This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
Many wish they could create a large family. But then they look at the difficulty of just one child and do not see any possible way to raise three, four, or more. How is a mother supposed to devote time to all of them? It is not until you actually meet a large family that you discover how it is done. Older siblings help taking care of the younger siblings, freeing up time for the parents. You can’t really understand the dynamic of a large family unless you come from one yourself. We are counseled to consider our “capacity to provide the basic necessities of life” when planning for the future of our families, but finances are so unpredictable and there is no telling how much children will actually cost. It feels like a jump into the known darkness, and it’s not just your own future you are putting at risk, it’s the future of your own children. I think if people had some idea for how to afford children, they would gladly pursue parenthood.
1. Eliminate Anti-Family Media – Up until 100 years ago, it was common sense. We talk about how much a child costs, yet somehow most folks in the 19th century were able to do it. What did they know that we don’t know? It’s not like children were ever inexpensive–our culture has simply shifted away from valuing family, and so the knowledge and needed mindset has been lost. The first key to having a large family is to shed popular culture’s anti-family influence, as it will keep you distracted from finding out what you need to do. The materialism, capriciousness, and heterologous design of modern society does not allow for large families. Read literature from before a hundred years ago when large families were very common. Study how society and the family operated. People started out poor with over a dozen children yet somehow managed to get wealthy.
Having children is the most destructive thing you can do to planet earth! Having more than two children can literally kill you! The cost of raising children is going to bankrupt you! You are a worthless baby-making machine if you choose to be a mother! Every day, we are bombarded with hysterical propaganda in the news and popular media instructing us not to have children. Children ought to be one of the most joyful part of a person’s life, but we have been conditioned to see them as a nuisance. Western culture has shifted in modern times to become unfriendly towards large families, and even if you have steeled yourself from media influence, it is inevitable that this pervasive popular culture influences you to some degree.
Well, just look at the numbers! The cost of just one child is over $230,000, not to mention the cost of six years in college and sending them on missions. The average cost of college is over $20,000 per year. Health insurance continues to skyrocket at a cataclysmic pace, and the entire final cost could multiply by a factor of five if you happen to have a child with special needs. How could anybody afford just one child, much less five? It requires a lifestyle shift. Our popular culture’s anti-family media is stuck in a very different lifestyle.
2. Less Community, More Family – The saying “it takes a village to raise a child” does not apply to a large family, because the family is the village. Public parks, holiday activities, libraries, and community events are as useful as any other parent would find them, because these are things you can take all the kids to at once. But day care, after school programs, and other such elements are less helpful because of the cost and the time required of the parents. It’s a lot easier if all the kids are reading books at a library or traveling on a road trip. If all the kids could be enrolled in a single community musical play, and if this is affordable, then that’s fine. But different kids have different interests and it is hard to juggle to have one kid do karate, another kid do football, another at after-school tutoring, etc. So how do you nurture each kid’s individual interests and talents? Keep it centralized inside the home as much as possible.
Church is obviously a community that you should be heavily involved in, but growing up in a large family, I noticed that even church takes a far smaller role than it does for smaller families. I grew up in a big city and Latter-Day Saint families in my congregation had few children. The congregation naturally suited toward smaller kinds of families. And I see this happening with more and more congregations. The church has been moving toward home-centered learning, with a shorter Sunday schedule, the elimination of Boy Scouts, and the new home gospel study program. But these things are not strange because they are things I grew up doing. We studied seven chapters of the scripture every Sunday as a family. We went camping as a family besides what we did at Boy Scouts. A large family is much more functional and much easier on the parents when kids spend more time interacting with the family instead of messaging with friends on their phones, going to parties, or playing video games alone in their rooms. Both fathers and mothers will have to work hard to set this expectation, but it’s worth it.
The problem with this, of course, is that it makes for an insular environment. Kids need to interact with outsiders to get a diversity of perspectives and grow as individuals. Everyone has met that weird kid that never left his house growing up, or that girl like Ariel from The Little Mermaid who flew off the rails the moment she left for college. The home also can’t be too insular for the parents. Men need to spend time with other men and women need to spend time with women. The modern norm is for adults to have five to ten people they are pretty close to, while the natural and healthy thing is to have one or two people outside the family they are close to. There needs to be friendships outside the home, but these friendships should be stronger than for smaller families because they are rarer. They will be more carefully chosen and I think be more beneficial friendships.
