The joy of six Reality of raising a big brood
As Jamie Oliver says his wife ‘hasn’t ruled out’ having a sixth child, Anna Maxted discovers what life is like in a supersized family
When chef Jamie Oliver, father of five, was interviewed by The Daily Telegraph
yesterday, he didn’t quite rule out the idea of a sixth bun in the oven. “Jools would love me to say ‘never say never’,” he said, coyly.
While the average British family may be shrinking in size – ONS figures show the number of only children grew by almost 12per cent between 2003 and 2013 – there seems to be a certain breed bucking the trend, who don’t stop popping out dimplecheeked babies until they’ve produced half a dozen.
Who are these people? Are they mad, super-human or merely possessed of multiple nannies and oodles of cash? Jacob Rees-mogg, Conservative MP, proud handsoff dad-of-six, barely counts as it’s hard to admire a parent who boasts of never having changed a nappy. (Also, the family nanny has been in service for 50 years.) Meanwhile, I have three boys, aged 15, 12 and 10, no staff, and frequently feel overwhelmed. I cannot conceive how one copes with double that number of offspring.
“You don’t always cope,” says Jo Brazier, 54, mother of Edith, 18, Agnes, 14, Constance, 13, Gwendolyn, 11, Katharine, nine, and John, seven. “You’re always up against it with six children.” Sometimes, she says, the laundry pile is such that “only a mountain goat could negotiate it”.
Jo, former foreign editor at Sky News and married to Sky News presenter Colin, adds: “You resign yourself to the fact that you’re never going to live in a show-house.” As we speak, she cheerfully identifies a mystery item on the floor as a piece of banana.
Why six, I ask Colin, 49, aware I’m stuttering in bafflement, which is possibly rude. He says their large family was a considered choice for three reasons: “Catholic dogma – we’re Catholic. Timing – my wife had one, we struggled to have any more, then you end up with a mindset that pregnancy is good, and we got carried away. And anthropology
– you see this Petri dish of siblingship in front of you, it becomes the central reality of your life, and you start to develop theories as to why siblings may or may not be good for each other.”
Colin, to state the obvious, believes there are benefits to having siblings, and has researched and written about the claims, citing studies that children with brothers and sisters are fitter, less obese and less allergy prone. “Your three boys will knock the corners off each other by abrasive contact,” he tells me, ”and they will develop soft skills and emotional capital through that abrasive contact.”
Indeed, though my sons’ treatment of each other can get a bit Lord of the Flies, all are sensitive and compassionate to other people. In the Brazier family, “there are frequent points of conflict, but they all seem relatively well-adjusted”. They’ve made each other more emotionally resilient. As for the logistics for getting six children out of the house in the morning, I assume Colin and Jo have perfected an advanced strategy? “By nagging, and chivvying, and bribing,” says Colin. “That doesn’t change.” But when asked how one effectively parents half a dozen kids, he says firmly: “A non-working spouse.”
Jo quit her career to look after the children full-time. A cleaner two hours a week prevents “public areas”
from becoming “totally squalid” (the master bedroom and en suite remain “mortifying”), but, she says: “There are eight people who drop things on the floor, but really only one and a half people who pick them up. That’s me, and my husband when he’s here.”
Happily, she adds: “As the children get older, they do more for themselves, and for the younger ones. They’re hugely independent. My little boy is only seven but if he goes away for the weekend, he does his own packing.”
I wonder whether the sheer impossibility of helicoptering six promotes self-sufficiency. “I absolutely think that’s true,” says Jo (who has a chilled air but, clearly, impressive organisational powers). “If I’d stuck with two children, I might have been a tiger mother. Because there’s six of them, I can’t police them all the time.
“They have riding lessons, a couple play the piano. But they do run a little freer and wilder, because there are so many of them. Certain things you cannot do unless you’ve got help.”
The children have a more old-fashioned childhood, she says, and it’s a “robust upbringing. They’re not careful of each others’ feelings.” She looks out of the window: “They’re in the field. They’re supposed to be putting a hen coop together, but I can see that numbers four, five and six are out there practising their bowling. Number three, who’s supposed to be cleaning the kitchen, has just disappeared without trace.”
Recently, Ann Buchanan, professor of social work at the University of Oxford, noted that there was anecdotal evidence to suggest that the “one per cent” of richest women in Britain are having large numbers of children as a way of displaying their wealth – for instance, Victoria Beckham, mother of four, and Helena Morrissey, chair of City firm Newton Investment Management, a mother of nine.
But families such as the Braziers aren’t dripping with wealth – while the fact that Jo doesn’t work necessitates a certain level of income, they’ve made lifestyle sacrifices along the way.
Colin says: “We’ve foregone quite a lot. It’s a battered car, it’s no holidays.” Jo adds: “We don’t have the sort of money to hire a villa for two weeks. The kids say, ‘Are we going to do anything this summer?’ I say, ‘I might take you to the beach if it stops raining.’” What strikes me is their confidence in their values and choices, and a lack of fuss about superficialities.
Alison Hanlon, 43, an occupational physician, and her husband, Tim, 45, chief pharmacist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, are parents to Ned, 12, Bea, nine, Kit, seven, Posy, six, Mary, five, and Clemmie, 11 weeks. Although they are “quite lucky, in that we’ve both been in well-paid jobs” – and Alison notes there are economies of scale when you’ve already got the buggy, the car seat and the hand-me-down clothes – she agrees that there are certain treats that they simply have to forgo.
“The girls are particularly keen to go to Peppa Pig World, but it would cost us about £250 just to get in for the day. We look for things that are cheaper or free. We don’t eat out very often as it would cost over £100. We’re really good at picnics.”
Particularly challenging moments as a parent-of-six include “when a norovirus sweeps the house,” says Alison. “One child in the high chair throwing porridge around the kitchen. One child on the sofa being sick into a bucket. Another on the toilet.” They have a nanny and an au pair, though Alison is presently on holiday in France, alone with the children. As there’s no online food delivery services, she has the supermarket shop – with her brood – down to a fine art.
“I start mobilising them 20 minutes before I want to leave, so they can all be dressed with suitable footwear.” Getting the children into the people carrier is accomplished via a militarystyle routine: “They all have the place where they sit.
“I always ask Bea, the eldest girl, to do up Mary’s seat belt, while I put the baby in. If you give them jobs, it helps: Ned’s in charge of getting the trolley; Bea likes to push Clemmie in the buggy.”
I’m humbled to speechlessness by her superior standards of organisation, but she promises me that the adjustment from “two to three was definitely the hardest, so if you had more than three, you wouldn’t notice them – they just follow the routine. They amuse themselves and when you’ve got more they can split into groups. They’re definitely less selfish because they’re looking out for their siblings and working out how they fit into that group.”
Crucially, neither the Hanlons’ nor Braziers’ marriages seems subsumed by the kids. “We have a very strong relationship, Colin and I,” says Jo. Some women, she notes, transfer their affection to the children but, “because there are so many of them, that’s not really happened to me. My primary relationship is still with Colin. His and my relationship is the central relationship of the family.”
And while life with six children is chaos, she reassures me: “Most of the time, it’s quite good fun.”
Colin adds: “At times you feel completely hollowed out, but then there’ll be transcendent moments when you see them all together, getting on brilliantly, wisecracking across the dining room table, and you think – this is absolutely worth it.”
‘At times you feel hollowed out, but there’ll be moments when you think this is worth it’