Have you ever known (personally) a very large LDS family?

How many children? How were they, generally speaking?

Do the benefits of being in a large brood outweigh the disadvantages?

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Largest+families+in+history%2C+number+of+live+births

The 3 obviously TBM guys on this season's Great Food Truck Race on the Food Network who drive the Waffle Love truck are 3 of FOURTEEN kids.

Largest I've ever met is bil's family- there are 12; 10 kids and 2 parents. The kids are all grown now with children of their own.
I don't know whether the benefits outweighed the disadvantages, but I have a hunch that there were some issues.

Largest I've never met: Great-great grandfather...he had 11 wives and 32 children. Some of you may have been to his mill in West Jordan known as Gardner Village.

I've been there. Had a nice dinner at a little restaurant there.

It's funny to think about polygamists from back in the day. I wonder if the husband ever encouraged group sex and lesbian sex among the wives? Not sure if the pioneers were that adventurous.

I had a roommate at BYU who came from a family of 14 children. She was terrifically self-righteous. I never met any of her family.

Knew a family from a ward I attended, also with 14 children. One of the children and the mother had nervous breakdowns. The father was a professor and made good money but they still had to live very frugally. All the kids were expected to serve missions. I knew one of the daughters pretty well and she was very attractive and well educated. She just turned 40 and hasn't married because she cannot find a worthy priesthood holder. I liked the parents but they are completely besotted and totally brainwashed into Mormonism. I don't think any of the children have left the church but I'm not certain. I watched while the older children were paired off with a younger child and basically had to raise their younger sibling(s). It seemed to be very hard for the oldest of the children and a bit too hard for a couple of them. I think a couple of the girls married very early just to get out.

I don't think any of the advantages that came from being in that large a family out weighed the problems and sacrifices. Growing up in that family was hard work and brutal even though many seem to have gone on to have happy lives.

My oldest so-called "brother". Him and that wife of his have had 13 children. Two of which are girls.

But that made me think, there was a family in Japan, I want to say Yasufuruichi, with 10 kids. That was the densest genkan I'd ever seen. They had purchased two condos next to each other and spread out thusly. Can you imagine? 12 people living in 2 2-bedroom condos?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2015 12:53PM by Levi.

So girlfriend at YBU had a roommate that was engaged to a guy that was one of 17 kids. The father was a surgeon of some sort in Mich. He seemed very intelligent and even keeled, but I heard numerous weird accounts of having a scheduled meeting with his dad every two weeks and to otherwise not bug him.

I'm not sure if I am remembering correctly. but the father was way into off-road trucks or something that was not a mormon guys acceptable hobby.

I have an aunt that has 10 kids. Glad my parents bought into the cult in a different way than hyper-breeding!!!

I knew a family that had 11. Dad worked with the government but they were still dirt poor. Had no yard, children went hungry. Breakfast consisted of like one egg. They would sit around on the floor and act very docile and quite. Not much interest or energy for fun. The walls of the house hadn't been painted since 1930's and the carpets were original.

The largest family I've ever met was non-LDS. They were San Joaquin Valley people who attended an Assembly of God church if they went to church at all, which was not that often. They had eighteen children when I knew them, and I believe they had a 19th after we left. The older kids were having kids of their own well before the mother stopped popping babies out. I think there was one set of twins among them, but that was it in terms of multiples. It wouldn't have been religious beliefs that drove the family to have so many kids; they just weren't all that religious. Either they really liked kids, they really liked sex, one or the other of them didn't know what was causing the babies, or a combination of the previously mentioned factors. I knew them in the early 1990's.

I used to be friends with a girl who came from a family of 19 children, with only one set of live twins. There was a second set of twins who did not survive birth. Interestingly, they were Protestant in a very Mormon town but I think the parents had been raised as Catholics. I have no idea as to why they had so many kids other than they must not have believed in birth control. They were very poor and there was rampant physical and sexual abuse and much neglect.

I worked for LDS bishop that had 11 children. I would meet him at his house to start work every morning at 7AM. It was a madhouse to say the least. His wife would have two or three kids piled into the bathtub at the same time. She always looked tired, wornout and depressed. I learned that she was only 35 years old at the time. I was newly married when I worked there and that experience influenced me greatly. I would never do that to a woman I loved.

14 kids. They were mormon and a mental and physical train wreck.