Extended family take a larger role. Extended family might even be living in the house to help pay the bills. It will be important to nurture these relationships and urge the children to be close to their cousins.
3. Close Proximity – It blows most people’s minds when they tour the home of Joseph Smith’s family, or other early church leaders, and hear the number of people that crammed into one tiny log house. If you visit any third world country today, many family members are likewise crammed into a small living space. In fact, that’s how it is anywhere outside the United States. We are so used to wide open living spaces, but it is very much the exception rather than the norm for human beings to live in such spacious homes. Very few kids get their own room in the world, and it’s probably healthier for their upbringing if they don’t. I grew up with four kids in a 12 by 15 foot room, and it wasn’t that bad. Every child need his private space where he can put his things, his own corner or backyard area. But it’s alright for kids to share a room (girls should not share with boys at an older age). Of course, there’s a limit to how crammed it can be, but I think it’s better for children to live in close proximity (though I certainly didn’t feel that way as a kid.)
But what about when they fight? They can’t avoid each other. That’s true, and that’s a good thing. Here are the important benefits of smaller living spaces:
- It forces them to confront their conflicts with other people. They have to sort out among themselves what channel to watch on TV, and this prepares them to be a social being in the real world when they hit adulthood. If a child is mad at his brother about something, he’d better figure it out because he is going to keep being around him.
- With a large family, a parent usually won’t be around to mediate conflicts, and you have to just hope that the older children don’t pick on the younger siblings too much. It takes a lot more trust in the children. It is scary, but this trust also builds a stronger bond.
- I used to think as a kid that we were living under the law of Moses because so many things were expressly forbidden that other kids got to decide for themselves, but really my parents were taking a less hands-on approach. We decided much more as a collective of siblings than a single-child gets to decide. It makes it easier for a child to figure out the difference between spirit and letter of moral law.
- It allows the opportunity for each child to solve life problems for himself and get the help he needs as an assertive rather than passive person. I believe this assertiveness is a skill which modern Millennial children are sorely lacking because they grew up in separate rooms.
- It is easier for a problem to get noticed. If someone is depressed, or has a vice, or a problem at school, it is more likely to be addressed. A younger child can easily feel ignored like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, but the fact is there are more sets of eyes in the home with a large family.
- Kids who are conforming to a family culture are conforming less to popular culture. That’s something you definitely want. They’ve got to conform to some culture. The more you can remove modern popular culture the better.
- It pressures kids to spend more time outside. I’ll bet Joseph Smith spent most of his time outside simply because it was too crammed for everybody to be in that tiny house all the time. Time outside connects us with nature, the outside world, and I believe is very important for development.
It’s amazing how so many of the things we worry about with large families end up being the solution to modern social ills. Don’t worry if you have to get some wood from Home Depot and build some bunk beds, if it means a smaller house payment. Don’t feel like you have to have that McMansion that every other middle class worker in Utah seems to have.
Financial Planning – Budgeting will be a lot more important for a large family, as will long-term financial goals. I really wish that at 18 years old I had approached college more focused with an occupation in mind. I wish I had fought harder to avoid useless fluff courses and concentrate on a well-paying job. The issue of financial planning needs its own lengthy article, but here are some key points:
- The real purpose of college is so that you can put on your job application that you have a certain college degree. That’s it. Some necessary knowledge can be received at college, and it certainly teaches you how to learn, but skill and talent is to be derived from the job itself. So don’t get into debt for a useless degree. Do everything you can to avoid student loans, get through it as quickly as possible, and get a degree that is most useful for job applications.
- Salesmen make more money than artists. Everyone thinks of art ability as talent, but really social and outgoing people’s skills are more important for earning money. That should be more emphasized as money-making talent. If you don’t have a salesperson’s personality, then reflect on what skills and abilities you can develop to earn money. Look for rare skills that nobody else has. The rarer the skill, the more people will pay for it. It could be as simple as a leather-making technique that your uncle taught you as a kid; people will pay high prices for quality leather goods. What are you good at, or what can you be good at, that few other people are good at, that is most useful for business? That’s what will make you money.
