MEGA-FAMILY SYNDROME
Australian Women’s Weekly, September 2014
Having a big family has become the ultimate status symbol. Yet is having a large brood as harmonious as it seems on The Waltons? Ingrid Pyne catches up with four mega families.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICK SCOTT; STYLING BY STAV HORTIS
THERE’S A PECULIAR trend being observed in swanky suburbs across Australia: highly educated, highly paid couples popping out four or more children – cheerfully and by choice. From Sydney’s leafy lower north shore to Perth’s exclusive beachside suburbs, four, five and even six-packs of siblings rule the playgrounds.
Some attribute the postcode phenomenon to the skyrocketing cost of raising a child in Australia today, up 50 per cent in the past seven years to $406,000 for a typical middle-income family, which means only the affluent can afford a large brood. Others claim a big family has become the latest status symbol, proving one can afford not only a mansion and luxury SUV, but also a small fortune in private school fees. Some believe the trend has been driven by celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Heidi Kium, who make a large tribe look glamorous. Yet more blame a generation of overachieving career women who have quit work and transferred all of their competitive energy into breeding.
Whatever the reason, actual data to back up the anecdotal evidence is hard to come by. The number of Australian families with four-plus children has fallen steadily over the past 30 years, from 27.6 per cent of families in 1981 to only 10.1 per cent in 2011, but these figures are nationwide and do not take into account household wealth. The Australian Institute of Family Studies is, howevei planning a study into the procreation rate among the various socio-economic groups, so watch this space. Until then, The Weekly has spoken to four couples about their decision to have a large brood.
THE CAUCHIS
Aaron, 33, Elizabeth, 34, Jessica, 13, Michael and Andrew, 10, Peter, eight, Elizabeth, seven, Mary, five, Joseph, three, Ava, one, and a baby due in mid-September.
IT’S NOT HARD to see the downside to having eight children – and another on the way – when The Weekly chats to Elizabeth Cauchi. The entire family has spent the past week on couches, stricken by influenza. “We have every symptom you can imagine,” croaks Liz. “Fever, achy joints, stomach aches, headaches, vomiting – and that is not fun when you have little ones who can’t aim into a bucket.” Yet even at the depths of her flu funk, Liz insists that falling ill en masse is one of the few drawbacks to her large family. “There is so much love. The kids always have a friend to play with, even when they’re fighting with another sibling, and nobody ever gets bored. It’s busy, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Raising eight children requires military-style planning. The Cauchis have the weekday routine down pat – uniforms are put out and lunches packed, Aaron drops the kids off on his way to work and Liz ferries them to after-school activities – but the weekends are a logistical nightmare.
“Aaron and I get together each Friday night to plan the weekend activities and we say, ‘You go to these birthday parties at these times and I will go to these sporting activities at these times, and we will meet up again in the afternoon.’”
Fortunately, grandparents live within a half-hour drive and are more than happy to pick up or look after a child, or even give Aaron and Liz a night out or a rare weekend away together. “I don’t know which poor unfortunate soul we could ask to babysit if we didn’t have that help,” says Liz.
Despite the financial burden of a weekly grocery bill for 10, the school fees, the mortgage on a large house and the cost of a 14-seater car, Liz and Aaron strive to ensure the children don’t miss out just because they come from a large family. “Fortunately, we have a salary that allows the children to do sport and other activities, but we certainly don’t buy them everything they want because they just don’t need it.” Jessica, the oldest child and only teenager, has her own room, but the four boys share one large room and the three younger girls another. “No one else actually wants their own room,” insists Liz.
Liz says she has learned to shrug off the funny looks and comments when out and about with her brood (“I swear if I hear, ‘Don’t you have a TV?’, one more time, I will scream.”) and instead focuses on her children’s excitement whenever she is expecting. “It’s never, ‘Oh no, Mum, not another one!’” Which is lucky, as she is adamant that number nine won’t be their last.
THE TOMASEVICES
Pedrag, 44, Magdalena, 41, Jovan, 14, Jana, 12, Eva, 10, Sofia, seven, Luka, four and Maksim, 11 months.
PREDRAG TOMASEVIC HAD been dating Magdalena Saicic for only a few weeks, back in 1997, when he first broached the subject of a house chock-full of children. “But when I mentioned it to Magdalena, she said, ‘Let’s just start with one and see how we go’,” he says, laughing.
“I wasn’t against, the idea,” clarifies Magdalena. “But in my mind, I had decided on two children so that I could do both the career and the kid thing. That is the way our generation of women has been programmed.”
