What’s it
like growing up in a family of twelve? Busy.
Or so I’d
guess. I grew up with one sister, so how would I know? Today’s post is a Q and
A with someone who knows exactly what it’s like to grow up in a big family. My
friend Diane is one of ten siblings. When I discovered this fact, questions
instantly ricocheted around my brain. I had to know more, so I announced to
Diane that I was going to interview her, and sweetheart that she is, she
agreed.
Sarah: You grew up in a family of ten
siblings. Where were you in the lineup?
Diane: I am one of three girls, and we have
seven brothers. I was born seventh.
S: Your parents married young, and
started their family the following year. Tell me about their early years.
D: My parents, Robert and Norma, married
soon after my mom’s high school graduation. Mom was still seventeen and Dad was
twenty. Their first child arrived when Mom and Dad were eighteen and
twenty-one. In the next seventeen years they had a total of ten kids. The
closest siblings in age are my older brother and me, and we are thirteen months
apart, to the day.
S: When did your parents move into the
house in which you grew up?
D: When my oldest brothers were small,
my parents moved into their house in Paradise Hills, a neighborhood in
southeast San Diego. My dad was a mechanical engineer at Rohr. My mom worked
when her first kids were young. Once the family became larger she stopped
working outside the home until we were much older. Although my parents didn’t
come from big families, large families were not unusual in Paradise Hills in
the 1960s and 70s. We knew families in our area with thirteen or sixteen kids
or more. To us, a family with only five or six kids was small!
S: What was your neighborhood like
when you were a child?
D: When I was very small, the
neighborhood was mostly Caucasian, but as I grew a little older there was a lot
of cultural diversity. We kids had friends of various nationalities, and we
liked the diversity. My parents lived in the same house for more than thirty
years, and they were quite friendly with their neighbors throughout the time
there. Although our family does not own that house anymore, one of my sisters
lives two doors away from our childhood home.
S: The house you grew up in was
approximately 1,000 square feet, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Who
slept where?
D: My two sisters and I always shared
a bedroom. My parents had a room, and some of my brothers shared another room.
Eventually we needed another bedroom so the garage was converted into a fourth
bedroom, where four of my brothers slept in two sets of bunk beds.
S: Your neighbors helped convert the
garage into a bedroom.
D: Yes, one neighbor was an architect,
and drew up the plans to convert the garage. Another neighbor was an engineer,
like my dad, and they worked together to turn the garage into a new bedroom.
Many neighbors helped. It was that kind of neighborhood. Neighbors always helped
one another.
S: Still, even with an additional
bedroom, it was a full house. One man I met from a family of fourteen said they
ate dinner in shifts. How did all of you manage mealtimes, and all the ins and
outs of daily life?
D: Breakfast was usually a quick meal.
We each packed our own lunches for school. All of us had chores, mostly driven
by our ages. Before dinner, the younger kids peeled potatoes and carrots. Older
siblings were allowed to cut vegetables. Mom delegated and she did the cooking,
and as we became older she taught us to cook. Dad cooked, too. Whoever was home
at dinner time sat and ate. We had a big horseshoe-shaped booth and whoever was
home sat there for dinner. My older siblings reheated dinner when they came
back from sports practice.
S: What about other chores?
D: In our house, when you turned twelve, you entered into the dish-washing
rotation. I hated washing dishes! There were always so many dishes, and big
pots, too. You could trade which day you did dishes, but no one got out of
doing dishes. Eventually we got a dishwasher, which made a difference.
S: Speaking of cooking, grocery
shopping must have been a frequent activity. Your family grew up in the 1950s
and 60s, and Costco didn’t open in San Diego until 1983. Bulk buying wasn’t the
option that is today. Did your mom shop daily?
D: We did go to the store regularly,
and we always went in teams of at least two, since we needed two shopping
carts. Sometimes my parents went grocery shopping together at night, as kind of
a date night. But we were fortunate to have my grandparents nearby, and they
had a huge garden at home, so we got a lot of vegetables from them. We
considered ourselves lower-middle class—we weren’t wealthy—but we always had
enough to eat. Occasionally we’d go to a restaurant, and I remember the Mexican
restaurant near our house. To this day I measure all Mexican food against that
place.
S: Did your family have a washer/dryer
at home? Were these machines running 24/7?
D: Yes! Once you were in high school
you were expected to do your own laundry.
S: Not only did your parents raise
their ten kids, but at times there were also friends living with your family.
D: Yes, there often was an extra boy
or two living with us. If a friend was going through a rough patch at home, my
parents opened up our house to our friends.
S: Wow. They had big hearts. They died
young but they made an impact while they were living.
D: My dad died at age forty-five, when
I was thirteen. He’d had heart problems. Mom died at fifty-two. Both were
amazing. They had tons of patience, and they had great senses of humor.
S: You are an involved, patient mom of
two. Do you approach parenting in some of the ways your parents did?