- Art would be a high-demand skill if it weren’t for one thing: the camera. Why pay for someone to paint a painting if you can just take a picture of the same thing? Sure, it takes a level of artistic ability to take a good photograph, but now with Instagram filters and photoshop artistic ability is quickly being replaced by technology. Technology replaces talent. Why pay for a handcrafted chair when a machine in China could easily create it at a tenth of the price? There are certain jobs that will never be automated, jobs that have been around for thousands of years, such as plumbing and teaching. Consider going for those jobs. But there is always going to be a necessary job that technology can never replace: creating technology. Learn to program has become a meme these days, but it’s true.
- Avoid all debt. The real estate business is pretty screwed up right now so that you can’t buy a house unless you borrow a large sum of money from a relative. But you got to do the best you can. Use a credit card to improve your credit, but pay it off immediately. Get a used car, cash down. Don’t use credit for anything else, except to start a business. Get rid of your debt as soon as possible.
- Move to a cheap area with a well paying job. Hopefully it will be near extended family. Right now Utah is great, but home prices are quickly rising in Utah and I think Idaho will be next on the list. Ideally, we would live multiple generations in the same house, as this is the natural way for humans to live, but unfortunately we have to do the best we can, and that means migrating around.
- The saying in business is that you should sell when times are good and buy when times are bad. When the housing market is expensive and you are raking in the cash, be willing to sell, and when the housing market is cheap and you are at risk of getting laid off because the economy is bad, be willing to take a risk and buy a second home to rent out then. This requires an extra store of money put away, and risk. But it’s all about the timing. You’ve got to see when markets are at their peak, prepare for future recessions, and have the means to buy when things are cheap.
- Real estate is a pretty solid market to be in. It’s definitely nice to have a second house or basement to rent out to college students to have that extra monthly income. It’s also likely to increase in value. The danger is becoming dependent on that extra income, because then what do you do when it dries up? The more steady sources of income from a variety of places you can get the better–rental checks, book revenue, online website ads, stocks, etc. When buying disposable goods like a car or even furniture, consider what will sell for a higher price. Craigslist is great for a little bit of extra cash.
- I love taking vacations abroad. But the problem with a vacation is that it is a brief experience that is unlikely to invest in greater financial income. It’s also sometimes more stressful than just taking a few days off at home. Dining at restaurants is the same thing. Food is temporary pleasure, and it is often less healthy than just fixing food at home. The things to avoid are activities or products that have no future financial value. Road trips are a great activity to do with the kids, and much less expensive than flying to Europe.
- Invest early and hold on to those investments–in things like stocks, gold, mutual funds, bonds, etc. It’s important to have a store of money around for emergencies, and it is also much easier to pay for the kids’ future college this way.
- Have a backup plan for if you lose your job or one of the other revenue sources dries up. For Latter-day Saints, the stereotype is for the wife to go to work, but there should be additional plans, such as other job possibilities, occupational skills and experience in a different field.
- Research every purchase you make. If you want to buy a nice SLR camera to do wedding photography, spend hours researching which cameras, lenses, and software to get. With significant purchases, you can’t afford to buy a crappy product.
- I’ve noticed it is human nature to show loyalty to a business you buy from. When I was little, my dad bought a huge van that would fit all of the kids, and years later when the van started breaking down, my dad kept taking it to the same mechanic even though it would break down again after a few months. He refused to go to a different mechanic even though he was obviously throwing away money. I like to keep written track of businesses I spend money on, and my rule of thumb is: three strikes and you’re out. Keep a blacklist of businesses to avoid. If food is missing when I get home from a drive-through or the belt in my car gets squeaky soon after getting it fixed, that’s strike one. For serious unethical practices, such as Honda’s refusal to honor their warranty or my experiences with Wells Fargo, it was one strike and never again.
- Little purchases add up, and so you’ve got to research the small but consistent payments you make. Go as cheap as you can on these frequent purchases like groceries and gasoline. They quickly add up.
