Posted by:
formerrlds
(
)
Date: July 14, 2018 09:03PM
I have nothing to add to this topic from my own perspective because I don't have children, but I came from a family of five children whose parents were completely overwhelmed, so if I had been straight and had children, I am pretty sure I would have limited myself to two.
I have also read two excellent books, both written by men who grew up in super-religious Catholic families, both describing childhoods marked by distant, overburdened parents, older siblings whose youth was confiscated to care for younger children, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and ultimate splintering of families. One is called "Fourteen" and was written by a New Hampshire man named Stephen Zanichkowsky.
The other was written by Tom North, one of the eight children born to Richard North and Helen North, who later was widowed and became Helen Beardsley after marrying widower Francis Beardsley, who had ten children, and went on to have two more for a total of twenty. The 1968 movie "Yours, Mine & Ours" starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda was based on Helen Beardsley's book, "Who Gets the Drumstick?" Tom North blows the lid off his mom's book and relates what growing up in that household was really like and it ain't pretty, trust me. His account is disputed by some of his stepsiblings, not surprisingly, but I think I he convinced me.
Also, if you've never read Betty Friedan's classic "The Feminine Mystique," one chapter describes a woman Friedan interviewed who had what seemed to be a charmed life in her 1950s suburban household, but who tearfully admitted that she was envious of women who had careers and knew what they wanted to do with their lives, because she realized she couldn't just keep having babies, and once the babies grew she wasn't needed as much.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2018 09:06PM by formerrlds.