Fast-forward 17 years and the Tomasevices have six children, ranging from 11 months to 14 years. Magdalena, a former corporate communications specialist, spends her days in the kitchen cooking, baking and packing school lunchboxes (about four or five hours per day); washing (three eight-kilogram loads a day); grocery shopping (the weekly food bill is $800, which stocks the family’s three fridges and one freezer); ferrying her children to school and their various after-school activities; volunteering as parent helper at the children’s four different schools; caring for baby Maksim; cleaning up; checking homework; counselling; helping to manage Predrag’s GP surgery; and writing a food blog.
Unlike friends with fewer children, the Tomasevices don’t go on annual overseas holidays or eat out regularly, but neither Predrag nor Magdalena see these as major sacrifices. “The real sacrifice has been made by my wife in terms of being happy to leave her career and stay at home and look after the children,” Predrag says. Yet Magdalena, who quit her job just before their third child was born, says the economic productivity of stay-at-home mums, in terms of their children’s education, moral and social development, is underestimated by society.
“If you have the right qualifications, you can always go back to work,” she says. “I have one shot at being a good mother and everything I do influences how our children turn out. It’s a huge responsibility.”
The children also contribute to their siblings’ character development.
“I think being surrounded by so many siblings makes the children far less selfish,” says Magdalena. “That is so important in this age of instant gratification.
“I hope being a part of a large family teaches them tolerance, empathy, caring, patience and an understanding of people’s needs outside their own.”
THE BLACKLEYS
Wayne, 51, Karen, 45, Kara, 14, Hugo, 12, Max, 10, Oscar, eight, and Henri, six.
EACH WEEKDAY AT 2am, Karen Blackley’s alarm sounds and the mother of five hops out of bed to get iady for the day ahead, The children’s school lunches ae prepared, their uniforms laid out, their homework checked and their activity bags packed. Then there is the family admin to tend to – everything from ordering a new basketball uniform to sdrting out school tiretable clashes, from folding washing to getting the night’s dinner prepared – as well as some work for her husband Wayne’s real estate business. “There is a lot of PA-style work that I have to do for my family,” she says.
If the wake-up time sounds brutal, it’s because Karen and Wayne are determined that their children receive the same opportunities as those from smaller families. “I know some big families who limit their children’s activities, but my kids are into everything,” Karen says. “They do acting, singing, cello, piano, debating, athletics, rugby, basketball, surf lifesaving, swimming, you name it.” So most to swimming squad by 5.3Oam,or by 6.3Oam, or band practice by 7.30am. “One of the downsides to having such a big family is that you are constantly on the run. There is not a lot of time to just switch off,” Karen admits. “And it’s very, very expensive, especially with five children at private schools.”
Yet Karen, who for years had her own thriving real estate franchise likens the challenges of running a large family to those of running a successful business – only with higher stakes.
“You ask yourself, ‘How far can I go and how far can I get them to go?’“she says. “But to me, true success is your family. “If you can look around the dinner table and know everyone loves each other, that is success. Money is not success, it is just the tool.”
THE HENSHCAWS
Michael, 42, Fiona, 43, Aneka, 12, Jude, 10, Ciara, nine, Sasha, seven, and Cecily, two.
WHENEVER MICHAEL AND Fiona Henshaw are out with their five children, a stranger inevitably asks, “Oh my goodness, how do you do it? We struggle with two.” Yet Michael insists that he and Fiona aren’t superhuman.
“Most parents give 100 per cent,” he says. “The difference is our 100 per cent is spread over five children rather than two, so I totally understand that parents of two children would feel equally exhausted.” In tact, Mike thinks parents of large broods may even get more “free time” together because their children have an in-built group of friends within the family. “It’s easier to say, ‘Right, kids, off you go and play, we are going to have some Mum and Dad time.’”
Before having children, Fiona imagined they would have three, even as Mike insisted he wanted a “small football team”. Yet after their fourth child was born, Mike took her out for a slap-up dinner, presented her with an eternity ring, thanked her for his beautiful children and said, “We’re done, right? We are done?” It was Fiona who yearned for one more and spent the next four years persuading him to have a fifth. “So he got his small football team in the end, but they are nearly all girls,” she says, laughing.
The Henshaws, who moved to Sydney from London 13 years ago, say the best thing about having five children is watching the various sibling interactions and the sense of family that a large brood inevitably creates. They make sure to keep their Sundays free of any activities or birthday parties to maximise family time.
By far the biggest downside is the huge cost of raising five children in Sydney. “You want to go out for breakfast, that’s $120 to $150,” Mike says. “You want to go on holiday, that’s seven seats on an airplane and three hotel rooms.”
Fiona agrees. “When they were little, everyone said it would be so expensive and we didn’t really feel like it was,” she says. “But now when we go out, nobody wants the kiddie meals, they now all want the ‘vongole’. And we aren’t even bearing the brunt of private school fees yet.”
Linked from Overpopulation