- Create as much of your own stuff as possible to avoid spending money. This means cutting your kids’ hair yourself, sewing their clothes when they get holes, fabricating your own bed frames, changing the oil in your own car, doing your own electrical work in your house if you know how, building your own shed in the backyard, planting fruit trees in your backyard, putting solar panels on the roof, etc. There are so many things that we can do ourselves, but it just doesn’t make sense to because of how cheap it is to pay someone else to do it–but that changes when you have a large family. If your daughter is embarrassed to wear homemade clothes, try a thrift shop. There are lots of great finds at thrift shops, or from friends and family with old stuff they don’t need anymore. Or Craigslist. Of course, sometimes you need to spend money on something special for them and get her that really nice dress, however.
- Kids get less stuff. That’s just how it is. Don’t get them treats every time you go to the store. I can count on one hand the number of times I went to a restaurant as a kid. I can count on zero hands the number of times I got candy from the dispenser at the front of the grocery store, even though I begged every time. A kid who is given quarters as a present instead of hundred dollar bills will be just as happy. Don’t feel bad about it.
- Entertainment is a cost that quickly adds up. You could spend tens of thousands a year on DVDs, music downloads, Netflix, Itunes, phone games, computer games, movie theaters, concerts, cruises, streaming TV, vacations, etc. Cut all that out. If you go to a concert, make it an opera instead of a pop music concert. Go to cheap community events and local sports with the kids. Find entertainment that they can produce themselves, to foster creative talent and to keep it cheap.
- Accept financial help. I have a friend with a large family who refused to take unemployment checks when he was between jobs. He considered it welfare and did not want to be on welfare. Unemployment insurance is something you pay into with each paycheck, so it’s not actually welfare–but besides that, I believe it is okay to get help, whether from the government, the bishop, family, or friends, as long as you aren’t becoming dependant on it.
| See also: | Media Discourages Having Children |
Less Money Can Actually Make It Easier – You don’t have to be young or marry a rich person to have a large family, though that certainly helps. Well… actually, is that true? Does being rich actually help? Statistics show the more income an adult has, the less likely they are to have children. Wealth has an inverse relationship to success creating a large family. Why? The obvious reason is that you become more dedicated to making money if you have more money, and this replaces obligations to family. You feel more obligated to get your kids nice things. You feel more ashamed that you can’t drive a nice car to work. And when it comes to age, when you are in your mid-twenties you don’t feel any kind of urgency to procreate or prepare for the future. Why not order out pizza instead of taking a few minutes to cook cheap spaghetti? Yes, it certainly makes it easier to be young and rich, but that’s only if you have the extra discipline to lead a non-materialistic lifestyle and really plan for the future. Few do.
Starting a large family requires a humble mindset that is very hard to have in America, even as a church member. Growing up, I compared my dirty and ragged little home with the pristine homes of other families in my congregation and thought our home made our family less worthy. They had large paintings and marble statues of Jesus while we had curling crayon children’s pictures taped to the walls. How could the Spirit of God dwell in an unkempt, cramped, cheap house like ours? Now having spent more time in the Utah McMansion, I find that this air of greater spirituality is just an illusion. I believe it’s important to keep a home as clean as possible and to dress it up with inspiring art, and I do not fault those other families in my congregation one bit for making their homes nice. But I have learned that I prefer a greater abundance of family to a rich house. The Lord was born in a humble farm stable. The Spirit dwells where love is.
This is another reason why investment is so important. Money at the fingertips gives a sense of wealth, while money that is tucked away and understood to be reserved for a certain future event is already spoken for. I think anyone who has over $5,000 in liquid cash sitting in their checking account is making a mistake, because every time you forbid your kids from getting cheap toys from the store you are going to think it is unfair. It will be harder to have the mindset necessary to run a large family no matter how much you make.
