Why women say, "No more!"

I could hardly wait for my husband to get home. The baby never stopped crying, no matter what I tried. I finally resorted to carrying her around all day in a Snugli. She was no better at night. Sometimes I fell asleep right next to her crib and woke up with her still crying. She wanted me to walk with her all night. Would this never stop?

I don't know how I made it through those first three months. I was thankful they were over and she was finally sleeping for longer stretches of time. It would be awhile till she slept straight through the night.

Later on, when she and her sisters were older, I remember breathing a sigh of relief when they were finally in bed. Now my evening could begin!

But as they got older they stayed up later until eventually I went to bed before them! The evening hours never seemed to end. If I had worked full-time during the day in those years I don't know when I would have found time for me.

And I needed that time. When I didn't have it I would become short-tempered and resentful of all the pressures of child-raising and keeping the family afloat.

So I joined forces with the millions of women underground who say, "Enough!" This might mean enough children, enough cooking, laundry, housework, shopping, chauffering, cleaning, etc. Whoever reaches that point knows what is enough. The problem is that we usually wait too long to say it, even to ourselves. We wait for someone else to say, "Enough" and thereby rescue us.

That doesn't happen. Why should anyone else take on this burden? Is he a fool?

Furthermore, we become so hard-of-hearing our own voice that it becomes submerged under layers of suppression and emerges distorted, diffused into emotional rage, medical problems or psychological disorders.

Finally, if we still don't learn how to take care of ourselves within the marriage and family, we might become so desperate that all we can think of is LEAVE!

And so many women have abandoned their homes, their families, their children.

It's time to stop and listen to one's heart, while it still sustains the life of the family.

If we learn how to say, "No," we won't have to scream, Enough is enough! as we walk out the door.

Why do some women want large families?

With the birth of octuplets in Southern California last month, the question of large families has become newsworthy.

Apart from the circumstances surrounding the birth of these children through fertility treatments to a woman who already had several children and could not afford more, the decision of many women to bear and raise a large number of children warrants discussion.

I will not attempt to enumerate what we mean by "large." The typical population replacement rate is approximately 2+ children. At a minimum, then, a large family would be one containing more than 2 or 3 children.

I have 5 children and more than that many grandchildren. Thank G-d, I have a large family.

Why did I want so many children? This question can be divided into two: 1)Was my desire a pathological "baby addiction" as some enlightened psychologists declare? 2) Was I "obsessed" with having another baby, clinging to the notion of having someone totally dependant on me and giving me unconditional love?

To answer the first question: Fulfilling an inborn need is not an addiction; otherwise, we would not eat and sleep when we felt it was needed. True, overeating or sleeping too much (or too little) are unhealthy behaviors that lead to negative consequences. However, unless one's mental or physical state indicates that one is unhealthy, the range of "normalcy" is quite large.

Similarly, what may be a "large" family to one person could be average to another. Thus, a family with five children may appear large to some people and average to others. The determinant is not the number but the health of the family.

We can make short shrift of the second question: If I wanted unconditional love, I would have bought a pet who would never grow up and leave me.

There are many positive reasons to have large families. See my Newsletter entitled Siblings are Forever to learn some of the benefits for children who grow up in these families.