1/4 Jan and Frans proudly show an old family photo (photo: Imke van de Laar).
Families in Brabant are getting smaller and smaller. Today, families with four children are already called large. But in the past, families with nine children or more were no exception. Jan and Frans Bouwdewijns know what it’s like to come from such a large family. They grew up in Mariahout with 17 brothers and sisters.
In 1947 there were about 6,000 households with nine or more children. There were even families with more than twenty children, according to research by Het PON & Telos commissioned by Omroep Brabant.
Frans and Jan show an old framed family photo. Father, mother and no less than nineteen children look proudly into the lens. Frans laughs: “That used to be an exceptionally large family.”
In the photo, Jan is twelve and Frans is five. Now they are 82 and 76 years old. They look back on life in their large family with warm feelings. “We had a good life. With nine brothers and nine sisters, there was always someone to play with.”
“If everyone came to eat, it wouldn’t fit at the table.”
Living in a farm with 21 people is of course a challenge. “There was a very long table in the kitchen. But when everyone came to eat, it didn’t fit. Then my mother grabbed the sewing machine. It had a pull-out leaf and then a few children could eat there.”
The men show a black and white photo of the farm where they used to live. “Look here,” says Jan. “We were born behind this window down here. That was my parents’ bedroom.”
“You got the biggest egg for breakfast on your birthday.”
Then he points to the attic. “We, the children, slept up there. The boys and girls slept separately in two large bedrooms. We shared the beds, we were two or three in them. Three children didn’t fit in. They had to sleep in the upstairs room. ”
Life was simple and austere with so many children. “But at Easter a hundred eggs were hidden. And on your birthday everyone came to congratulate you, you received a small gift and the largest egg for breakfast.”
The children also had to help at a young age. In the household and on the land. Jan explains: “Everyone helped each other, you just did that. Without complaining. The little ones helped, for example, with collecting the eggs or sanding the clogs. The older children went to harvest beets and plow with the horses.”
“Hide and seek was quite a challenge.”
From the age of fourteen, a large proportion of the children went to work as servants for a farmer or for families in the household.
Yet there was also enough time for the nineteen children to play. Frans looks back with a smile: “We mainly played hide and seek. With so many children it was quite a challenge to find everyone again.”
Another challenge was knowing which clothes belonged to which child. But the mother of Frans and Jan had come up with something. Frans explains: “All trousers, shirts and socks were numbered. In order of when you were born. My father had number one and my youngest brother number twenty-one. And everything was made by myself, the sewing machine ran all year round.”
“We have lived in a golden age.”
Even after everyone left home, the bond between the nineteen children remained good. Almost everyone still lives close to each other, within a radius of eleven kilometers from the birthplace in Mariahout. Except for a sister who moved to Canada. And three children have since passed away.
They sometimes look back on the past together. They agree on one thing: “We lived in a golden age. We did everything together and really lived for each other. It was much more romantic then than now.”
This article is part of a series in which we look back at Brabant 75 years ago and is based on research by Het PON & Telos.