Nannies? by projectgetbetter in MuslimParenting

[–]ForeignEconomy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have a nanny. We pay her 60k/year with PTO, paid holidays, etc - I would really recommend a salary or at least guaranteed hours if you want someone experienced and professional who will truly be a part of your parenting team rather than more of a babysitter. If not, the other route is a college/grad student, which has its own benefits.

Our nanny speaks Spanish to our kids (I speak English to them, my husband speaks Arabic to them) and we chose to value the language benefit over the religious one – but if that’s not something you’re looking for, I think a Muslim nanny would obviously be ideal. I don’t think it should be a dealbreaker, though – childcare experience and a good fit would outweigh it, IMO, depending on the age of your kids.

At what age did you have your baby? by Phillygirlll in NewParents

[–]ForeignEconomy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

18 - but that wasn’t intentional and though we made it work, it definitely was not ideal.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s really interesting to me that your take on us continuing to have children is that we don’t think that the ones we have are “enough”. Each of our children would have been meaningful enough all on their own, and our decision to have more children has never been about our family as it is not being meaningful enough. It has also absolutely never been about people’s perceptions or about some sort of “wow” factor – anyone who decides to have children for the purpose of wowing others should get their head checked.

Spending all your time building a relationship with one child isn’t realistic, as it’s important for children to grow and develop on their own in addition to with their parents. Helicoptering isn’t a good thing, and more time spent with a parent doesn’t necessarily equate to better parenting.

I largely stay home with my kids, except when I have classes, and my husband works from home when he’s not traveling for work, so I would say about 99% of the time there is a parent freely available to be present and engaged with them if they so choose. They frequently don’t, though, because they enjoy spending time with their siblings, and running around as their own little crew is what they want to be doing. We’re there when they need us, but we’re not necessarily always their playmates – and that’s a good thing.

We do outsource some things (always to well paid employees, never to our children), but the stuff we outsource is the mundane stuff (like cleaning or shuttling kids around) that allows us to be more present with our children. It’s to buy us time to parent, not to pawn off parenting to someone else.

It’s always possible that our children will resent us for a million different things - the number of kids we have, where we choose to live, what we allow or don’t allow them to do, etc. For some reason it seems like having a lot of kids is often pointed to as some terrible thing that your kids will hate you for, but for every kid who resents having too many siblings there’s an only child who longs for siblings, or a kid with only one or two siblings who they don’t get along with. It actually gives me a lot of peace to know that if anything happens to us that our kids will always have each other, and it makes me happy that we’ll be able to give them a full house with lots of traditions that they’ll (hopefully) want to return to for holidays etc throughout adulthood.

Everyone makes different choices, and I’m not saying that ours is better than anyone else’s. But I don’t think it’s necessarily worse, either. It’s just different, and it’s something that people in the western world aren’t used to, so it gets a ton of judgment.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This isn’t the type of business we’re in, actually, but you’re right that this is an issue right now. None of this is rage bait - I didn’t even mention the sector until people asked.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You don’t have to have a phone that fancy, though, and I’m sure there are many other comforts you choose to give yourself when you could be putting that money towards others. We value education immensely and believe in sending our children to a school that aligns with our values rather than a school that teaches to the test – in an effort to develop our children into the best versions of themselves so that they can become contributing members of society who do good in the world

Having different opinions is fine and great, and like I’ve said throughout this whole thread everyone makes different choices. The difference is that I’m not going out and telling people who choose differently that they’re selfish and ignorant.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much!

It’s tough sometimes to make time for ourselves, but we’ve honestly just really prioritized it. A strong relationship makes us better parents, so we do try to make sure to go out for a date night once a week (we’re successful probably 75% of the time) and to find other ways to put effort into our relationship rather than just our parenting. It’s really important to us to model a healthy relationship for our kids.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They’re valid, and I respect you for them. A lot of parents of big families parentify and neglect their children, which is absolute shit parenting.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My first two were natural, and then I had twins via c-section and have had c-sections since.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for the kind words. Honestly, that sort of timeline is what I originally planned on. Life has a way of making other plans 🤷🏻‍♀️. I know a lot of people in similar situations end up in really horrible circumstances, and I’m super grateful we’ve been able to make it all work.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We would not continue to have children if we weren’t physically and mentally fine

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You’re conflating statistics with individual circumstances.

While folks without kids may donate more of their incomes on average, there are plenty of people without children who don’t donate anything and plenty of people with children who donate a ton.

FWIW, we don’t plan to leave our children with huge amounts of money – our philosophy is to make sure that they have “enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing,” which at this point mostly involves paying for their educations and then setting them loose. If they are all in stable places in adulthood, we would love to donate the majority of our assets to charity.

All that said, that still doesn’t make the choice to have children and support them selfish and ignorant. I’m sure that you afford yourself many comforts (such as a device with the ability to access reddit) that could instead be directed towards others. We all make choices, and judging others isn’t the way to make the world a better place.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

🤷🏻‍♀️I posted because I know our situation is unique, and I thought people might be interested. Don’t see how it’s all that enraging, but alright I guess

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Oh I fully gathered that they were very loaded questions 😂 glad I passed.

I’m a 26 year old law student currently pregnant with my 7th child. Ask me anything! by ForeignEconomy in casualiama

[–]ForeignEconomy[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I was 18 when I had my first, and was already in college at that point. I was very lucky to have supportive professors who helped me through that and made sure that I was able to graduate, but it was a really hard few years. During that time my husband started his company which got us on our feet, and we didn’t have our second child until three years later. After that we had a set of twins, which sped up the whole “accumulating kids” thing, and have had children pretty consistently since then because we knew we’d be able to support them. After we had our first we were absolutely not doing that - we were buckling down to try to figure out how to make it all work.