The Undersung Advantages of Growing Up in a Big Family
Or: my childhood as the only unmusical member of a traveling family choir.
Hello everyone,
I’m just popping in to say that I’ve got an essay up today in The Atlantic (that’s a gift link, so no need for a subscription). It is an attempt to make sense of some research suggesting that I am worse off for having grown up with a lot of siblings (I am one of five, which, as I note in the piece, was actually on the smaller side in the very traditional Catholic circles in which my family ran). There are nuances to the research, but in general, I don’t dispute it. The more kids you have, the thinner your resources are spread, which tends to manifest in worse educational outcomes (among other things). There is also some countervailing evidence suggesting that there are benefits to big family life. But in this piece, I try to explain why I feel so attached to my many siblings, even though I think it plausible that I could have gone further in my education and career were they not to exist.
To illustrate this, I focus on the weird joy I derive from being the only unmusical person in a very—very—musical family. I spent a huge chunk of my childhood singing with my siblings in a literal traveling family choir. We ended up cutting a lot of these details out of the piece, but we called ourselves The Battlefield Angels, after the Civil War nurses who tended to wounded soldiers regardless of which side they were on, and we sang for pretty much anyone who’d listen. I don’t think we were destined for stardom or anything, but we were at least good enough that, for a couple of years in the early 2000s, the city of Fredericksburg hired us to carol along the streets of its historic downtown area during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Our local paper, The Freelance Star, even did a little feature on us (see pictures).
Even when we weren’t performing for pay, we were always singing somewhere for some reason, often with other members of our sprawling extended family, and particularly during the holidays: we sang for the elderly at the nursing home near our house, for the poor gathered for Mass at the Missionaries of Charity in D.C. on Christmas or Easter, or just for family friends scattered throughout the neighborhoods of Manassas on Christmas Eve. To this day, family reunions are mostly an excuse to get together and sing.
All of this is a little strange and funny for me because, well, I’m not that good at singing. I just never took to music the way my siblings did. There is no world in which I would have pursued music on the basis of my own talent or passion. And yet, singing with my family is probably the aspect of my life I cherish most. Anyway, I am really proud of how the essay turned out—so do give it a read and let me know what you think.
Edit: After an onslaught of requests (literally one), I decided to share a few singing clips, two of which are from the video that I mention at the opening of my essay. The first is my Grandpa’s arrangement of Hey Ho, Anybody Home and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. Mostly sharing this one because you can see that I mess in the early part, as was my tendency (also it’s a beautiful arrangement, even moreso when it’s well-executed). The second is a carol that my Grandpa wrote. It’s called In Freezing Winter’s Night and it’s set to a poem by Robert Southwell. The last video is a more recent-ish (2016, I think?) clip of my siblings and me singing Carol of the Bells with a bunch of our maternal aunts, uncles, and cousins—just to give you an impression of what our family reunions are like.
We have six children. Ages 16 to 26. After our second child, every time I was pregnant at least one person would ask me how were we going to pay for college?
It’s a sad commentary on our society that many people view the addition of a child to a family only through an economic lens. My husband has one brother. I have two brothers. I see many advantages of having five siblings. They’re in interpersonal skills seem to be ahead of their peers. They’re good at sharing. They are all different, so the family’s been exposed to all kinds of interests / passions / friends over the years. They have high executive function skills. (Far beyond my peer’s children). We had less margin of error for kids to be unorganized, so they learned early to get their act together. (I also used to be an executive coach so I trained them :-) They always have someone to do something with. They have lots of fun together. They are a party wherever they go. One of my friends has nine children. And she once said she didn’t know how people with only one or two children taught virtue. There are many opportunities in a large family to learn virtue. It’s built in.
BTW Our three college students have or will graduate school without debt. All three went to their school of choice. And they all received substantial merit scholarships. Another son is in the military. The younger two are still at home will likely also have no debt when they graduate college.
Great work on this article! I also grew up with 7 musical siblings, performing all over throughout childhood, and we also still sing every time we’re together. There wasn’t much money for college, but I’d much rather have my younger siblings around. I am grateful for the work ethic I gained from putting myself through college, actually, which has proved even more useful than my two degrees from Carnegie Mellon. I think that giving your children siblings is a precious gift, especially when they can share a joyful, common activity like music. By the way, I would love to hear more about your musical family! Your great-grandfather likely performed with a conductor I just wrote an article on over at my Substack, The Musical Father.