Full of prejudices I started the first episode of A house full. For two weeks we can follow four families every evening, families with according to the voice over “a lot” of children.
I don’t know if the Pope still has a say in the KRO, and it would surprise me with the NCRV, but these are family sizes that we only know from one or two generations ago, when God had not yet disappeared and the pill not yet invented. Cudoghan family from Amsterdam: seven children. Family Jelies from Tollenbeek (near Urk): nine children. The Buddenbruck family, just across the border in Germany: eleven children and one grandchild. Another family is taking part, the Zeldenrust skipper family with eight children, but their turn will not come until Wednesday, in episode two.
With so many children, I thought, there must be some faith involved, or these families are what my mother would call “antisocial.” She found her own group of children (six) already well over the limit of the permissible and always exclaimed “they must think …” during the occasional family visits outside the home. and a trunk full of children attracted attention. What I don’t know is whether she meant that it was antisocial to bring so many children into the world (for the environment, the space you occupy, the appeal to collective facilities), or whether parents with many children were antisocial. Anyway, then you kind of know why my view on this phenomenon was not completely neutral.
But what did I see? Tidy mothers, children who were nice to each other and fathers who felt like it. Well okay, don’t exaggerate: there are also fights, there are tired mothers, piles of laundry, children with big mouths, irritated fathers who have no idea where their children’s clean underpants are, and there is a lot of spillage and mess.
Two sheepdogs, six cats
Golden times for the two sheepdogs that the Buddenbruck family also has in the house (plus six cats and a Great Dane puppy on the way). They slobber everything off the tiles in the kitchen and lick toddler hands clean.
Still, all in all, big family life is not disappointing. Do I have to say that the camera focuses on children up to and including primary school age. The bigger ones pull their hoodies a little further over their heads and do their best to escape the spotlight. What you do wonder is what they do, feeding, transporting and dressing all those children. The Amsterdam Cudoghams are both independent entrepreneurs. He writes books and film scripts, she has a cooking studio. Apparently, working around the electric cargo bike rides to and from school works quite well, because the groceries delivered to your home are not cheap. The Jelies have a minibus in which all children fit, they buy over kilo firecrackers for the barbecue and there is candy and chips of everyone’s choice. A lollipop sticks in every child’s mouth and very crazy, one remarks, the baby likes that too.
Inflatable Jacuzzi
A wonderful scene is the one in which father Jelies fills the inflatable jacuzzi in his self-built annex on Friday evening and lights the wood stove with Harrie, his only son. All the children in it, do you know how many liters of shower water that saves? Who’s the happiest? Hard to say. Father Johan who sees his children having “great fun”? Or Harrie, hanging over the edge of the bath, spreads his arms and says: “This is just life.”
Wait, Friday night at the Jelies’ house wasn’t over yet, another memorable moment came. The eldest daughter of fourteen had friends over, including her boyfriend. Enthusiastic that father Johan is about his son-in-law. So handsome, so sweet, he can stay with him. No, this father knows what cuddling to death is.