I agree with you that it is very important to seriously consider the health of the mother when deciding whether or not to have more children. I would have to have a definate confimation from the Spirit before I put my life at risk. I can’t imagine leaving my children without a mother.

We were unsuccessful having any children the first five years of marriage. We made the best of it. My wife had a great job with NASA and we traveled around and went to the beach and had a good time. We had a bunch of church callings and it was fun doing them all. Many people in the ward thought we were just being worldly and selfish and we got quite a few little lectures. My wife did not want anyone to know the details of personal health problems so we never disabused the ward public opinion that not all young healthy couples without children are purposely delaying their births. We had one other couple in the ward who couldn’t have children as our best friends and support system.

At one point this self-righteous church leader scheduled a visit to our house. He demanded that the visit be at 6:00 pm. I told him due to her long commute my wife would not be home until 7:00 pm. If he wanted to talk to both of us he bettter come by later. He told me that if I was exercising my Priesthood properly in the home, I would force my wife to be there when the Priesthood called, even if she had to miss a day of work. It was most inconvenient for him to come any later.

Anyway, the Lord’s annointed came at 6:00 pm and after a long opening prayer by his counselor, proceeded to tell me that he had received a revelation and that he was compelled by the Spirit to come over to my house and call us to repentance. He told me to stop curtailing the birth of my children and to start working on having a real family. Funny thing, my wife was pregnant right then about 2 months along for the first time. We didn’t want to tell anyone that early since it would be easier not to have to deal with all the curious questions if it didn’t work out.

I just laughed at him and told him he was so far out of line in so many ways. I laughed so hard that I actually fell out of my chair. He must have thought I was the worst. I told him to keep praying and thinking about the topic of repentance, it was our best collective hope. And to carefully record that exact day he came over to my house in his journal, it might come in useful to him some day.

He was leaving as my wife came home. She wanted to hear his message and he was inclinded to deliver it again. At that point I physically put him in his car which was parked under a rather large spreading live oak and I told him if he didn’t get off the property immediately he was going to be dangling from the end of a rope. And he being the literal minded type, actually believed me.

I knew my wife was rather more emotional than usual and she would have very likely flown into a rage at him and kicked him out of the house and called her relatives in Salt lake and maybe tried to get them to tell the GA’s they know or are distantly related to and in some way got herself so worked up that it could have jeopardized her pregnancy. We had grown so sick and tired of the insensitive way many Mormons treat infertile couples. When I later told her what his message was, she was glad I had not told her, although she thought the part about the rope was a bit extreme.

Everything worked out for us. My wife almost died having that child. She put her life on the line again for the second. Now that was a difficult question. How big of a risk do you take to have the second child? With the first we didn’t know the risk, but it was high. We just wanted a family like everyone else and you start with one child. With the second, because of the understanding modern medicine gained during the birth of the first, we did know the risks and they were high. Our doctors advised us not to do it.

The risk also included developing chronic health problems that would change the equation from mother as care giver to mother requiring intense care. I’m glad we did, we got lucky. And I like to think of my son as the kind of guy who might grow up to change the course of history. But I would never ever fault anyone if they chose to only have one child in our situation. Sometimes I think we should have had more faith and tried our luck again; put the gun to the head of my wife’s health and pulled the trigger the third time. She was willing at times. But then I come to my senses and realize we should be grateful for what we have.

It is great to talk about general principles on this blog. But if you see specific people in your ward, do not judge them. A couple who is happy and wealthy and maybe even a little sassy on the outside, with only one spoiled brat may have things going on you would never guess. I think telling people what you did and why is more useful. They can form their own private judgements about how it relates to their individual circumstances.

“After decades of decline, birthrates in the United States, unlike those of most industrialized nations, have in recent years begun to tick up slightly, driven largely by immigration and to a lesser degree by people, including immigrants, who have followed the building boom into such counties as Loudoun and have produced, it seems, a mini baby boom of their own.

“They are for the most part middle-class professionals and stay-at-home moms, people including Catholics and Mormons who might have had large families wherever they wound up living, and others who had one or two, moved out to Loudoun and then decided to have another one, or two, or three.”

I read an article about a similar (the same?) study done by Ohio State University researchers:

SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT DROPS IN LARGER FAMILIES — EXCEPT FOR MORMONS

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/sibsize1.htm

The researchers’ explanations for high school achievement in large Mormon families were:

1) “It may be that Mormon parents spend less time and money doing things for themselves, such as exercising, reading or watching TV, as they have more children,� he said. “They simply allot a greater portion of their total resources to their children than do other parents.�

2) “Mormons are well-known for being pro-family, so parents with many children may receive substantial support from outside of their family,�

How did you get your kids to sit still for so long and just eat? They are so well behaved!!! I could launch into a talk about how my wife has them all scheduled out and they get regular naps but no…….

I then have two standard answers.

1. We never feed them so they are just happy to have something to eat
2. I beat them

#2 always get them laughing hystericaly.

Amen.

And don’t assume that the sooner your children marry, the better. The website where I met my wife, there were a substantial number of women close to my age (and older, and even younger) who were divorced. Almost all the divorced women – regardless of how long the marriage lasted – married at 18 or 19.

It all depends on the individual family. I would hesitate to draw a sweeping conclusion on this topic from one family.

The largest family in our ward 8 kids is also a well behaved competent bunch of kids. But the next largest 6 kids is a mess.

It really just depends. Also if you are not used to noise and activity it seems like large families are out of control just because there are so many people involved.

I sympathize with your feeling ostracized. And judgment of those with or without children is all of concern. But your post is quite knee jerk in and of itself, somehow suggesting that negative reactions to “large Mormon families” in public is justified. Well, it’s not justified. And it’s sad. The large disconnect between your feeling “somewhat ostracized in your ward” and your subsequent marginalization of a large family is telling.

Meanwhile my wife (29) and I (33) feel somewhat ostracized in our ward – there’s only one other couple about our age who isn’t at least expecting. (We’ve been married now for a year and nine months, ourselves.) I felt plenty of pressure in the Church when I was single to get married (not that I didn’t want to) but now that I am it seems everyone looks at us strange.

There’s a family in our ward – the father is ward mission leader, the mother Relief Society president – with ten kids. (They started at 22, and finished at 42.) One is on a mission, and one or two others are off at college for eight months of the year. The younger kids are among the worst-behaved in the ward, and my wife (who has baby-sat for them) says they’re that way at home too. This family to me makes the case that quantity parenting isn’t necessarily quality parenting.