Oh, barf. And sigh.

I’m too tired to come up with intelligent ways to express my disgust.

Kids don’t cost $950 a month. What the heck? That’s crazy. I know people who have 8 kids on an income of $43,000 and the wife stays home. And they’re American, which is really saying something. (Crappy health care and all that.)

Physical rewards associated with pregnancy? Is she on crack? Pregnancy SUCKS for most of us and at the best, it stretches your hooha (or garners you a C-section scar) and makes you tired.

I also know a ton of people who do NOT have a “fundamental drive” to reproduce. Most people have the number of kids they WANT, period.

All that said, I’m sure there are SOME people who keep having kids because they are addicted to the attention they get. There are all sorts out there. But I think they’re a teeny minority.

As one of those who supposedly uses higher function to stick with the two I got, my higher function says she has no idea how incredibly offensive that is.

Well, there is some truth to what she says. Obviously not *everything* she says is true for *everyone* who has lots of babies, but it does happen.

My own mom was the second of six kids, born to an emotionally and physically unstable woman who simply would not stop having babies even though she couldn’t care for them.

The psychological toll this took on the family was devastating; my mom and her siblings still suffer the negative effects today.

So…my only criticism of this article is that she should have done a better job of emphasizing that this doesn’t apply to everyone, or even to most large families. Just some of them.

Lori, of course it happens. People have more children than they can care for, or have them for the wrong reasons. It’s just as likely to happen in a family of 2 or 3 kids as a family of five or six. The point is, the article speculates wildly about the motives of a huge group of people and makes really sweeping assumptions while doing it.

Wow! Where does one start. Life is such a blessed, awesome gift. To care for children, be it one or a dozen requires so much more than money. The rewards of motherhood do come…eventually. They come, however, through much hard work, tears and a pouring out over a lifetime.

“The point is, the article speculates wildly about the motives of a huge group of people and makes really sweeping assumptions while doing it.”

That’s kind of what I meant about her needing to be more specific and not generalizing so much.

But also, I have to think that she knew what she was doing, right? She wanted to get some “buzz”. All her higher functions couldn’t keep her from it

i just find it laughable that people believe kids can fill “…an emptiness inside…” if anything, my days are longer and lonelier because i’m home with my kids instead of out partying with my girlfriends. i’m still committed to my children, and i’m happy to stay home with them, but it is their neediness that i’m always working hard to fill, not mine.

Only $950 a month? Heh…so much of this is laughable. I’m sorry.

I’m sure either she–or her editor–knew what they were doing! I just think an article like this is pointless unless there’s a pretty large number of the population it applies to. And I think articles like this make it sound like “bumpaholism” is some kind of epidemic. If she’d generalized less, there wouldn’t be a story here.

I don’t think you even quoted some of the more offensive portions of this article. I’ve rarely read anything more condescending.

And seriously, after the first pregnancy, who gets lots of attention and gifts? I’d like to know.

I’m sooooo sick of the tendency in the media to pathologize everything.

I love how people rationalize their fertility choices while judging others they have no idea about. Really too angry to speak now. Go get’em Meagan.

I read this and tried to give the writer the benefit of the doubt because you were quoted in the article. I’m glad to read that I can dislike what was written as freely as I would like to now. As you know, I’m now the mother of five. While I always wanted a big family, three out of those five came into the world because there is literally no form of birth control that my body can’t outsmart. (We haven’t tried permanent sterilization yet.) However, I receive very little positive attention for being pregnant from anyone outside of my church and I certainly don’t enjoy pregnancy. I just see it as a means to an end. Admittedly, I must like the end result because even now during that newborn sleep-deprived/sore nipples haze, I still have no desire to go that permanent sterilization route just yet.

And as an aside, I read a few of the comments on the article and have decided that whether they were for or against big families; there wasn’t a person on that first page who wouldn’t scare me in person.

Although I loved Martha B.’s book, “It Could Happen to You” about her first pregnancy and will likely stop at two kids myself, I find the article and its’ failure to recognize and note the rarity of the pathology she describes reprehensible at best. Seems designed to focus on the extremes…and to act as if those extremes are the norm for those who have more than 2 kids… Oy.

ACK! So cute! dimples!!

Clearly, the author has never vomited around the clock for 25 weeks.

I have three children. With every pregnancy I had hyperemesis gravidarum. I was in and out of the hospital, in bed for months, vomiting nonstop for months, losing weight instead of gaining it. But my babies did not suffer during the pregnancies. All were born at term and healthy. Even knowing what I know about my body and pregnancy, I would have another baby. I would endure it. I can see my family growing again. And I am sad knowing that it won’t. But there are other issues like age, and how another pregnancy would impact my existing family–now that the kids we have are older.
Wanting children, birthing children, parenting children all are such complex issues. Emotional. Physical. Enduring. We cannot and should not as women even try to think we know what is happening in others’ families and minds. We need to be supportive and encouraging and understanding and open minded. And in doing so, we will be better women and better mothers to our children.