Rediscovering God’s design for family in a world that sees children as a burden

I have mostly been off of social media entirely since early January when I got my new “dumb-ish” phone for my birthday. But even so, news reached me that Hannah Neeleman from Ballarina Farms had her 9th baby. And that the internet has imploded over it.

I’m honestly not sure what is so shocking about a Mormon mom, who’s had 8 previous babies, presumably every 1/5 – 2 years for over a decade, now having one more child. Like, don’t you expect it by now? But nevertheless, baby #9 is here, and the interwebs have strong feelings about it.

Not being a Mormon myself, or particularly interested in what Instagram influencers are up to, I am not here to defend Hannah’s family or enter into any debate about their life, their finances, or how they live their life (or portray it online). What I am particularly interested in, however, is this backlash against the simple fact that she would dare to have 9 children. “Hannah, don’t you know that you are not supposed to have more than 1.6 children? Anything more is outrageous and clearly immoral!”

The outrageous thing is that the United States has fallen to a birthrate of just 1.6 children per woman(1), which is now tragically below the replacement rate, and is a record low. We are seeing this same trend over most of the developed world, including Canada (1.4), virtually all of Europe (with a combined birth rate of 1.4), Japan (1.3), South Korea (0.8), Australia & New Zealand (1.6 each), among others. If you are someone who believes the world is overpopulated and that this change is good because immigrants will come in and do all the jobs needed, or that technology and AI will replace all of the jobs needed, we can still be friends, but we will not agree on this issue. You might want to go on your merry way to a different article.

Our two sets of twin boys, back to back! 

Because of the birth rates that have been falling for decades, when you go outside your home with two cheery, or two cranky, toddlers, you will hear over and over again “Wow, you’ve got your hands full!” or if anyone is having a tough time being out past naptime or just being a toddler, you will get nasty comments and looks. (This is a topic for another day, but I do think two things are happening here: on the one hand, no one disciplines anymore, and children are allowed to run wild in public spaces and can genuinely be a nuisance. We are tired of parents not teaching and training their children, and so any outburst, noise, or even laughter from someone under 5 feet tall is looked at with a side eye or outright sneering. We, as a society, have forgotten what it’s like to have children around. We’ve forgotten that they are entitled to live and take up space as much as any adult. We’ve forgotten that children are precious and that they are learning how to be adults and members of society, and such training needs to happen in the real world. It’s as if our tiredness of permissive parenting has convinced an entire society of adults that 100% of all children are ill-behaved and a nuisance. But I digress…)

Our society can no longer fathom how someone could have 5-9 children, and that it must be impossible. What we forget is that until about 3.5 seconds ago, this was the norm. And don’t come at me with “Well, rates of infant mortality were higher.” Yes, and families still had a lot of kids who grew to adulthood. You can disagree on the reasons why they had so many children, but the fact remains that generations upon generations of women raised more than 4 children and did it successfully.

So, back to Hannah.

A viral tweet when the news broke relays the sentiments of a large portion of my generation: “You cannot give nine children adequate time, attention, and connection.” This sparked articles and comments arguing that large families bordered on child abuse, that large families are oppressive or ignorant, and that mothers (and children) in large families are miserable. As someone with a whole lot of experience in this area, I’ve been mulling this all over for days.

But I haven’t been mulling it over when it comes to Hannah. I’ve been mulling it over because moms in this generation need to know that there is another way to have a family than the 1.6 children they see in society. Families need to be encouraged that you can have a large family and that it can be a joy and a blessing. I love looking back through old literature or hearing stories of great-great-grandmas raising their brood, but it’s hard for us to connect with these stories on a personal level.

We read about Ma Ingalls raising her larger-than-normal family (by today’s standards, anyway) in a dugout without electricity, running water, or an urgent care to run to when the cough turns deep in the chest. We are inspired by the rugged courage it took to be a mom back then, and we might even pick up a tip or two. But by and large, we don’t know how to connect the lessons we see from Ma Ingalls or Marmee with those of our very modern world, juggling soccer practice, grocery pick-up, social media, dating, lack of community, and so much more. In so many ways we see, we have it so much easier than “back then,” and yet in others, it seems impossibly harder.

18 months later, we welcomed our 1 precious girl!

