Large Family, you say?

The names thing reminds me of Good Fellas or My Big Fat Greek Wedding!

My mom was the youngest of 11. Some of those numbers are wild!

Also almost all the men on my mom’s side of the family are named William or Thomas, as are almost all the men on both sides of DH’s family. That will be fun for somebody digging up genealogy in the future.

I have a friend who is one of 21 (his wife's family was a bunch of slackers, she is one of only 9, lol) and another friend who is one of 22. All three families are Catholic, which in my observations of the world seems to be not out of line. I may have that impression from Monty Python though. I don't see either name on the list and I know the kids all lived to at least their teen years. I have heard anecdotally of other families that large in Quebec and yet I only see a couple from that province on the list. Interesting.

In my former community, there are several families that belong to a Finnish branch of the Lutheran church. They take "go forth and multiply" very seriously. Most families had more than 10 kids or more. The largest one I encountered was 21 children, no twins. Basically, they marry young, from within the church. A former student from this church currently has 6 kids. Her peers are having fewer kids, so there may be less pressure to have an overwhelming brood.

There is also no makeup, no tv, no contemporary music (even Christian), no movies unless they are educational. Kids are either hard working super-students or they hate school, there doesn't seem to be a middle ground. Very traditional gender roles. Men are the providers (even if it takes three or four jobs) women rarely work outside the home.

I dealt with that too. But there was also some first cousins marrying, still naming the kids all the same names.

I am also descended from two wives of the same man, one had died. I also came across, people having first and last names switched, both male and female.

my great great great grandparents had 20 kids.. a couple died young. the next directly related generation had 15 kids.. and I saw their house in Wales--about 15 ft by 15 ft. without a fireplace.. just a raised shelf for the fire with a hole in the roof. then there was my other side welsh family.. that emmigrated to the us. 12 kids, all boys had the middle name of griffith.. my great grandfather was griffith griffith...last name.

in wales, it seems only about 20 names are used.. so figuring it out can be tough.

If you scroll down to the father's.. geez.....

Latter-Day Saints men are very busy 16 members with a total of 735 children. I wonder how many of those kids married each other? That could get weird.

Too funny to read these numbers after DS and I had a random conversation yesterday on why humans didn't have litters like dogs. 

I am a massive skeptic of multiple multiple births surviving into adulthood in the 1700s and the idea a human body could have survived that wear and tear. 

The average life expectancy was under 30 during this time period!?

ETA Families with up to 20 births weren't unusual with my Scottish ancestors, 10-14 common and under 9 was considered a small family. I am so thankful for the birth control options available today.

I grew up across the street from a family with 12 kids - about 25 years from start to finish. The dad was a bartender (Irish Catholic, of course); mom stayed at home. One set of twins - numbers 9 and 10. She actually had 2 more after them!

Dear God, no. I am not 100% sure I am going to make it out alive when raising two!

there are quite a few large families I've come across while researching family history. Sometimes the father remarried and had more childern with a subsequent wife, and sometimes one wife has had 9-12+ pregnancies.

I went to school with a girl who was near the tail end of a dozen kids and my cousin is one of 15 (but there are two sets of twins in there). I have an friend who is one of the oldest of 21 - her own family is on the larger side 7 or 8 I think. And another friend has 13 kids plus several m/c (I think only 2 or 3 are girls)

one of the families in my family history (that I'm a direct descendent of) was William Taylor who married his 1st cousin Ann Taylor and had nine kids, she died and he remarried an Anne Taylor and had another nine with her

I am the middle child of 9 - 5 boys and 4 girls and we were a relatively small family for the era. There was a doctor who live around the road who had 13 or maybe even 14 children and they bought the house next door to accommodate everyone. I thought that was a big enough family. 

Given the lack of any real birth control for the majority of humankind, plus the young age at which people used to marry, I can certainly understand people having very large families. Really, the fact that they even start that list at 20 is surprising to me, because I don't think 20 is that extraordinary given the first 2 things I mentioned. however, when you reach those huge numbers at the top, it does become rather mind blowing to me. However, I will say that I recall even as a youth reading the Guinness Book of World Records that many of those same women were mentioned. I recall the information given for some of them. So if they are fabricated or mistaken, they have been so for quite some time.