Britain’s biggest family is offering a glimpse at what parenting 18 kids, aged eight months to 21 years, entails. Spoiler alert: it’s loud and expensive.
The volume in the clan’s Moracambe, Lancashire home reached a fever pitch recently, when 40-year-old expectant mom Sue Radford revealed to some of the youngest in her brood that their new sibling — baby number 19 — is a girl.
The Radfords posted the gender reveal on YouTube over the weekend. It shows the kids freak out when given a package to unwrap. A teddy bear with a pink square on its shirt (meant to signify the sex of the upcoming addition) was inside.
The reaction that follows might be enough to make some people re-think having children.
What might be even scarier than the noise associated with having so many kids, is the cost of running such a large household.
The family estimates it spends just over CAD$58,000 on their offspring, according to the Mirror.
Of that, around $500 a week goes towards food. The parents apparently feed their small army pastas or stews using deals from their local butcher and grocer. The 20 of them go through “two boxes of cereal and 18 pints of milk” every day, the Daily Mail states.
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After breakfast — which has to be eaten in shifts — the dad drives some of the kids to school in a “minibus.”
Over the course of the day, there are reportedly between six and 12 loads of laundry and four rolls of toilet paper that get used.
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The couple, both of whom were adopted, told the Mirror that the original plan was to have just three kids.
It all started with a teen pregnancy for the childhood sweethearts, who met when Sue was seven, according to the family website.
“Sue found out she was pregnant with her eldest child Chris when she was a mere 14 years old,” the site reads.
Noel, now 45, would have been 19. The UK’s legal age of consent is 16. Global News has asked the family about this and will update if we get a response.
The couple moved in together and got married a few years later when Sue turned 17.
They reportedly loved having children so much, the Mirror wrote, “that they simply kept going.”
No word on whether Baby 19, due in July, will be their last.
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