Table for Eight: Raising a Large Family in a Small-Family World

by Meagan Francis

Introducing a host of coping strategies for larger than average families, a helpful handbook offers practical advice, encouragement, and tips on everything from determining how big a house a family really needs and ways to insure each child gets the right amount of attention to financial strategies and how to run a house efficiently, effectively, and peacefully. Original.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2007

About the author

As a mother of five kids ages teen to young adult, a parenting writer for twenty-five years and the cohost of The Mom Hour podcast, which has been in constant publication for ten years and downloaded over 20 million times, Meagan Francis has long been a strong advocate for women and mothers and a celebrated voice in the parenting community, with the clear messages: motherhood doesn’t have to be miserable, and it’s all gonna be okay. Meagan lives in Michigan. Her writing and podcasts can be found on Substack.

Reviews

[Kendyl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good thoughts, but also odd that the majority of the people quoted in the book with "table for eight" (or very large families) have 3-4 kids. That's neither a large family, nor a family of 8... I may pull it back out again if certain situations arise (like choosing to adopt, trying to figure out how to make small housing work, etc), but it wasn't really what I hoped it would be.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not quite sure where she is getting a "table for eight" from seeing that she only has four kids, but seeing that I sometimes find it hard to even find my table in my family of three kids, I'll take it.

This book answered a few questions and fears I had about large families with a direct and simple approach. At times, however, I felt it was too general as it was trying to fit all types of large families (biological, blended, adopted, and foster). It has the feel of an online message board with the constant quotation inserts from various moms, but perhaps that's the best style for busy moms. The book is probably most helpful to mothers in my situation with two or three kids but hoping for more who are looking for hints for setting up the framework in a family that allows for large families, rather than the already large family.

[Alissa Faust · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and all the helpful little hints that were in it. There were many different resources like additional websites listed to check out too. I like how the book was all practical information and nothing seemed to think that you had to be the perfect mother already to incorporate the ideas into your lifestyle. I also liked that there were so many different ideas out there from having each kid have their own room to having all girls in one room and all boys in another. Such a huge range of solutions. Good read.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I REALLY wanted to like this book, but it was disorganized and the author doesn't even have 6 kids! False advertising.

[Christi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the book. I was however a little disappointed that she did not have a family of 8 so that was a bit discouraging however the advice and tips are spot on so I can appreciate its worth.