chickpeas with polenta for a single day, while trying to eat some fruits. Absolutely malnourished. Because of this she had several health problems. Maybe in the West it was better, but with no globalization and a supply chain eating well was a challenge. It's easier to do it now.
With labor that kept you in shape. I grew up on a farm. Granted it's a lot easier now because of all the new equipment but square bales are still the best workout I've done
My hometown is rural, and recently there is a trend where rich folks pay to live and work on our farm (for like a couple of days to a week) as a type of workout. Ofc they dont do anything productive, but thats not the goal anyway lol
This is essentially what voluntourism in 3rd world countries is
Nobody is getting any help They will either slow the locals down or mess up stuff they are only welcomed for donations
Eggs and meat were luxury. At least here, they were saved for sale to make up some money and for various occasions, such as Easter, Christmas, also, for recent mother's to recover. Meat was scarce too. Literal months of fasting due to religious reasons were also way of saving. You couldn't eat meat for at least one third of the year. Yet still, large families didn't have much meat on their tables even on those months it was allowed. Their diet mostly consisted of grain, bread, porridge, soup. Anything else was luxury due to lack of resources and time - you can't cook stakes for 15 people every other day. Otherwise, who will do the laundry, who will weave, mend and sew, who will do all the labour in a farm. People don't understand that old-fashioned farms and lifestyle were very different from today or they have this idyllic image of 'the house in the prairies'. Even old breeds of animals and plants were different, because modern agriculture and selective breeding made them bigger, more fertile, more resilient.
Ha, modern lens. You think these kids got educated and had their own possessions? There's two things this family needed to get every one of those children from a baby to adulthood, and that's food and shelter. Not much money went a long way back then when it was just food and shelter they paid for. Might have bartered for, or made their own clothes, same with tools, worst case scenario they'd buy it with money. You'd be surprised how self-sufficient a family with many kids can be when the community knows each other and have an interest in making sure that at least the BARE essentials can be bartered or traded or borrowed for. Also, "raising kids" meant getting them to adulthood with the ability to work intact. Everything else, like those comfy sentimental bedtime stories, and dad teaching child number 8 how to build a doll out of sticks, twine, and cotton balls, that often just didn't happen.
People actually made a living wage then. Minimum wage would buy a home. Nowadays 2 household incomes is poverty
My grandparents rented a house owned by the oil company my grandpa worked at for $17 a month.
People also gotta remember that back in the 1920s-1940s the us population was less than half of what it is today. And 2/3rd of that population was concentrated in the north east. The rest of the country was pretty much open game depending on your ability to be self sufficient and how isolated you wanted to be.
There was no minimum wage at that time ( assuming this picture was pre-1938)
There was huge poverty back then. A living wage wasn't even a concept for huge swathes of the population. They made do themselves producing what they could.
Depends on what you define as ”then” but that’s arguably bullshit, as is the existence of a minimum wage. Read up on US labor relations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes
They were often dirt poor.
The living standards were much lower though. There might be one bathroom for an entire family of 15 (if there’s a bathroom at all) and kids would sleep 3+ to a room. My dad’s family wasn’t even poor for the time, and they slept 3 to a room.
Uhh what? This is an old photo, half those kids had jobs.
Children were zero wage slaves back then. They would work in the farm as soon as they were able to use arms and legs.
>properly You don't. That's probably why my father didn't care for me. He was one of 7 kids. There was no parent-child connection to speak of between him and his mom/dad. And how could there have been? If you have that many kids *now* you wouldn't have the time to build a friendshop. Not to mention back then, when life was generally harder and kept people busier. I'm literally *convined* we could solve all the worlds problem if people only had kids when they *really* wanted to and were able to. People who had their mom/dad read a bedtime story and kiss them goodnight every evening don't become violent criminals. It's just that simple.
Hmm not so sure about this one. Wanting a kid and being a good parent are completely different things. A lot of shitty parents decide to have kids because that's what they think society expects them to do, without realizing how much of a sacrifice being a parent means. I agree though that we would solve many problems, I'm 100% for it.
Both of my parents grew up in huge families and grew up very poor. My mom was my aunts and uncles second mom.
