Creating and raising a large family is not an easy task. A rare couple plans to give birth to a large number of children: in modern conditions, it will be difficult to support them. However, there are heroes in the world who have managed to create prosperous large families.
World record: 69 children from one woman
The historical record belongs to the Russian Vasiliev family who lived in the 18th century. The wife of Fyodor Vasiliev, a Shuya peasant, gave birth to 69 children in her life. The woman to this day is the record holder for childbirth and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records.
For more than 200 years, no woman in the world has been able to repeat or beat this record. The advantage of the peasant woman was her genetics, which made it possible to produce children in 27 births. Vasilieva gave birth to twins 16 times (another world record), triplets and four quadruplets were born seven times. Unfortunately, only 67 children survived to adulthood.
It is worth noting that this record is not the final point for Fyodor Vasiliev himself. The peasant was married twice. In his first marriage, he had 20 more children. As a result, there were 87 children in the large family. This fact was appreciated even by Catherine the Great, and information about such a large offspring was recorded in the book "Supplements to the Acts of Emperor Peter the Great."
Historians are still arguing about the order of birth of the children of the peasant Vasiliev. However, the facts gleaned from house books and editions of the Vedomosti newspaper testify to the excessive fertility of the second wife.
The largest families of our time
If not a single woman has managed to beat the record of the peasant Vasilyeva to this day, