I don’t think most women wanted to be pregnant back to back like that then.

My grandmother had 16 children. It destroyed her.

They needed workers. Not pictured is the shallow grave out back for the 4 that got the rickets

The food bill for those kids today would be pretty close to the median gross income in USA.

I had the fortunate experience of growing up with great-grandparents living, as well as some of their siblings. I got to hear first-hand experiences from 3 generations of women (mother, grandmothers, and two great-grandmothers plus various aunts sprinkled in). It was invaluable for me. Knowing their life stories and the truth of what they endured has helped me navigate life in so many ways.

It also has been incredible armor against the flood of misplaced nostalgia and outright manipulation of history that seems so prevelant. My great-grandmother was born in 1908 and died in 2002. She left her abusive husband in the 1930s and raised her kids as a single mom in a time when it was exponentially more difficult to do so. Glad she got out when she did with 4 instead of 14...

If you teach women about their bodies and give them the choice, they will have fewer children.

Before modern medicine, often people would have a ton of kids because they would frequently die.

God that poor woman. That's so many kids.

Being fair to women back then, most of them didn't know how sex and babies worked, lacked any sort of formal education besides knowing how to read and write, and were raised that disagreeing with your husband or saying no to him in the bedroom was how to wind up an old spinster, the worst fate for any woman.

"Honey, if I knew what was causing it, I would never have had more than two."

-My great grandma, mother of 12

That's what happens when a wife is not allowed to say no and birth control doesn't exist. Could also represent having sex only 15 times over 16 years and getting pregnant every time. My grandmother swore all my grandfather needed to do was look at her and she was pregnant yet again.

How many of those old kids were acting as parents because the folks were too busy fucking?

They didn't think about it they just did it.

I love being childless.

That’s like 2 decades of pushing out kids.

I came from a big family like that. My mother had 13 children and 11 of us survived long enough to get married and start our own families. Lost one sister to fibroids and another to gang violence.

Grandma wasn’t thinking about sex, she was having it.

To be fair, I don't think grandma pumped out 252 children because she enjoyed the sex.

My dad is 70 and he was the youngest of 14 kids…

Grandma, you know better. Everyone was just as horny and kinky back then as they are today. You're STILL horny and kinky Grandma!