Life as one of many

Coming from a large family is an understatement judging by the number of people in my family. My mom and dad must have planned to have a football team when they were planning on having kids; if not, they wouldn't have given birth to a set of football players, even though none of us became footballers.

I don't know what it feels like to come from a small family because we are more than a team now in my family, including extended family.

I don't know about the small family, but as for a big family, there are lots of advantages there because the responsibility of the parents wouldn't weigh the children down when they were plenty.

In my family, anytime we want to do something for our mother, it is not just one person's responsibility but everyone's. Imagine having ten grown-up children who are working and earning.

The image is mine

Last year, when my mom insisted on celebrating her birthday, we just talked on the WhatsApp group and shared the money that would be enough to get the party done, which wasn't stressful for any of us.

So keeping a large family has a lot of benefits, though when raising the kids, it might look stressful, but when they are grown, the family will surely be filled with happiness, especially when most of them go home during the holidays.

I normally went home for holidays before I got married, and the same thing goes for my sisters and brothers, but now none of us go home again. Instead, my mom always goes around to celebrate with every one of us since we are all married.

I remember how happy she always looked whenever we went home and even now that she always visits us during the festive season.

Now talking about what I prefer, "big family or small family," hmmm, this is a very big question because ever since I was little, I have made up my mind not to have plenty of kids, which means I would love to keep a smaller family.

Even if I had money, I would still prefer having a smaller family; the reason is that the world we live in now is different from the one we grew up in.

Then taking care of three kids is very easy, even five children, but now taking care of one child alone is like taking care of ten children because of how much life has changed.

I wouldn't want to put my kids in a spot where they will ask me why I gave birth to them when I can't provide for their needs, so it is better to have few and take good care of them than to have plenty and make them suffer.

Aside from the world that has changed, giving birth to a child alone can be exhausting, though I haven't done one before, but looking at how much pain my elder sister was in when she wanted to give birth to her last child scared me more than anything in this world, and yet my mom went through the same process to have a football team for my dad.

Well, it is my and my husband's opinion that matters since we are the ones involved, so that will be our decision to make without consulting anyone.

I love smaller families, even though I came from a big family, and the reason was that if we were just three or four in number, then I am sure the stress of raising us wouldn't be so much on my mom then, though she's happy seeing us now, I'm sure then she wouldn't be so happy struggling alone to raise a team.