Dwarfism ran in the family 10 of the 14 kids were dwarves and most had serious medical issues. No matter, mom just kept having babies. I don't know what the final number was. I will say it was heart breaking for me to watch.

I've had previous experience with another family that had dwarfism in the family. It's a very difficult problem to deal with sometimes. The medical bills can be out of sight. The social and emotional issues can be extremely difficult. The kids who know their parents intentionally had kids in spite of knowing the outcome, are filled with anger and resentment. It can be a sad situation. Throw mormonism into the fire and you have hell.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2015 02:21AM by madalice.

My TBM brother has 13 children, ten are adopted.

Next to him, my immediate family although not that large, we have a super large extended family on dad's Mormon side, and mom's Jewish side.

I mean H-U-G-E. Cousins everywhere. My Israeli cousin has app. 18,000 names on his family site of the Jewish tribe I belong to.

And the Mormon side *might* come close, although his genealogy is much more detailed than the Mormon's is. The *best* genealogist on dad's side wasn't even a Mormon. He was a Deist. He left volumes and volumes I was able to access last year once I discovered some new relatives we're directly descended from.

My great great grandpa who immigrated to Utah in 1862 was sent to Ogden by Brigham Young. He had 20 children all told. The cousins on that side alone are so extensive when I was a child we had our family reunions in Ogden, and there were hundreds of cousins I'd never met or seen before or since. :)

Off the top of my head ....

Largest LDS family in my area? 12 kids, though I only really knew "off them" in the area. Largest I knew on any personal level? 8 kiddos. The father, now advanced in age, is still a personal friend and think he is one fine, honest individual, despite the Morgness.

Largest ever that I personally knew? 16 kids. They were some thoroughly wacked, charismatic/full-quiver type of Protestants. The dad was a preacher an a world class nutbar, as was the mom to a lesser degree. Some of the kids, 2 of which I befriended, were actually pretty good individuals and went on to lead some pretty successful adult lives.

My first cousin (fairly strict TBM) not insanely strict had 14 children. When he and his wife got married they found out shortly after (about 1 year) that they could not have children the regular way. They adopted 14 children. I admire him and his wife very much for doing this. Their children are all grown now, but they had about 5 or 6 with special needs (including a Downs child, a blind child, another child in a wheelchair for some reason, various learning disabilities. The children were also every race you can think of, asian, black, white, polynesian, russian, etc. Their annual Christmas card looked like it came from an advertisement for the United Nations. One of their children became a famous basketball player. All of the children turned out just fine.


They sold there house when it got to small and remodeled a hotel for their brood. They were not an any kind of welfare and supported their children themselves. They were not rich but they did not go without what they really needed including college educations for those that wanted/ were able to do that.
I have two first cousins I seriously admire and this is one of them.

Their two black children were adopted before 1978 as very young children or babies at the time. My cousin did a wonderful job of dealing with the racism of the cult. I don't know what he said or did, but the entire family were treated equally well. By the time the two black children (both boys) were old enough to be priesthood holders, it was after 1978. I am not sure what would have happened if it had been before.

My mom had 11 children in her family and my dad had 8 children in his family so I have tons of aunts and uncles (all passed away now) but lots of cousins, second cousins etc.

My SIL, a nevermo, had just one daughter and no other children. She was lucky to have that one physically speaking. The daughter got married last year to an over the top TBM who is from a family of 12 children. They got married in the Temple and my SIL and her hubby BIL were not allowed to go of course. These are the bride's parents! They is still heartbroken.... their only daughter. I told my SIL that family is not really important in the CULT, they pretend that it is.

What is super sickening is that my SIL's daughter's MIL (the one who has 12 kids) expects (I should say demands) that each of the 12 children have 10 children each. They are suposed to be knocked up most of their lives. This doesn't bode well for the daughter who wants a career and she is smart enough to have a very good career. She grew up as an only child and she is already sick of hours of church each week. She is in a ward with a bunch of fairly young parents so most of the church service is bawling babies and you can't hear the speakers. She isn't missing much.

Can someone tell me why people want so many children? With my cousin who adopted the 14 kids, I can see his reasoning. He had the income and desire to provide a great home for many of the kids who might not have got adopted otherwise. Many people refuse to adopt children with Downs and other disabilities unfortunately. He also didn't overpopulated the earth. His 14 were already born.

But what is with the daughter (our niece) who MIL expects her to have at least 12 kids. What is the point of that? They can't afford 12 kids and they dont' want 12 kids.