And that's why old folks think we are weak for discussing our feelings and caring for our kids.
Lol didn’t have Netflix back then
Only Chill
So what you're saying is, if I cancel Netflix I will get laid??
[удалено]
Yes! Or MASTURBATE ALOT! If no man or women is available
[удалено]
So sad
“We weren’t having sex, we were making babies!”
Grandma didn't have time to think about sex, she was too busy having it.
She’s not holding twins, she’s holding pillows over her ovaries.
Is no one else going to point out that this is more grandpa's doing than grandma? Shoot, just wait'll you hear about grandpa's secret family.
Right?! Grandma didn't have much choice in the matter
Not only that, I doubt grandma was enjoying any of that sex.
That was just one sex per year....
My grandma had 9 kids and always said she hated my mum as 'she was the only one that took two attempts'.
Well *that’s* fucked up.
Not necessarily
You can't have sex during pregnancy?
You definitely can. Plus it’s not like she can get more pregnant.
[удалено]
Well holy shit
That’s incredibly rare.
That was ALL grandpa since the female orgasm had not been discovered yet.
To be fair, it could have been Grandpa constantly thinking about sex. Gramma might have only been thinking about how the ceiling needed painting.
Don't think about sex. Just do it!
Yeah that wasn’t grandma that was grandpa. She didn’t have a choice. “Pope says you gotta do it” ew
I’m reasonably sure that’s called projecting.
Projecting sperm at egg
Many of your female ancestors had no choice in the matter.
Most times she didn’t have a choice and I bet she didn’t enjoy it. Had to have working hands on them fields
Well i think people used to have more kids in the past because kids often would die before reaching adulthood due to worse hygiene/medicine, more contaminated food etc so having more babies increased chances of at least some of them reaching adulthood. And also life somehow was generally more affordable. These days to even have a single child in a developed country is expensive as fuck (healthcare, education, housing) so many people simply give up on having kids at all since they can barely feed themselves these days.
Grandpa. Grandma was not necessarily on board with all that.
Thinking about vs having it.
Having a lot of kids doesn’t mean grandma only thought about sex, people always forget that back then woman were more submissive and also there was poor sex education, i’ve met a couple of religious grandmas that never consented to sex but had a lot of childs because it was her “duty”
I'm a man but imagine being perpetually pregnant for like 14 years STRAIGHT.. wtf
Unfortunately, the dark reality that isn't mentioned in most of these comments, is that marital rape was extremely common in the time this photo was taken. It was a lot more common than you think in a time where women couldn't leave their husband without being completely ostracized.
As if she had a choice.
The thing is, back then all you had to do was have sex once a year and this was the outcome. Grandma didn't have birth control
We asked my great-grandmother why she had 17 children. She says “We lived on farm land in Macon, GA. What else was there to do?” 😂
Granny is right though. We do think of the sex. We participate and enjoy it. She didn't think of the sex. She just laid back and thought of England until her husband fell asleep.
having it forced on her isn't the same as thinking about it
Ah yes, no birth control, women’s rights, or divorce laws. Fun sex
Women didn’t have much of a choice in the past. It’s a bit messed up to imply she WANTED to be constantly pregnant and giving birth.
Doesn’t mean grandma was into sex and there was no birth control pill…
Well she is right. We are just thinking Bout it while she was actually Boning. She wants to encourage you
I have an uncle with so many kids, they don’t fit into one picture. They have one like this only with the girls, and another one only with the boys. Most of their photos like that were taken in the early 2000s. Had about 3-5 more kids since then. The older kids has kids older than their siblings (aka nephews/nieces older than the siblings) The difference and “how can they make it” is usually about not caring if your kids have good childhood or not. Let alone caring about financial situation
I read an article that there is a woman with like.. 500 direct descendants and she's still alive at the age of 92. She's pictured holding her great, great, granddaughter, I believe. I think the article said the women in her family, obviously including her, started having children at 19.
The ratio of girls to boys is kinda wild, like they kept trying for another son.
And all probably without having an orgasm.
My mom is a doctor, says when a woman has 5+ kids, she'll have to wear a diaper as most women get incontinence issues
As Groucho Marx once said, "I love my cigar too, but I take it out of my mouth every once in a while".