What About College? – Statistics show school achievement drops for children in large families. This makes sense because a large family can’t afford special classes, tutoring, elite schools, clubs, etc. But there is an exception to this statistic: Latter-day Saints. Kids from large Latter-day Saint households have high school achievement. Experts are puzzled by this. How can we afford to devote so much to education? They theorize that Latter-day Saint parents devote much more resources to kids and go on less cruises, which is true. They theorize that the Mormon community pitches in, which is also true. But I would argue it’s not so much the amount of community support that matters as the type of support, and likewise from parents. Seminary prepares kids for a school day by reminding kids of morals and virtues that will inspire them to be better learners. Parents set rules and enforce discipline.
But if you look at another part of that statistic, you start to see something else: Large families with high income parents get a lot worse education that high income parents with less children. The disparity of education performance is greater the higher the parents’ income. That supports my theory that higher income parents feel pressured to have a larger house and nicer things no matter how many kids they have. Lower income parents will spend a greater portion of income on education than high income parents do. But I think this is less true for Latter-day Saints. The standard 10% rate for tithing may also be partly to thank: it reminds us that we need to devote a certain portion to a necessary cause like education.
The cost of college is out of control and it is pretty much a racket at this point. It’s a way to enslave people to debt collectors for the rest of their lives. College used to be standard for financial success, but I believe it’s time to rethink college. For many occupations, it’s not even necessary; trade schools will do just fine. Almost all education can be found free or cheaply on the internet if you know where to find it. Now, most of college is social brainwashing, and parents are very likely to not recognize their apostate child when he returns from college. Yet, a college degree is necessary for a resume, and there’s no getting around that. You can’t get a job as a janitor now-a-days unless you have a masters degree in something, and that’s the way it is. So that means people just have to get through it as quickly and cheaply as they can. I recommend local community colleges to save money, and careful preparation to make the university as brief, cheap, and safe as possible. Get pell grants and instate tuition rates. Research which professors are crazy Marxists and avoid their classes. Prepare your child for life within the den of apostate Babylon. Avoid useless degrees like sociology and journalism. And make sure the student gets a part time job, no matter how low it pays, because that sets the expectation that they will start paying for school themselves.
Do Not Run Faster Than You Have Strength – The book Doctrines of Salvation by Joseph Fielding Smith uses very strong language about the importance of large families, but it also counsels parents to not have more kids than you can afford. It is unacceptable for a kid to not receive healthcare or to go to school in dirty clothes, for example. Parentship also takes a lot more than financial resources–it takes a high toll emotionally, spiritually, and mentally as well. We need to make sure we don’t have more kids than we can afford emotionally and mentally. I think finances are usually the least of what a person should worry about, to be honest. People spend so much time worrying about money that they neglect their mental and emotional health. It is always going to take faith for anyone to have a large family, and I think we will be surprised what we are capable of.
At first, the words of Joseph Fielding Smith would seem like chastisement and might make us feel ashamed that we aren’t performing our earthly duties by procreating. But I think we can see it as comfort for those who are going crazy because their kids won’t stop drawing on the walls with permanent markers and throwing baseballs through the windows while their friends spend their nights out having fun. It can remind us that posterity is the highest eternal blessing, and that if you endure this for a few decades it will pay off immeasurable dividends in loving relationships and star-dwelling fidelity. “When a man and a woman are married and they agree, or covenant, to limit their offspring to two or three, and practice devices to accomplish this purpose, they are guilty of iniquity which eventually must be punished. Unfortunately this evil doctrine is being taught as a virtue by many people who consider themselves cultured and highly educated. It has even crept in among members of the Church and has been advocated in some of the classes within the Church… There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty? To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into the families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can… I regret, I think it is a crying evil, that there should exist a sentiment or a feeling among any members of the Church to curtail the birth of their children. I think that is a crime wherever it occurs, where husband and wife are in possession of health and vigor and are free from impurities that would be entailed upon their posterity. I believe that where people undertake to curtail or prevent the birth of their children that they are going to reap disappointment by and by. I have no hesitancy in saying that I believe that is one of the greatest crimes of the world today, this evil practice… When young people marry and refuse to fulfill this commandment given in the beginning of the world – and just as much in force today — they rob themselves of the greatest eternal Blessing… Those who wilfully and maliciously design to break this important commandment shall be damned. They cannot have the Spirit of the Lord.” (Doctrines of Salvation