Big Family

Lupe	Kara

Kara: So, Lupe, you have an extremely large family compared to family sizes here in the United States. How was that? How was that growing up in a large family?

Lupe: Yeah, coming here to the Unites States it was really strange for me to see how small families were, and me coming from such a big family where there's - I have five brothers and six sisters, so five boys, seven girls. There's twelve of us and we all have the same mom and dad and you know at times it can be a little rough because growing up, you know, at one point we did all live together. Now it is not as hard because there is a big age difference between the oldest and the youngest. I am the youngest girl and I have a younger brother. My oldest brother now is forty, married, lives in his own house and most of my older brothers and sisters are all married and have their kids and have also moved out. It's not as tough anymore. What I love about having such a big family is that now they all have babies so there's twenty-three nephews and nieces so when we have get-togethers, it's really an amazing party because there's so many people there just with our immediate family. The kids are running around playing. All the women are you know, hanging out, talking and the guys are also doing their thing, and there's also a lot of birthday parties as you can imagine. There's so many birthdays throughout the year, so there's always a party. There's always someone to talk to. There's always someone to go to. Although it can really hurt your pocket around Christmas time because you know there's twenty-three nieces and nephews to buy presents for and there's also eleven siblings to buy, you know, presents and the family's only getting larger because also got to think about them getting married, so now I have sister-in-laws. I have brother-in-laws, and there's still a few of us that are not married so the family's only gonna get bigger, for sure.

Kara: What was the hardest part about growing up in a family that large?

Lupe: I think the hardest part about it when I was little was I think my parents didn't have the resources to raise all of us in maybe the way they wished they could have. There wasn't always enough money to make sure that everybody was well-dressed, or even that there was enough food. As the older siblings started, you know, growing up and being old enough that they could work, they became a central part of the family and started helping with the income, the family income and that made it a lot easier for us younger ones growing up. They had it a little tougher than we did because they had to work a lot and they were really young to make sure that the rest of us had everything we needed. That was definitely the hardest part.