Cheaper By the Dozen and Other Myths

by Rose Wade-Schambach

Sooner or later, the question always comes up: how many children do you and your husband have? When asked, I love to see the reactions we get. We have an even dozen between us: six from my husband’s previous marriage and six from mine. The ages of our brood are as follows: 29, 28, two 27s, 24, 20, 19, 17, 16, two 14s, and a 9 year old bringing up the rear to make a total of seven girls and five boys.

When John and I married five years ago, eight of the children were under age eighteen. Since then, three more have left us to go off to college or out on their own, slimming our family down to somewhat normal proportions.

Things are getting simpler now, but the early days weren’t for the faint-hearted. There were constant messes to clean up, mountains of laundry to deal with, and numerous crises to solve. There were times when it would have been helpful if we had a full-time chauffeur, cook, housekeeper, time manager, and loads of money. But instead, my husband and I simply rolled up our sleeves and did the best we could. Sometimes, things went well, and sometimes they didn’t.

In those early days together as a blended family, we had a lot of adjusting to do. Those adjustments included going on some “creative” family vacations and logging frequent-visitor points at the local ER for the most cases of strep throat, fevers of unknown origins, stomach viruses, and broken bones. That was just the beginning of the onslaught to our pocketbooks that blew the “cheaper by the dozen” theory out of the water. Because of our children’s propensity toward crooked teeth, our orthodontist probably has a new boat dedicated to our family! And because of their healthy appetites, plus half of the neighborhood kids that hung out at our house, all the employees at the grocery store down the street still know us on a first name basis!

Then there were the sleepless nights. Many nights the kids were lined up outside our bedroom door for “counseling” sessions as they learned to cope in a step-family and to maneuver the tough waters of adolescence. Other nights we waited up for teens to come home from dates, and worried about the new drivers in the household who always seemed to push their curfew to the limit. Then came the hordes of teens who spent the night constantly. There were times when we would wake up on a Saturday or Sunday morning to find the floor of our den lined up with guys who had stayed over. Some even left a toothbrush at our house especially for those occasions. We always tried to keep an open-door policy to the children’s friends for two reasons: so we would always know where our kids were, and we figured that if we were good to other people’s children, then somewhere along the line someone would be good to ours. Since the beginning of our lives together, we have had three young people live with us for extended periods of time until they could find direction for their lives. They stayed from a few months to two years, and each left an empty space in our hearts when they left.

Those were the difficult times, but raising a large family has had plenty of merits, too. I’ve seen the children rally together in emergencies in ways that I never thought possible. I’ve seen them stick up for each other in unexpected moments, and become best friends. I’ve seen holidays so filled with joy that I had to choke back the tears. Besides that, we have never been without excitement for any length of time, and having to throw out leftovers in the refrigerator has never been a problem for us.

Before we met, my husband and I never “planned” to have such a large family, but sometimes life goes in some unexpected directions. When I count up the blessings and the laughter we have received these five years, there’s not a thing I would change. Except maybe the leaving part.

Rose Wade-Schambach is a college instructor, inspirational speaker, and mother of six children and step-mother to six more for a total of twelve! She resides in Marietta, GA with the love of her life, her husband John, and "the tribe". She is currently writing a nonfiction Christian book called "Soul Survivors".