THE JOY (COST & CHAOS) OF SIX!
As Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has a sixth baby, other parents who know what’s in store say congratulations . . . and good luck
When Tory MP Jacob ReesMogg recently welcomed a sixth child to his brood with wife helena, he joked that his large family was ‘jolly hard work’ for the nanny.
having such a large family is also jolly expensive, and not something many could contemplate.
here, LAUREN LIBBERT meets the lucky, privileged — and very frazzled — parents who, like the Rees-Moggs, know the joy of six.
My favourite time of day is when the children pile in from school and the house is filled with laughter, chat and chaos.
I don’t believe in giving them chores — I just want them to enjoy their childhood and to have happy times. It does mean they seem to think it’s magic that their dirty clothes get picked up, cleaned and returned to their wardrobes.
The laundry is the worst part of having six children — there’s just so much of it. Together, Simon and I probably make between £90,000 and £100,000 a year, but we haven’t had help since Albany was born. Being self-employed means we can be at home every day.
We live in a big, six-bedroom, four-bathroom house and have three lounges — one of them is the ‘PlayStation room’, so the kids often eat on their laps in there.
There’s never enough food in the house, so I go shopping most days at 7am —– I’m back in the house by 7.30am — and buy enough for dinner each day. I probably spend at least £250 a week.
As for clothes and shoes, I spend around £150 a month, although that can jump up by £100 if the boys need new trainers.
Most days, after school, Saxon will shout: ‘I’m taking the dog to the park. Anyone coming?’
I’ll hear a clatter of footsteps and they’re all out the door.
Simon’s brilliant at arts and crafts, and the kitchen table is always full of pots, paints and glitter or half-completed jigsaws. I don’t mind the mess, as long as they’re having fun.
Simon and I haven’t been away together just the two of us since the children were born and, because I’ve often had one child or another co- sleeping in my bed, we haven’t shared a bed for years, either.
But a marriage isn’t all about sharing a bed, and we have a full, working marriage in every department. We don’t go on date nights, but we go out for lunch once a week while the kids are at school and often walk the dogs and go to the supermarket together. We have a holiday home in Cyprus and all go there every summer for a month. It’s the highlight of my year. eight flights are expensive, though, so we book well in advance — we end up spending about £8,000 a year on average.
We have a £1,800 Fiat Panda as a runaround and an LDV Maxus 17- seater minibus, which we bought for £3,500 on eBay.
Simon and I get comments and people often say: ‘Don’t you have a TV?’ when counting up the children. I always reply: ‘Yes, we have several, but we have a great sex life as well, thanks.’ That shuts them up. SIMON SAYS: With six children, there’s always something to do, a face to wipe, a toy to find.
I would have liked more, even, but I’m not the one who has to carry them and give birth, so I’m happy to defer to Amanda when she says it’s time to stop. But if she did get pregnant again, I don’t think anyone would even blink — we’ve got a child in almost every year at school, so we’re pretty unusual as it is. But I think I’ll have to wait for the grandchildren to have the baby stage again.
REBECCA SAYS: ‘We never really discussed how many children we were going to have — we just went one by one. We manage by being careful with what we spend. We pay out about £120 a week on food and stock up two or three times on bread, milk, fruit and veg. We keep the costs down by making all our meals from scratch.
having a large family doesn’t mean missing out on doing things — you just have to be a bit more inventive. We have a nine-seater Ford Transit Tourneo, which we call The Fun Bus. It’s taken us on lots of road-trip adventures.
As for holidays, we’ve become quite expert at finding a bargain. We discovered eurocamp in France in 2015 and loved it there — it’s full of kids, so no one seemed bothered by the noise of our six, and the kids could swim and play badminton. Shaun and I didn’t have to vacuum, cook or tidy up once, which was bliss.
We try to give each child individual attention and will stagger their bedtimes, so Shaun and I can read them a bedtime story each. At night, the older two
will sometimes watch a bit of TV with us and we’ll chat. Shaun and I haven’t been out since Milo was born, but that’s fine — we love being with our kids.
We live in a five-bedroom house and only Poppy has her own room, but we have a large playroom where they can all play together and keep most of their toys.
The children help around the house in return for pocket money — their age in pounds per month.
I love seeing all the children together and it comforts me to think that, after we’ve gone, they’ll always have each other.
SHAUN SAYS: Having so many children comes at a cost, and I do sometimes feel under pressure to make sure the bills are paid.
It’s my job to take the boys to football practice. I do love watching them — it makes me feel so proud. The best thing about being a father of six is watching them interact together. They really are each other’s best friends.
