Well, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Today we're going to talk about the perils of large families, and we've got Michael Foster here to help us think it through. Hope you enjoy the discussion. Jason, we've had the joy of talking a lot about family life being fruitful and multiplying the blessing of children, how God providentially makes your family. He opens and closes the womb.

But then we bumped into this guy who talked about the perils of a large family. I thought it was such a great article. Yeah, we're so often praising large families as a concept, as being scriptural, and we're pushing back against, you know, the general tide against that, but this is a man who is encouraging us to engage that thoughtfully because it's not all, you know, sunshine and birds chirping. There are things that need to be thought through and considered. So, yeah, I mean, we want to pray the prayer of Rebecca's brothers, but we also wanna offer the cautions.

And Rebecca's brothers say, Oh, our sister, may you become the mother of thousands of 10, 000s. We like that, right? But, that's not all that you should think about if you're going to have a big family. So we've got Michael Foster with us. Hey, Michael.

Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you. Michael is the pastor of East river church in Batavia, Ohio. Hey, he wrote a really good book called, It's Good to Be a Man. I read it.

I thought it was a great book. Go out and buy the book. It's good. But Jason, there's something else. He wrote an annotation of Thoughts for Young Ben by J.C.

Ryle. So this guy almost worships J.C. Ryle. He's always quoting J.C. Ryle.

Lies all the lies. Loves worship. He loves J.C. Ryle. But anyway, so anyway, you got to go check it out.

It's a really nice introduction. Okay. But we're here to talk about, Michael, what you wrote about the perils of a large family. And we thought there was a lot of wisdom there. Tell us about why you wrote that.

Sure. So I'm from a non-Christian family. I grew up with two younger brothers. And when I…so I always had a positive view of children. My mom did.

And she's like one of those people that said, oh, if we could afford to have two more, we would have and wish we would have had a girl. But, you know, sometimes we bristle at that, but she meant in a really positive way for a non-Christian. So I always wanted to have kids right away. And me and my wife would joke about having a bus full of kids. It's hilarious looking back to that.

We thought that was five. Five seemed like a whole lot. So we got involved in some reform churches after we got married that were very pro-children. And I would say anti-contraceptive, pretty strongly anti-contraceptive. And we had my son Hudson and then my son Athanasius, and then we got pregnant with Kaidman, and all that happened in about four years, a little over four years, and it felt fast to me.

And we were dirt poor at the time, and we were reading in a men's group, performing marriage. And Doug Wilson takes a sort of, however many kids you can educate view, whatever that means. And I wasn't super persuaded by that back then. And I wanted to do this, do a study that would justify contraceptive and not having children. So I did a big study.

So yeah, 1930, Lambeth, all this stuff, like, you know, all the things people are going to say, I've heard all that stuff. And, and then I B I became convinced that you shouldn't ever do any form of contraceptive. And, but I still was fearful that we're just gonna have kid after kid after my wife gets pregnant and my wife is always very much pro having more children my wife gets pregnant with our first girl and the foster side of the family of our 17 cousins there's only three girls and 14 boys. So girls don't happen very much on that side of the family. So I was blown away that we were actually having a daughter, we named her Nysia.

And I used to joke about how Emily had this tomb of iron, She just had these great pregnancies. And so Nicaea though, for some reason, her heart gave out on 39 weeks in and died the day before her due date on August 12th, 2012. And that was kind of a life changing moment where some people would think that'd make you not to want to have more kids, but it didn't. We saw how precious they were. And this assumption that you just can have lots of kids is not true.

It's actually, in a fallen world, it can be very hard to get pregnant. A lot of us have friends that want to have a bunch of kids, but had multiple miscarriages and only had one or two or people that have multiple stillbirths and these very painful things. God definitely used it to humble me on the sort of contraceptive stuff, but As I moved through life, I had lots of friends that are having, you know, we, it's common. I have not, I've had nine children with my wife, including the one in heaven, but I have lots of friends that are anywhere between eight and 13 kids, you know, and it's, and We've seen the sort of toll that it's taken on their marriages, on the wives' back. The difficulties that arise, you think the years when they're little are hard.

