By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in The Australian Jewish News

26 June 2026

I recently turned 34 and on the morning of my birthday I did not have a luxurious sleep in, and I definitely didn’t get to chill while I drank my coffee. Instead, my five kids under the age of eight had me up at 5am like they always do. On the morning of my birthday, our house was loud, slightly feral, and busy as always.

When I was younger, I always imagined having a big family, and when we got married more than ten years ago, my husband and I made a very deliberate decision to build one. We are the same age, we both work full time in professional jobs, and we are raising our large family without family money or intergenerational wealth (ha! I wish!). To say we have bucked the trend of our fellow millennials is probably an understatement.

So why did we do it? In an age where large families have become increasingly unusual, why would we choose to have so many gorgeous, exhausting, funny, messy, glorious children?

Partly because I think raising children, and raising them well, is one of the most meaningful ways to spend a life. But also, I think there is something about a big family that you just cannot really replicate anywhere else.

When there are five children in a house, the idea that the world revolves around you evaporates pretty quickly. Kids from large families learn to wait and think about other people’s needs. Our kids take turns with everything, whether it is who gets the first cuddle before bed or who goes first in a family board game of Settlers of Catan. My kids know that we have to think about others. Sometimes that means sharing your favourite toy with your younger sibling or helping a baby sibling get the last sticky licks of an ice cream.

A lot of modern writing about parenthood frames children almost entirely as a burden. Once you have kids, apparently your social life disappears, your marriage suffers, your freedom evaporates and your identity dissolves into an endless pile of laundry. And while parts of parenting are undeniably exhausting, I actually enjoy my children and I like spending time with them. I think they are funny, thoughtful little people with interesting observations about the world.

That is not to say my children are tiny angels floating serenely through life. Absolutely not. Our house is often noisy, messy and sometimes even bordering on complete chaos.

But underneath all of that there is also a strong sense that we look out for each other, and that everybody has a role in helping the family function. Big families are also oodles of fun. There is always somebody to play with, somebody to rope into a dress up game or somebody to convince mum and dad that pizza for dinner on a random Wednesday evening is a completely reasonable idea.

In a big family there is movement and noise and somebody always talking over somebody else. Dinner usually involves three conversations happening simultaneously, one child telling an incredibly detailed story that could have been summarised in two sentences, another interrupting to announce something wildly urgent that absolutely could have waited, and my husband and I repeatedly failing to finish a sentence to each other. Sure, our family spends huge amounts of time doing the usual chores like school pickups, kinder drop offs, afterschool activities and birthday parties, but our lives feel incredibly full. Full of people, full of conversation, full of obligation and full of love.

Sometimes it’s not easy, and at times it can feel that there is an endless list of to-dos including cooking, washing, packing lunches, finding library books, replying to school emails, remembering who needs what on which day.

My house almost never looks the way I want it to look and school holidays require military-level logistical planning and cost a small fortune. There are days when I feel so tired it is almost physical, where I fantasise about sitting alone in a silent room for a few hours without anybody touching me or asking me questions.

I look around at my millennial peers and see how common anxiety, loneliness and depression have become. I do not think children offer some magical cure for any of that, and I certainly have hard days too. There are moments where I feel stretched painfully thin and overwhelmed by the sheer relentlessness of family life. But overall, I feel busy and anchored. Caring for so many small people provides me with a sense of direction that comes from pouring so much of my energy into something beyond my own immediate comfort or selfish pursuits.

A large family also expands our circle and makes us feel part of a community. We are connected to multiple schools, childcares and groups. When we go to a local park, most of the time we bump into other parents and other families we know through our kids. It’s nice to know our neighbours and for them to know us.

I know having a large family is not the right choice for everybody. Some people do not want children, and others desperately want them and face fertility struggles that make the path to parenthood painful and uncertain. But I also know there are plenty of millennials sitting on the fence, trying to work out whether it is worth it, whether they will enjoy it, whether the trade-offs are simply too great.

For people who are unsure, I want to say that I completely understand why many people hesitate. Children are expensive, they change your body, your marriage, your schedule and your sense of self. They make life logistically harder in almost every imaginable way.

But there is also something on the other side of the decision that is hard to properly explain to people who have not lived it yet.

Yes, I would absolutely love to sleep past 5am occasionally. Yes, there are holidays I cannot afford, restaurants I rarely go to and entire stretches of life currently dominated by school lunches and bedtime routines, but when I look around at the life my husband and I have built, it does not feel to me like we chose the lesser option or we somehow missed out. It feels like an exchange I would make again instantly, without hesitation.

This version of my life is louder and messier and undeniably more exhausting than the alternative probably would have been. But when I look around at this life, at the noise and chaos and fullness of it, I do not feel depleted by it. I feel lucky, and in a way I do not think I could really have understood in my twenties, having a big family has made my life much richer and much happier.