Many Children, Many Risks? Listening to the Voices of Families with Many Children from the Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Community in Israel

Abstract

Most research on families with many children highlights potential risk factors for an individual child's development, even considering the sibship size itself as a risk factor. A few scholars, however, describe potential benefits of a larger sibship size. Yet, we know very little about the within-family perspectives of families with many children regarding risks and benefits. This chapter presents interview data, complemented by family drawings, from a qualitative study that focuses on five large families (with five to nine children each). The perspectives of all family members, who are old enough to express themselves verbally, are presented in this chapter. We investigate the relational network of families in light of risk and protection factors for child development. We chose a cultural context where families with many children are considered normative: The Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews in Israel. The data reveals underlying dimensions of a multi-layered network of relations that are not yet reflected in classical developmental theories on family relations, e.g. relationship formations on group and subgroup levels. Thereby, we approximate context-informed conceptions of risk and protection factors that have huge implications for future research. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.