British mother raises 11 children, and every day it is like commanding military operations article cover image
News/Community Wire/Archive/Jan 21, 2012
Legacy archive / noindex

British mother raises 11 children, and every day it is like commanding military operations

Republished with permission

British mother raises 11 children, and every day it is like commanding military operations (Alberta Times) It is not easy for a mother to raise a child to adulthood, and Kent, England...

Local families

British mother raises 11 children, and every day it is like commanding military operations (Alberta Times) It is no longer easy for a mother to raise a child to adulthood, but a 37-year-old mother in Kent, England, is actually raising 11 children! Although her life has become very busy and hard to take care of her babies every day, she enjoys it. In order to dispel other people's gossip that "I earn government subsidies by having children without working", she resolutely refuses to enjoy the relevant government benefits. According to the British "Daily Mail" report, the mother's name is Tania Sullivan, and her husband is 38-year-old Michael. Michael already had two children from his previous marriage, 18-year-old Ben and 17-year-old Stephanie. After his union with Sullivan, he gave birth to nine more children, namely Caitlin, 12, Harry, 8, Eddie, 7, Sid, 6, Patrick, 4, Oliver, 2, Joseph, 1, as well as twin baby girls Elizabeth and Anna who were born in October last year. In order to take care of these children, Sullivan devoted a lot of energy and time. After the birth of her sixth child, she gave up her job as a recruitment consultant. "Running a big family like ours is like commanding a military operation. Fortunately, these children are very quiet after going to bed at night and will not keep me up all the time. However, I still don't have much time to rest. I have to get up before 5 a.m. to start doing trivial and heavy housework. I feel guilty if I get up late." "After the children get up, I start cleaning and making breakfast. Our family consumes 20 loaves of bread and 50 pints of milk every week. Now, in order to meet the family's travel and living needs, we have to buy a minibus. The house is sometimes messy, but I will not change it anyway." Sullivan and her husband met in school, when they were just over 10 years old. Later, they broke up for some reason, and they met again after her husband ended his first marriage. They never expected to have such a large family and initially planned to have only two or three children. "But after experiencing several heartbreaking miscarriages, I learned how precious children are and what a blessing it is to have them. It makes me very angry when I hear people mistakenly believe that we have children in order to receive government subsidies, because that is not the case," Sullivan explained.

Sources and usage

This piece is republished or synchronized with permission and keeps a link back to the original source.

Editorial tags

Community WireArchiveRepublished with permission