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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
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
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
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?
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.
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).
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
My mother wanted two, got two at once, went “DONE NOW” and it was for the best.
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.
I see a lot of women applauding for feminism… But I never see them at the rally’s.
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!
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
if you’re into that kind of thing
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.
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!
I love being childless.
*childfree!
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.
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.
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.
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.
~~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.
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.
To be fair, I don’t think grandma pumped out 252 children because she enjoyed the sex.
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.
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?
Bros gotta start pulling out
No
Government minder here wants more meat for the wars
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.
True, but they also have more options for birth control.
That’s the choice that yesman is talking about. Birth control and abortion.
Before modern medicine, often people would have a ton of kids because they would frequently die.
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.
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.
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.
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.
those kids are far too tan to be Irish 😂
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.
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 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.
Please stop. The planet is overcrowded as it is.
The planet is not overcrowded, the West just exploits it with sheer arrogance and greed till it fucking implodes.
Based and factual.
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!
