“Back in myyyy day…”
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- 1 month
I don’t think most women wanted to be pregnant back to back like that then.
My grandmother had 16 children. It destroyed her.
- Elting@piefed.socialEnglish1 month
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.
- 1 month
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.
- Elting@piefed.socialEnglish1 month
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.
- 1 month
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.
- baines@lemmy.cafeEnglish1 month
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
- Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish1 month
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.
- 1 month
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
- Elting@piefed.socialEnglish1 month
It is fucked how much easier it is to get a vasectomy than a tubal litigation.
- 1 month
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?
- 1 month
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.
- 1 month
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.
- Passerby6497@lemmy.worldEnglish1 month
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).
- 1 month
often it’s just the lack of contraception and/or appropriate education.
- Vreyan31@reddthat.comEnglish1 month
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.
- 1 month
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.
- Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish1 month
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.
- 1 month
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.
- 1 month
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.
- OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish1 month
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!
- Beth@piefed.socialEnglish1 month
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.
- 1 month
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.
- 1 month
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.
- unalivejoy@piefed.socialEnglish1 month
My grandparents had 8 children. 7 came after everyone moved out and 8 came because they didn’t want 7 to be lonely.
- 1 month
They needed workers. Not pictured is the shallow grave out back for the 4 that got the rickets
- 1 month
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!
- 1 month
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
- 1 month
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
- 1 month
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.
- 1 month
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
- 1 month
No problem :)
Tone can be so hard to convey on text and then further complicated with neurodivergence haha
- 1 month
Do you have a link to the podcast “the Left” or related doesn’t show clear results, thanks.
- 1 month
Oh wow, you dug a grave? Look at mister “thinks he’s better than everybody else because he owns enough land to bury people”. Why don’t you just tie em up in a sack and toss em in the river like the rest of us?
- 1 month
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.
Dude. They just said two of their siblings died. How about you stop?
- 1 month
The planet is not overcrowded, the West just exploits it with sheer arrogance and greed till it fucking implodes.
- realitaetsverlust@piefed.zipEnglish1 month
To be fair, I don’t think grandma pumped out 252 children because she enjoyed the sex.
- 1 month
My grandmother had her first child out of wedlock at the age of 14, her second child (my mom) out of wedlock with a different father at the age of 16, and her third child out of wedlock with yet another different father at the age of 17. And this was all in the 1930s. I strongly suspect grandma really enjoyed the sex – otherwise, why go through all the social approbation and abandonment by her family that went along with it?
- 1 month
Nobody asks to get kicked in the nuts twice do they?
Can’t have been that bad.
- realitaetsverlust@piefed.zipEnglish1 month
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.
- 1 month
How many of those old kids were acting as parents because the folks were too busy fucking?
1 monthThe two oldest, seated in front, are tending two newborn babies. Presumably the parents are off somewhere else, fucking.
- 1 month
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.
- 1 month
If you’re interested, I highly recommend “The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper” by Hallie Rubenhold!
- 1 month
The food bill for those kids today would be pretty close to the median gross income in USA.
- 1 month
Good thing that the father has a stable job at the gas station to support his family.
- Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish1 month
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.
- OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish1 month
The US school calendar was based on the realities of this.
No it wasn’t. The US school calendar gives the biggest break times in the middle of summer and the middle of winter – two times when farmers are the least busy. School is fully in session during a farmer’s busiest times of spring planting and fall harvest.
- ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish1 month
Don’t worry, all those kids were being put to work to supplement the family income.
- 1 month
Being fair to women back then, most of them didn’t know how sex and babies worked, lacked any sort of formal education besides knowing how to read and write, and were raised that disagreeing with your husband or saying no to him in the bedroom was how to wind up an old spinster, the worst fate for any woman.
“Honey, if I knew what was causing it, I would never have had more than two.”
-My great grandma, mother of 12
- 1 month
That seems unlikely to be true unless they were raised very religious and not in any proximity to farm animals or pets.
- Tomtits@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish1 month
So she knew if the farm animals had sex they’d become pregnant?
- 1 month
She lived on the farm, but she didn’t work it; that’s what the male children were for. Her “place” was in the house.
She told me she would ask sometimes, but all anybody would ever tell her was some variation of, “Birds fly. Fish swim. Women have babies. That’s just what they do/That’s just the way it is.”
She finally found out from her doctor while discussing her hysterectomy, but only after confirming her husband was already dead.
- 1 month
Not until after menopause. She was born in the rural US American south some time in the 1920s (the date is known, I just forget). She grew up during the great depression, never went to school, only knew what she learned from her mother, who lived the same way, and only socialized with other women at church, who also lived and grew up the same way. She could read and count well enough to follow a recipe and write enough to leave her husband a note, but that was about it. She was raised to believe that if she said no to her husband in the bedroom, he would divorce her, word would spread around town that she wasn’t a “good woman” and she would end up an old spinster, the worst thing a woman could possibly be.
- 1 month
I mean, if you can’t figure out a pattern after birth 3… You might be mentally underdeveloped.
- Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.caEnglish1 month
That’s what happens when a wife is not allowed to say no and birth control doesn’t exist. Could also represent having sex only 15 times over 16 years and getting pregnant every time. My grandmother swore all my grandfather needed to do was look at her and she was pregnant yet again.
- 1 month
I love children … in 15 minute doses. That’s why being a childless school bus driver is so great.
- 1 month
Was literally thinking this while making coffee this morning. It’s Saturday. I didn’t have a good sleep. But now I can play video games all day and maybe have a nap later. Then going out at 8pm, until whenever I feel like. None of this would be possible with kids.
- 1 month
If you teach women about their bodies and give them the choice, they will have fewer children.
- 1 month
True, but they also have more options for birth control. And a family needs two working parents to have a children nowadays as well.
- 1 month
True, but they also have more options for birth control.
That’s the choice that yesman is talking about. Birth control and abortion.
I expect my wife to have more sex with me than once every 10 months
- jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish1 month
Before modern medicine, often people would have a ton of kids because they would frequently die.
- 1 month
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.
- 1 month
God forbid you point that out though, there’s a bunch of people who think this was all consensual.
This is a really important factor here that it wasn’t exactly “Grandma’s” choosing (not to make the meme unfunny but…) Yeah, more often than not it was “Grandpa” with no choice in the matter.
- 1 month
Rather than attributing this to the lack of modern medicine, I would attribute this to the lack of television and the internet. 🤣
