Raising a Large Family: A Book Review

When you have a newborn, you sometimes wonder when you will get to shower on a regular basis again. Then that newborn becomes a toddler, the sheer intensity eases up a little, and you start to consider whether you want to add another child to your family. At some point you take the plunge and you make the transition from one to two children. Eventually you find that you’re surviving and occasionally even thriving with two. Are you crazy to consider a third? A fourth? Mary Ostyn’s A Sane Women’s Guide to Raising a Large Family helps parents think through the decision to expand the family and offers helpful tips on how to make it work both financially and emotionally.

Mary shares her wisdom and wit in this practical and accessible book. Through her experience raising her ten children and through stories culled from other mothers of many, Mary demonstrates how a large family can be rewarding for the parents and satisfying for the entire family.

I have long enjoyed reading Mary’s blog Owlhaven.net. Mary breastfed and pumped for her four biological children and practices attachment parenting with all of her ten children including the six she and her husband John adopted from Korea and Ethiopia. Even though I do not share Mary’s religious convictions, I appreciate her openness and the way she conducts herself as a mother. I have learned many things about attachment parenting older children from her examples. I also like how she freely admits that maintaining patience is a daily struggle. Her approachable and generous style of writing means that even as I filed away ideas from her book, I felt reassured that I, too, could maintain sanity and happiness in raising a large family.

(Note: Mary also has a cookbook coming out this September. Family Feasts for $75 a Week is available for pre-order on Amazon.com now!)