They might be sleepless some nights, but there's a whole different range of difficulties that happen when you've got kids from one year old all the way up to 22 or whatever. And one of the most difficult times in parenting from I've observed, my oldest will be 18 in the fall, but it seems to be when they're all out of the house and all you have is influence, right? If they call you. I've watched a lot of parents in their 50s and 60s that become one of the most challenging times. As I saw all those challenges, as much as I love children and I'm for fruitfulness, and I think fruitfulness is normative, and I say have sex and let your sex be fruitful, But there are real challenges attached to it.

And good things can be dangerous. Like all good things can be dangerous. And there's a responsibility that comes with it. And we don't just have babies, right? We raise men and women, right?

We raise them up into adulthood. And children that don't know the Lord are one of the greatest pains that a Christian parent will ever experience in their entire life. It's one of the greatest woes. And so children can, if they reject God, grow into a curse, right? So a rot into the bone.

And I wanted to write something that just helps, as people right now, since really 2020, maybe even a few years before that, there's been an awakening where people are questioning kind of the mainstream narratives and ideas, and they're grabbing old ideas back, but they're doing it in a very reactive manner. And they're like, yeah, we should have as many children as possible. And I'm like, okay, but you also like…you don't have…just have children. You raise them, you disciple them, you nurture them, there's like a whole thing. And some of you guys have no extended family.

A nuclear family is not a biblical concept, there's no such thing in scripture. Scripture is an extended family. We know that because the man who won't provide for his own that's worse than an unbeliever is a man that doesn't provide for his mother or mother-in-law, right? The concept is broader. And so we have people like me who are a first-generation Christian that we're grabbing the productive womb, but we don't have the productive household or the extended family.

And there's a sort of idealism that just needs to be checked. You just check so you come into it sober. Because I have run into incredible numbers, I think, of large homeschool families that are experiencing divorce and some wild behaviors in the mothers in their late 40s and early 50s. I could think of like 10 to 12 families. And people say, that's not a lot, but that's a pretty significant population of homeschool families with like 10 and 12 kids.

It's like, they're not everywhere. And it's enough where I think like, hey, I think these people didn't take the gravity of this seriously. So my goal is not to scare people away from large families, but like, look, this is a great responsibility and blessing from the Lord, right? With each kid, level up, right? Get better, get more productive with the money, better at budgeting, better at vision casting, you know, all these sort of things you have to do.

So that was the motivation as someone who's from large family churches and appreciates and believes it's normative to just check that sort of idealistic. Yeah, so let's talk about that's what I really appreciate it about your articles. You know, you were really not, not just giving thanks for the opportunity of a large family, but the, the responsibility, every opportunity draws responsibility. And that's what I thought was so good. One of the things you mentioned was you have to consider the scale of living that a large family creates.

So what are your thoughts about that? Well, I have three deep freezes, two fridges, four cars. I've got a whole lot of clothing. Laundry is crazy. We're looking at redoing our kitchen and putting in an industrial-sized dishwasher.

It's a lot. Schooling, people say anyone can homeschool. I'm not so sure about that, but I'll tell you this much, is that it's one thing to be a first grade teacher, it's another thing to be a first and a third and a second and a fourth and eleventh grade teacher, right? Like things keep ramping up and the scale that you of responsibility, again, if you're taking this serious and you're growing with each kid through life. But everyone's like, these are unmitigated blessings.

No, no, they're not. If you don't raise your kids up in the Lord, if you're not responsible, you're like the man in Proverbs who didn't take care of his own Vineyard. And this thing that could be this productive blessing of Vineyard, right, something you can hand down to a family, something that grows wealth now is really just a monument to your failure of taking care of it. And it comes with nettles and broken down fences. It's not a good thing, right?

And so scale of living is just the amount of food, the amount of clothing. Like we did cloth diapers for a while because we are like every stupid, crunchy family, right? Where it's like, oh, it'll save us so much money. Well, first off, cloth diapers are disgusting. I don't care what anyone says, they're gross.

