The Truth About Having a Big Family
What No One Prepares You For...
My heart was busting open.
I was a young mother with four little kids, and a husband studying full time in school. My arms and my days… were full. So, too, was the double stroller I pushed on our daily walk, and the sling I wore holding the baby—while the oldest cruised ahead of me on the sidewalk with his bike.
Once in a while he would pause, look back, and wait for me to catch up with my entourage.
I loved our morning walks under the mature trees that lined our vintage little neighbourhood. I felt rich with my little crew of humans. Tired… but rich.
Somehow, in the midst of our already dynamic days at home weaving our own world-within-the-world together, my heart was again uploading it’s next brilliant idea: more life.
LIFE itself was wooing me, calling me, opening up my heart like a portal, inviting my womb to participate in the generative work of creation.
“More life”… whispered my heart, again.
I longed for another baby.
The four humans already in my world were so magnificent, what would it be like to have one more? I toyed at the edge of this thought for a long time. My mind and heart seemed to be in a kind of battle. My mind—well conditioned by society by that point—had lots of reasonable doubts to cast over the idea of having a larger family. My heart, though… It just wouldn’t stop romancing me with the potential joy factor of a new infinite human in our family.
By the time we had three children, the world had already registered complaints:
“Slow down—do you guys think this is a race?”
“What are you doooooooing?”
“Just wait till they are teenagers!”
“How are you going to afford all of them?”
“What about yer body?”
“What are you, a baby hoarder?” (True story.)
“Haven’t you heard of over-population?” (Cue eyeball roll—theirs, not mine.)
(Although, speaking of rolling one’s eyes, mine do when people refuse to face the very clear fact of a global population collapse. Another story for another time.)
These comments should have clued me in…
…that I was right on track!
You see, when your heart desires to risk something that is aligned with goodness, beauty, truth, and life, the world will tell you,”NO!! Don’t do it!!” Once you dial into sovereignty, you can’t unsee that pattern playing out in every field. This reality is a cage built by our perceptions, and society likes to fancy itself as the ultimate arbiter for “off-grid” decision points—it always calls us back into line, back into contraction (fear mode), keeping our perception and experience contained. The world wants to play small, our hearts call us to expand.
And for me, that expansion meant my belly.
Another child!
…Now, thirteen children later, I want to tell you the truth about having a big family. I share this from my own perspective as a happy, fulfilled wife and mother of many. I want to tell you things that nobody told me when we were setting out (because so few people have big families, how could they know?).
Your home will be a little village—it’s own mini-ecosystem. It will hum with a heartbeat all its own. You will never be lonely. Your children will always have playmates. You have your own vibrant culture that impacts the way you do and see everything… you are an architect of culture.
Your children will elevate you. They are perfectly attuned rendering “machines”, so they will build out (act out) the energetics of your inner world. They reflect your energy back to you, giving you the feedback you need to evolve and up-level your approach to life. So, mathematically, the more children you have, the more your will be honed and refined… this virtually guarantees that you will become a sage or a saint in due time.
Home will be your favourite, most glorious place on earth. It will absolutely explode with the creativity and character of all the unique individuals sharing the space.
The family chat app will be the only worthwhile and truly fun thing on your phone.
Your kids will become in-house chefs. I literally have no desire to eat out any more. My oldest daughter spoils us with her vegan twist on Indian, Thai, Lebanese, Mediterranean, Spanish and endless other kinds of food. My teen daughter is all about the fresh daily sourdough, homemade granola and healthy raw food desserts. And four of the middle kids make the most amazing healthy snacks, bars and cookies… literally every craving is taken care of in a healthy, love-infused way, because my kids love to create in the kitchen!
There will be live music every day. The singing in our house is almost constant, and the instruments are in action for hours over the course of a given day: piano, guitar, cajón… the frequency of analog instruments and your children’s voices is a healing energy in your home and on the earth.
Every meal will feel like Christmas dinner. You sit around the huge table and have extended conversations, read books or poetry aloud, discuss philosophy, make jokes, chat about the nuances of the day, draw riddles and word games on the chalkboard wall... Tiny Tim wishes he could join you.
You are a party on wheels. Wherever you go, it’s a party… which means that everything you do is a container for fun.
Your kids will grow to adore each other, becoming each other's closest friends. They learn to embrace the raw, unfiltered humanity of their siblings, and navigate life creatively together, which deepens their bond and creates a beautiful scaffolding of trust around their relationships.
You get to experience all ages interact with all ages over real things! This is real, age-integrated living—so different from the age-segregated lifestyle that is promoted by society. This keeps us all in constant growth mode… learning, flexible and adaptable.
Your children learn to navigate frustration quickly. If a child has a conflict, it's usually with the sibling closest to them. However, with so many other sibling pairs and groups, they quickly find opportunities to connect and take a break to repair the harmony with the sibling they had a disagreement with. Grievances rarely last long!
You see children selecting different areas to excel in, often inspired by the successes of their other siblings. Younger siblings observe their older ones mastering skills and, growing up in that environment, they naturally assume these abilities come easily, which helps them pick up those skills quickly. The relationship between mentorship and mastery among siblings is unique. This dynamic leads to many collaborative projects, as they create and build their own imaginative worlds together.
You raise resilient humans. With a large family, micromanaging is impossible, so it naturally encourages your children to develop adaptability. This fosters a healthy, balanced way of experiencing life—free from hovering parents, yet wrapped in the safety and love of the clan.
Your older children have the opportunity to observe you parenting the younger ones, which serves as a formative experience to prepare them for their own future parenting. They benefit from seeing you refine your approaches over time, and gain valuable skills in understanding young children. By learning the nuances of interacting with babies and kids, they develop an intuitive ability to connect with others. The language, expressions, and needs of children become clear to them, making them adept at reading, engaging with, and communicating effectively with others.
When you have a baby, the Kingdom of Heaven is in your midst. There’s a magical quality to their presence that transmutes you into something greater. Babies have a unique way of helping you stay attuned to the delicate, wonder-filled aspects of this life. They keep you soft in all the best ways.
You will step on LEGO. Just call it 'natural environmental acupressure'—a little pain for ultimate enlightenment.
The other day, I was down on the floor playing a sloth game with my five-year-old, he paused, and out of nowhere said, “Mom, you know what would be the sad thing if you died?”
“What would that be, buddy?”
“You wouldn’t have any more babies.”
Portrait by Poppy
Thank you for such a beautiful expression. What you describe is a dream I always held in my heart but have been to ashamed to fully be behind. I’ve been wrestling with and integrating the darker influences in my psyche that tell me the desire to have more than my three boys is a distortion. A desire driven by avoidance of aging, inability to accept my boys growing up, and a laundry list of other judgy excuses cooked up by my programmed mind. My heart has always longed for more and at almost 44 I’m finally trusting the desire. I have a lot of work to do to clean up our rhythms and spiritual life at home with my two oldest, a teen and preteen, who are entranced by life outside our family, but I have so much faith that our family will recenter as I fortify my reclamation of motherhood as my most desired, worthy and important role in this life. God willing, we will expand our family in this process. Message like the ones you shared in this article are rare and precious and I am so grateful to have read them. Thank you. 🙏
I loved reading this Bonnie. I could really picture your household and truly believe life with lots of children is how we were designed to be. Both of my grandmothers had 9 children each but that’s where it stopped. I was heavily indoctrinated and only started having my children at 34. I hope that I can have a small clan of littles to raise and enjoy the beauty of it all.