Orlando Sentinel article on Rachel Scott and large families
Posted by: homenews <homenews@...>
Posted May 8, 2005
The van was a dead giveaway.
Clarebout, the mother of 12 children, wandered over and introduced herself. Scott, who has eight kids, had heard about Clarebout already. The two stood in the parking lot for 20 minutes, swapping war stories.
Although many Americans look at large families and see only hardship, people who've grown up in them see loud, loving broods -- and a whole host of positives.
As moms with lots of kids will tell you, there's always someone to play with, always someone to help with homework, always a shoulder to cry on.
Nevertheless, yesterday's farm family has become today's neighborhood novelty. And on Mother's Day -- as on every other day of the week -- the mothers who've bucked convention find themselves answering questions.
What do you drive? Where does everyone sleep? How do you make dinner for that many people?
"When people see the 13 of us, they can't believe we have one mom and one dad," says Federico Zambrano, 32, of Orlando. But in Mexico, where his parents, Eva and Mateo Zambrano grew up, large families were common.
Now ages 18 to 35, the Zambrano clan grew up in the Pine Hills area of Orlando, where their dad, Mateo, now 55, worked in auto-body shops and their mom, Eva, 54, worked as a hotel housekeeper.
Now family members gather several times a week at the Zambranos' auto-body shop on Westmoreland Drive to eat together or just hang out.
"My neighbors here say there's always a party going on over here," says Federico, laughing. "But with 13 kids, it always seems like a party."
Religion plays a role
During the last 40 years, the number of big families has dropped steadily. In 1963, 3.3 million American households contained seven or more people, according to the U.S. Census. By 2003, that number had dropped to 1.3 million.
Families of most ethnic and racial groups are shrinking in size. The one exception is Hispanics, says Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau.
"Latinos don't seem to be trending downward," he says. "It could be that these folks are retaining some of their cultural preferences for how many kids they want to have." And because Hispanics are predominantly Catholic, he says, "religion likely plays a role."
Indeed, when big families venture out in public, strangers frequently ask the same question: "Are you Catholic or Mormon?"
Neither, say the Scotts. They attend a community Christian church.
When they married 25 years ago, Rachel Scott wasn't even sure she wanted children. She was focused on her career as a TV news producer.
But the babies started coming. After their fourth child was born, Christopher planned to get a vasectomy. Then one night, he says, he had a dream in which an angel warned him not to.
Christopher, a project manager for a construction company, woke up and shared the dream with Rachel. They canceled the vasectomy.
Look behind a large family -- and you'll often find another large family.
Take Michelle and Winfred Duval of Orlando. Michelle, 39, grew up with five brothers and two sisters. Her husband, 49, a truck driver, grew up in a family of 11 kids.
Today, their family of seven invites lots of looks.
"Nowadays, any family over three kids, people consider large," says Michelle, 39, a stay-at-home mom. "I guess when you grow up with a large famly, it's natural to want to share the love."
And there are advantages to big families.
Kids are rarely spoiled by material possessions, says Rachel Scott. What they have, they share. Big families also could teach the Pentagon a few lessons about organization.
In the Scott household, where the kids range from 8-month-old Leviticus to 22-year-old Shawn, everyone has an assigned seat. At the dinner table. In the van. Even on the sofa in the family room.
"You have to," says Rachel Scott, 43. "Otherwise, they'd be fighting all the time."
When the Scott kids turn 8, they begin doing their own laundry -- on their assigned days.
Grocery shopping can be a daylong task -- and the subject of curiosity for onlookers. When you're buying 10 gallons of milk at a time, everyone wants to know if you run a day-care center.
And while many of her neighbors in Windermere drive $40,000 SUVs, Rachel Scott tools around in a 1995 Dodge 15-passenger van.
"We talked about buying an old limo," says Christopher Scott, 46, with a laugh. "But a school bus is the next step."
Counting the blessings
Stan and Gail Clarebout have been there and driven that. For 11 years, they shuttled their clan of 12 kids in a small, used schoolbus. When it stalled out occasionally, they always had plenty of kids to push it off the road.
"It was fun," recalls Rachel Clarebout, 18. "Everyone in Clermont knew us because of the bus."
Now that they have only six children at home, the Clarebouts have scaled back -- to a Chevy Suburban.
Growing up in Wisconsin, Stan and Gail were surrounded by big families. When they married, she wanted five kids and he wanted six.
But when a minister at their Protestant church led a discussion about large families, the couple had a revelation. "We did feel that God said children are a blessing," says Gail. "Why say no to that blessing if you can handle it?"
As more children came along, the Clarebouts moved from a 1,300-square-foot house in Clermont to a 2,300-square-foot home in Minneola. The nine girls shared a 20-by-30-foot room, nicknamed "the girls' dorm," while the three boys sleep in a room with six bunk beds -- extras for cousins or grandchildren who spend the night.
Gail is an expert at saving money. In addition to home-schooling the children, she makes their meals from scratch and bakes her own bread. She scours consignment shops and yard sales for clothes. To save money, every family member has only two pairs of shoes -- sneakers and sandals.
The Clarebouts' home is paid for, and Stan, who's 54, fixes their cars, the roof and anything else needing repair. They don't have a television or other luxuries. For fun, they read books, play basketball in the park across the street, ride bikes or take a hike. Because their dad works at Disney, they visit the theme parks regularly.
"There were times that were hard, maybe, but they didn't seem very hard," says Gail. "And our children didn't think they had to have everything."
Even college tuition is a family affair. When 25-year-old Michelle went to nursing school, Gail, Stan and the other kids pitched in to pay her tuition. If any of the other kids want to go to college, Gail says, that's how they'll handle it.
Getting by, making do
When Rachel Scott visits her obstetrician and sees women having their first babies at 40, she feels a pang of sorrow.
"They'll tell me, 'I wish I hadn't waited so late,' " says Scott. "They discovered the joy of family so late that they may not be able to have any more kids."
Instead, she has told her daughters to go to college, pursue a career, but marry and start having kids young. Maybe, she tells them, they will find careers that will work with motherhood.
For the Scotts, the arrangement has worked out -- though they carefully juggle their finances to live on one income. They put off braces for the older children until last year's tax return came through. Because the grocery bill rivals the mortgage payment, they eat chicken and pasta.
The Scotts' three oldest girls, Ashley, 17, Heather, 13, and Courtney, 10, pay for their ballet lessons by baby-sitting for neighborhood children.
And when a yard-sale TV broke a month after Rachel bought it, the kids took a lesson from their parents: They began saving money for a new TV. For five years, they saved the Christmas money their grandparents sent. Last month, the kids celebrated by buying a 60-inch Sony.
While most of the country is headed in the opposite direction, the Scott kids want big famlies themselves.
But Shawn, 22, hasn't mentioned that to potential girlfriends.
"It's not," he says, "a great first-date topic."
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