It never lasts. It never lasts. Yeah. And then cleaning those things, the amount of time it takes to clean when you have a bunch of kids, it changes. So I just, the scale is, People say it's just the same as, no it's not, it's more responsibility, so step up.

So I just like, this is like finding the vehicle. Think about vehicles, right? Like once you hit six, life changes. Now Airbnb has made travel possible for large families. Cause remember you just have to like negotiate the truth with hotels when you're trying to put kids in rooms and stuff.

But now, you can do Airbnb, but we got this big Conaline 350 15 passenger van I love. We take the back seat out so we can put groceries in there. But even when we travel cross country, which we've done a couple of times, like kids have their feet up on all their clothes and stuff because it's just expensive. If that thing breaks down, to replace it right now, like I'd be lucky if I could do anything as little, I mean, 14, 000, 12, 000, they're expensive. It's expensive.

And you've got to ask, what's the meantime before failure for my washing machine? Because it's going to run 10 hours a day. It does, yeah. Hey, One of the things you said in your article which I thought was helpful was while scale does matter it doesn't all happen at once You don't go from one child to 10. So you do have time, but you have to do something with the time to put things in place for that.

So you need to be thinking proactively about these things. You don't go from an economy-sized car to a minivan to a 15 passenger overnight, but you have to be thinking about that trajectory. Amen. And the same thing is with managing your time as well, because things get so much more complex as children get older. You have to be really good with managing your own time, because that's the time that your family is subjected to.

And a disorderly family is a disaster. We did a podcast on it on an orderly families one time. I say so. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did.

And I got a lot of feedback on that, but orderliness is really important. If you're not an orderly family, you'll pay a price for it. Your kids will pay a price for it So yours your next category was loss of boundaries, what do you mean by that? Yeah, so if you're growing with your children and being thoughtful, this won't be a problem. But I have seen, it could be a lot of people crammed into a little bit of space.

And so one thing that we're very careful about, There's boy spaces and girl spaces and family spaces, right? And we don't want the boys in the girl spaces. So the girls' room is a girl's room. So once the boys get out of like little, you know, Like my son Cyprian really can't go in there anymore. He's like seven or whatever.

But he's like three or four or five, whatever. But that, the girls are changing, especially as my daughter, my oldest daughter is moving in 13 years. We need those spaces to be tight. I won't let my girls walk around in the house like in a modest way or whatever, or my boys do it either. When there's large families, it's really hard to keep eyes on everyone.

And so you have to set these boundaries and enforce them without making it weird I mean, that's the main thing like no, this is what we do you you're in your room You're in your room, but you don't let them cross that stuff because I don't know it's sort of people listen to this podcast But if you've been involved in large families, you know that those boundaries matter because some bad things can happen. People don't have an eye on it. And so that would be some of it. That's the one that I think about most is just making sure the way that people have their own type of space, right? So that's, I think that's what I most...

Yeah, and I found, you know, there are some people in the Christian community, they're very insensitive about matters of nakedness in their family and... So, and naive. Insensitive and naive about it. And we want to just say a hearty amen to what you just said because we've seen the damage and dangers associated with being naive and we want people who watch to just know we cannot afford to be naive in this category. Oh, they're brothers and sisters.

Yeah, you can't be naive about that. What I would say to that also is that you can another boundary that I've seen, especially with little girls, is they can be moved into adulthood premature by being required to take care of their siblings in a way that's inappropriate. Now, everyone in our home pitches in, right? And so it's fine. I love watching my sons and daughters help the little kids and all that but you do have to protect them from that because actually what you see a lot of the second generation out of a large family is that they tend towards a more moderate family and one of the complaints you'll hear from them is how they felt like they're like second mom or second dad and I tell my oldest son I was like look you're a firstborn son privileges come with that responsibilities come with that.

But what our family needs is you to be the son and brother. We don't need a second mom. Okay. And, and with my girls, I protect their childhood, and we'll just go hire a babysitter or something. And so again, there's responsibility, because the problem with these conversations is people don't know how to balance things.

It's like one extreme or the other extreme. And like, obviously you need this shared responsibility, but also protective childhood. Yeah. And I think the Bible makes the order of the family very, very clear. You know, sons and daughters are not parents.