NICHOLA SAYS: My first three children were all so good that John and I kept saying: ‘Oh, let’s have another one,’ until we had six. My work has always been flexible — I’ve been able to work within school hours and often from home — which is a relief because we need two incomes to earn enough to manage.
We are constantly on the go and sometimes function on very little sleep.
We tried live-in help with the first three children, but have had none since — not even a cleaner.
The costs of having six children are quite hefty: we spend around £200 a week on food, £200 a month on clothes and shoes and about £20,000 a year on holidays, sometimes taking the car on the ferry to France or going to Israel, Spain or Cyprus.
I start my day at 5.30am by going for a run or walking the dog for two miles — it’s great to clear the head — then I do breakfast.
The older ones are good at helping the younger ones. That’s the thing about having a big family with children close in age — they’re great friends and playmates, which reduces the need for playdates with other kids.
We live in a five-bedroom house, so it’s two to a room, with one room for an office. But we’re just about to extend, so the older ones can have their own space.
We drive a £30,000 nine- seater VW Transporter, which, with so many of us, is much-needed.
Now that Charlotte is of babysitting age, John and I will try to go out once a week to dinner or for a drink in the local pub.
The house is never spotless, but my children are expected to clean up after themselves. They have chores to do, such as helping to load and unload the dishwasher, and the older ones will also help the younger children with their homework.
There are times when they’re all trying to talk to me at the same time and my stock phrase is: ‘One at a time!’ I do worry they may be attention-deprived.
JOHN SAYS: I love that there’s always so much going on. The kids have such different characters and, at dinner times, there are always plenty of stories told.
When friends come to the house, they say it’s like a nursery with so many children running around, and noise and laughter.
But it’s a house filled with love and fun — and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
JULIANNE SAYS: We didn’t plan to have six children. Four was more what we wanted, but then the fifth took us by surprise — and our sixth was an absolute shock!
Jamie and I both work full-time and we have a household income in the region of £150,000. The five who go to school are all privately educated at a cost of £30,000 a year — that’s half the usual amount, as they’re at the school where I work.
The opportunities to do extracurricular activities such as music, dance and swimming during the week means the weekends are simply ours to enjoy, and we’re not ferrying children from one activity to another.
Their uniforms are a huge expense and we can spend about £2,000 a year getting everything they need — although we do pass things down from child to child.
From Tuesday to Friday, we’re lucky enough to have a live-in nanny, whom we pay £12,000 a year. We’re crammed in a bit in our current four-bedroom house — we have three children in one room, three in the other, all on bunkbeds, so it looks like a dormitory. Then we have a room for the nanny and one for us.
Jamie will plan the weekly menu every Sunday and we’ll always cook double the quantities, so we can eat one and freeze one.
We spend about £170 a week and go through so much milk — more than 16 litres a week — that it would probably be cheaper to buy our own cow!
Everyone assumes with so many children, it’s going to be bedlam, but I’m a primary school teacher and I’m not going to let my children run amok.
They all have chores and, when they come home from school, they have a snack, hang up their uniforms and do their homework. Then we wait for Jamie to come home and have dinner. In the mornings, everyone apart from Bertie gets themselves dressed, and I’ll often ask the older ones to help make breakfast. Everyone mucks in.
There will be the occasional tiff when the children are playing together, but on the whole, they’re all fantastic friends.
Of course, having six children means we have different family cars from most. We have a £38,000 nine-seater Mercedes as the family car and a second seven- seater BMW, which cost £25,000, for the nanny. This gives us flexibility.
Holidays, too, have to be carefully thought about. We probably spend about £25,000 a year on them, but I book them at least a year in advance, so I can get the best deals.
We’ve been to Thailand, Florida, New York, Spain and I’ve just booked for us to go skiing next year. I’ll start packing a week before and will lay out six rows of everything on a spare bed, so I don’t miss anyone out.
There are downsides, too, to having six children. When one gets ill, they all get ill and Jamie and I sometimes feel like we’re on a never-ending hamster wheel.
There are days when we don’t even have a conversation until 10pm after everything is done.
We go on a date night once a week and on holiday alone once a year. Our parents are happy to babysit — but we still end up talking about the kids!
JAMIE SAYS: When you have this many children, you do make sacrifices. But I’m fortunate that my business is successful and we can manage financially.
It can be hard to get time with Julianne, but when the nanny stays over, we sometimes walk the dog together at 10.30pm, which gives us time to catch up.
I’m definitely quite strict with the kids, and Julianne often threatens them with: ‘ I’ll tell Daddy’. Having so many children means you need to be strict — or it would be chaos.