Seven billion. And they're CONSTANTLY fighting.

+1
Get along, kids!

Some of my relatives. Very wealthy and devout European Catholics. The generation born 1930s / 40s had I think 11 kids on one side of the family and 14 on the other. They all seem to have turned out OK, wealthy themselves in fact, but money helps. Wasn't much fun when Hitler invaded their country, they tried to get away but couldn't and then there were massive food shortages for years.
Their kids have a max of 3 kids each.

I've met some of them.

The largest non-plyg family I've met is my tbm sister and her husband who had twelve kids, all grown now. Sis had two sets of twins and two single births in a row which meant she had six kiddies in diapers for a time. The other six kids came later.

Big families mean kids don't get as much love and attention or resources to help them develop. Kids have to raise other kids in a compromised situation.

My dad was one of nine. No, he didn't come from a Mormon or Catholic family. His mother and father each had nine siblings.

I knew a Mormon family with 21 kids, 10 of which were adopted. The adopted kids were all special needs children. The father made a good salary and they did get help from some women in the ward. My sons went to high school with the two oldest daughters of that family. When those girls went off to BYU, they didn't come home for summers and preferred to find summer jobs instead of having to provide free child care for siblings. The last I heard, those girls were married with only two children each.

the 16th of 16 children. None of them are adopted. Met the mom last weekend. That is all I'm going to say as someone might recognize the family.

There is a LONG story here and I don't know if I should share it in terms of my daughter is so TBM sometimes it makes me physically sick.

I married into a very musically talented TBM family of 13 children . My MIL got the the last " on the house" as the hospital didn't charge them for the delivery or hospital stay

There was an Elder from Alaska in my mission that was one of 20 kids. None were adopted. He was probably the weirdest kid I've ever met...had no social skills whatsoever. You would think it would be the opposite coming from a home like that.

I knew a tiny little old lady from Hawaii who'd given birth to 21 children, but not all of them were alive. She had out-lived several of her children.

I knew a Spanish family who had 9 kids.

One family had 8 kids.

My uncle had 7 kids, who are of course all of my cousins. My mother is from Newfoundland and she said that they tended to have huge families - anywhere from 13 to 18 kids. This was back in the '20 and '30s though.

Largest non polygamous family with same father and mother I ever heard of is the Idaho family of a sister missionary in France.

She's one of 17 siblings.

And I believe she now has 9 of her own.

I'm No. 2 of 11. We all turned out okay and mostly have two children each, except me with four.

We were assumed to be catholic but I didn't wish to correct that assumption.

Briggy

24 children and 2 parents. First wife had 12 then died. Second wife had 12 and aged out of childbearing, saved by the bell so to speak. Most of the kids were adults when i baptized the family (parents and 3 children iirc) in a suburb of Brasilia.

Haredi Jewish family in Baltimore - 21 kids. Parents lived at the local Yeshiva (meaning the father did not work), likely on public assistance.

Well that would hands-down be my Mom's polygamous family.

There were 36 brothers and sisters all sired by the same father, many of whom I met before they died off one by one.

we had a LDS couple that had 23 adopted children at last count (several years ago.) They would brag about it all the time, they were all adopted from Africa and some were HIV+, but people would ask, "how many kids do you have?" "Oh, we have 19 but 5 of them are HIV+ and they are all from Africa." Like they were trophies or something. Several of the adult and out of the house children were completely estranged from their "parents."

An LDS fellow that worked for my dad on the farm came from a family of 15. Some kids I went to high school with came from a combined family of 18!!

Ron Burr

I haven't known any very large LDS families, but there's a family that goes to my catholic church and they have 27 children.

My dad came from 18, which makes for a lot of cousins!

Next biggest is 10, a rural mormon family.

Growing up in Calgary in the 70s and 80s there were still many families of 5-7.

Raising my own three in the 90s and'00s, there were scarcely any families of four or more, and many families of one or two.

Here in California, the largest cult family I knew had 12 kids. The dad always had jobs in management, & made a lot of money. However, having a lot of kids, while they never had money problems, they didn't live as comfortably as they could have if they'd had less kids.

I've also known some other non-cult, & even non-religious families that have a lot of kids, with the biggest having 8 kids. I'm pretty sure that particular family wasn't religious either. I knew most of the kids, & they said nothing about going to church or God or anything like that. Both parents worked & made a lot of money too.