If we are firm in the fact that children are a blessing from the Lord, then we also know there IS a way to raise 3-4 children, 5-6 children, or even more in a good, godly, and wonderful way. For the past year or so, it’s often been on my mind that American (and Western) women need a better blueprint for raising children. We are now a couple of generations out from larger families being even somewhat common. We don’t need to be learning from the Hannah Neeleman’s of the world or the latest Instagrammer (I am thankful for some of the good and godly voices there sharing the positive (and the hard) sides of raising kids like Abbie Halberstadt – M.is.for.Mama and Elisha and Katie Voetberg of Now That We’re A Family), but rather from the mother sitting a church pew away from you, wrangling her five children, 7 and under. Or the mom fielding college applications and nursing a baby at the same time. Or the experience of the older mom welcoming grandchildren into the family.

I launched a project last spring that I think I’m finally ready to pick back up. I am the oldest of 4 siblings (along with a half-sister I sadly did not get to grow up with). Even at the time, I didn’t consider myself from a large family, but my mom constantly got comments asking if we were all from the same dad (even though we share such a strong family resemblance) and remarking on what a large family we were! My husband, however, is the oldest of 7 kids, very much a large family by today’s standards.

I always said I wanted a large family, and 6 was my ideal number of the largest family I could fathom. My husband said he wanted more like 4. So we compromised and said 5 was the perfect number. All young couples are idealistic when they have these conversations because, of course, they have no idea how many children they will indeed one day want, nor indeed the number of children they will actually be able to have! 

But 5 children came and went, and we realized that the “ideal” number for us kept moving up. Now, we have 8 beautiful children, ages 13 down to 1. So, not quite the 9 that Hannah now has, but I think I’m close enough to speak on this topic. Plus, we have the benefit of Jason having grown up in a large family with all 7 adult children still loving and walking with the Lord – Praise be to God!

At the beginning of last year, I read the terrific book, Hannah’s Children (totally unrelated to the Hannah mentioned above), and it got my wheels spinning. Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth explores why some women in modern Western culture (it might just be centered on the US, I can’t remember now) choose large families despite declining birth rates, highlighting their values, motivations, and sense of purpose. The book argues that their choices challenge mainstream assumptions about fulfillment, success, and family life.

Overall, great book, and I highly recommend it. However, it interviews any woman with 5 or more children, regardless of faith. And it really only gets into their motivation for having a large family. I would like to go about 5 steps beyond that. I am focusing on Christian women because our faith highly impacts how we raise our children. And I’m not only interested in what motivates Christian women to have 5 or more children, but what common principles we can draw from the families who have raised a large family well.

And since then we’ve added 3 more sons to the mix, making us a family of 10!

It’s no secret that it takes a lot to raise a large family. There are so many schedules to juggle, education to oversee, finances to count, food to cook, and love and attention to go around. So, as Christian women, how do we do this well? How do we practically and spiritually raise a brood of kids who love the Lord and develop a strong family connection? How do mothers of many do this with health, vitality, and vigor? There are so many flavors of good family cultures, different personalities, and different family sizes (a family with 4 kids will function a bit differently than a family with 12) that I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all answer. But I do think there are so many wise women who are quietly living this out. And until our congregations and neighborhoods are full of larger families again, it’s a good thing to be able to learn from those around the country or the globe.

How do we steward a large family well? 

I have collected email addresses from over 100 Christian women (not Mormon, not another faith) with 6 or more children who are going to participate in a study that I’m putting together. We have mothers who are deep in the trenches with 6 kids, 8 and under. We have mothers sandwiched in the middle who are bouncing a baby on their knees and teaching their teens to drive. And most importantly, we have mothers who have raised their 6+ children, and all of those children are still walking with the Lord. I am particularly interested in this segment to see if we can pick up some common threads that contributed to this (I think quality talking time will be a recurring theme, but we’ll see)!

I have plans of turning this study into a book, and I would love the prayers along the way. This will not be a quick turnaround, but I do think it has the potential to be a very significant project. I will, Lord willing, provide updates as we go into it. This week, I will be formulating the study questions and getting initial information out to study participants (Let me know if you have any burning questions you want me to ask)!

So, in the spirit of the Hannah Neeleman controversy and getting inspired for my new study, I’ll be doing a series of articles on the topic. Here’s what I’ll tentatively be covering:

• The blessings of a large family
• The pitfalls of a large family
• You actually get better at this (addressing the concern that one person can’t mother this many)
• Addressing the no-time-for-one-on-one myth
• Parentification of the kids
• Mom’s health and vitality
• The question of birth control
• Educating a brood
• Finances and what is “the good life?”

I am inviting you to join me in this series, not because I have all the answers (far from it), but because I think we need to be asking the questions.

(1) https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/is-the-us-birth-rate-decliningaud