Pages

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

What do large families do "in case..." ?

So, my hearts desire is to have a large family one day....maybe 6-8 kids. I wouldn't be unhappy if I ended up with 11!! But Mike says "no, absolutely not" and argues with 6 being too many...well, we already agreed BEFORE we got married to plan for six and then renegotiate to see if we think we can handle more once the first six are here...

So I am a planner and even though we don't have a single child YET, I'd like to know what our plan is if we ever  passed on while the majority of our children are still minors. My parents had 4 children and the plan was for us to either go and live with my (then single, no children) aunt or possibly a family friend who already had many children and would probably be capable of parenting us...however they never PREPARED for that so its a darn good thing nothing ever happened.

So I have thought about this and I know it will likely change over the years as our family grows and as our needs change and as my potential named guardians lives change... All biological parents (grand parents) are out for various reasons. There is a sibling or two between the two of us that I would consider placing my children with, but I know none of those siblings want to parent a lot of children....I want our children to be raised by an active Protestant with similar values. That leaves like one person. I have a dear friend who I would consider, but not sure her husband would ever agree to it...

We plan on taking out substantial life insurance once we have children, "just in case." And I know that nay adoption subsidies we had would be transferred to the other family/person. Also any money/resources we had would be left to that family or a trust for the children or whatever...But Im wondering if its even practical to think 6+ children could all be placed with a single family, So my question, do other large families prepare for this? And if so, HOW? Is there a plan to separate the children, and if so how (biological, birth order or roles played by each child, genders, etc.?) Its very hard for me to consider that it would EVER be beneficial  to separate children, especially after they have gone through a traumatic loss (like their parents dying.) The whole reason I first started WANTING to do foster care was to keep sibling groups together. But I realize there comes a time when whats ideal and whats possible sometimes divorce. :-(

Ultimately, solving this issue is not essential for us to start and keep building our family. I trust that God is in control and he WILL provide answers as they are needed. (Its going to take several years before we have that many kids and if we died when we only had 2 or something there are tons of people I would consider...) So we may meet "the perfect" family one day for that role. And I hope and pray my husband and I will get to parent our children until they are adults (minimally.) But, just because we are "on Gods team" doesn't mean things CANNOT happen to us. I heard a of a Christian family with 12 children where the mother and father passed. Unfortunately they HAD NOT named a guardian or gotten insurance because they were "trusting God." So their children were split up into a number of different homes of relatives/friends some of whom DID NOT share their same beliefs. I think that is sad.

No comments:

Post a Comment