D: My parents were more patient than I
am. I guess they had to be! But yes, the two biggest lessons I learned from
them were to be patient, and to try to find a way to laugh about the tough
things in life. They were encouraging and always supportive. Even when they
were mad at us, we always felt loved.
S: With ten kids, how did your family
celebrate birthdays?
D: Growing up, we celebrated each
child’s birthday, sometimes with a party, sometimes with a family dinner at
home with cake. Once we were older we started gathering monthly to celebrate
all birthdays in that month.
S: Do any of your siblings have their
own large families now?
D: The most any of us has is four kids.
S: How many of the ten siblings still
live in this area?
D: Seven of us do. Some of us get
together regularly to play low-stakes poker. We play nickel-dime-quarter. I
actually learned to play when I was a child, so this is not only fun, but it’s
also a connection to the family in which I was raised.
S: Are there other special items or
traditions that have been passed down through the family?
D: Two stories come to mind. The first
is funny. When I was small Mom made meatloaf a lot, but it wasn’t something I
liked. Oddly, my sister makes meatloaf now, using the very same recipe Mom
used--and I love my sister’s meatloaf! The second story is about my mom’s
china. She had service for twelve, which my parents spent years collecting.
When Mom passed away my older sister inherited the china and she enjoyed using
it for years. But she recently gave it to me. I’m looking forward to using it
for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and one day I’ll pass on my mom’s china to my
daughter.
S: It’s a common belief that the
youngest child gets away with more than the oldest, or that rules became more
relaxed over time. Did this seem true in your family?
D: My older brothers remember our parents
being stricter with them, although my parents believed they parented each of us
the same way!
S: I’m interested in birth order and
how it shapes each person’s personality. But birth order stereotypes only go so
far when there are eight middle
children.
D: Yes. Middle kids are often
peacemakers. Sometimes I fit the peacemaker role but other times it wasn’t me.
The dynamic shifted a lot as we grew.
S: Were all the kids expected to share
toys and clothes with siblings? Were there items that clearly were yours—ones
that you were not urged to share?
D: Most things were shared but we each
had some things that were our own. You learned to find a safe spot to put
something special. When we were teens, my sisters and I shared clothes and
shoes. We each had our own but sharing was an affordable way to triple our
wardrobe.
S: What were the biggest challenges in
a family of twelve? Was getting individual attention hard?
D: Actually, my parents somehow found
a way to give each of us regular one-on-one attention. I never felt lost in the
shuffle. All of us kids did sports, and at least one of our parents made a
point to watch at least part of each of our games. The biggest challenges in a
family of our size were practical issues like getting shower time, or a ride to
practice, or access to the washing machine.
S: How does a family of twelve keep
things organized? I misplace things regularly and I have three kids—not ten!
Were you parents really tidy?
D: Certain things needed to be put back
exactly in their place—like Dad’s tools. With a lot of other things we just did
what we could. You were responsible for your own things, but there were plenty
of mornings when someone couldn’t find their shoes!
S: Getting a lot of kids out the door
to school each morning must have been a challenge. Was your school
walking-distance?
D: Yes. We walked a lot. School was
nearby. Baseball practice was walking-distance. High school wasn’t close enough
to walk to but as kids we walked a lot or rode bikes.
S: I did a
little research about large families (defined as having six or more children).
Online, there are a lot of theories about kids from large families being at a
disadvantage (especially as far as parents’ attention and finances). But one
article online pointed out that children in large families have notable
advantages. They learn cooperation at an early age (as
compared with children in smaller families) because they must learn to get
along with many siblings. Children in large families learn responsibility for
themselves and often for younger brothers and sisters. These children also tend
to have an easier time adapting to change. (http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/237/Family-Size.html) Do you think you are flexible in terms of change?
D:
Yes. I do think I’m adaptable to change and I know it’s because we had to be
flexible. From the very beginning we learned to compromise, to share and to get
along.
S:
What are other advantages of being part of a large family?
D:
We always had a playmate around. There was always someone to help you if you
needed it. Sometimes the disadvantages annoyed me: like my older siblings
making me play games they wanted to
play. But the advantages far outweighed the challenges. There was a lot of
camaraderie. My brothers also taught us girls to play sports and we became good
because we were practicing with bigger, more experienced kids.
S: What is
your favorite memory of growing up in your family?
D: Christmas holds happy, funny
memories. Our extended family always came to our house, and everyone piled in.
Our dad came up with a tradition for opening Christmas gifts. He’s start with
the youngest child, who was required to sing a few lines from a Christmas song
before being allowed to open a present. Then, the second youngest would sing
part of a different Christmas song before getting to open a gift. And so on.
Everyone had to sing a different Christmas song, and this became funnier with
each child as we tried to think of a song that hadn’t been sung yet. I think Dad
devised this plan to slow things down on Christmas, so that it wasn’t just
complete chaos. His tradition forced us to focus on one thing at a time and
while it took ages to get through the gifts, there was something fun and
special about the system, too. Life was hectic at times, absolutely. But I have
many happy memories of growing up in my family….