They are sons and daughters and keeping that. I've seen that problem, you know, in different times. And it's difficult. The reason it happens is because of just the scale. It's the scale problem.

Again, how are you going to deal with it? And then parents default to delegating, but they delegate to the wrong people. Some things can't be delegated. You're the parent, you know. So, yeah.

You also talked about physical and mental strain and the things that you were writing I've seen before. Just maybe fill that out a little bit from your perspective. Yeah, so with women, I see it happen a lot. I think basically a woman will get, her whole person gets totally swallowed up with the children in the household where she doesn't have her own hobbies anymore, her own time. And there's this kind That kind of happens to all of us.

I remember Mark Driscoll and he's gone weird ways but he'd always tell people, my hobbies are my kids. I appreciate that at one level. But everyone needs to get away and clear mind a little bit. And like my wife has a garden and we have a farm, right? And I told my wife, this farm just cost me money.

These are the most expensive free eggs and cucumbers. And If I wanted to make more money, it's not selling eggs. I'll go write another book or go speak or something. It's certainly not these eggs. I do this because it makes you happy and this is your happy place and you come and it refreshes you.

So I do that. Also the body going whoop, whoop, whoop. It's just like growing, shrinking. Every kid, like the hard labor can really mess up your back. And I've seen a lot of women have had like anywhere from eight to 10 kids and they just barely can get off the couch because they have a really messed up back.

It's very hard to be a mother. So all this, it's constant. There's so many responsibilities, not enough sleep, whatever. And that takes a strain on people. And you'll look at some of these women from these large homeschool families that are 40 and they look 50.

And I say, look, you're a husband. You know what the word husband means? You're supposed to be caring for this woman and giving her space. So we all like, look, you get, women get stretch marks from having babies. Men, sometimes we get potbellies because we sit around in an office and we can't move around and we eat too much or whatever.

We all like fall out of shape at some level, right? There's a toil that life takes all of the… We hurt our backs. I've got a crooked thumb from different things. You get messed up. But the kids, that's hard on the fear… I remember after Nicaea died and my wife got pregnant, we had Irish twins, she got pregnant with Galilee.

The full nine months, this baby was going to die in her head. The full nine months. When you do stuff like that over and over again It wears on people and so it's like look you need to be very attentive to your wife. Like baby blues is a major deal, like a postpartum depression that happens when women can get a little crazy. And that happens.

It's a normal, it's pretty common in lots of women. So you have to be attentive. You're gonna have all these kids, you gotta protect your wife as well. They need a mom. They don't just need someone to birth them.

They need someone to raise them and have that feminine influence in the household. You know, I, Deborah and I, my wife, we had four children. And my kids have gone out and had a lot more children than we have. My son is going on his ninth child and I sat him down a few years ago and I said, David, you're not going to be able to live the way that I lived. I'm not your own model on a lot of ways.

You're gonna have to be powered up for your wife way more. You're gonna have to have more babysitters. We never had babysitters, okay? You're gonna have to buy babysitters. You're gonna have to be really constrained with your work, you're gonna have to be way more disciplined than I was with my work, blah blah blah.

In other words, you can't live like your dad who had four kids because you've upscaled this thing and I like how you framed this in terms of physical and mental strain. And I'm really grateful for him. I think he's done a really good job, having his own personal boundaries and things like that. He's very disciplined. But I think this is a real, you just have to, hey, we're not throwing shade on big families.

We're just saying, if you got one, you know, you better power up, you know, and really take care of that family. Yeah. Hey, forewarned is forearmed. To know in advance that this is what you're dealing with and that there are real implications when the number of children really starts to mount. You should think through what it means in the different categories And I think that's what you've done is help us think through it in the different categories.

Yeah. Hey, I think that's it, man. I really, really appreciate the wisdom about all this kind of stuff. Do you have any parting, you have a parting shot? We're out of time.

No, make love, make babies, make them into disciples, finish the race, you know, life is a vapor. There you go. Praise the Lord. Good deal. Hey, thanks, man, for joining us.

All right. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and we hope you can be with us next time. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com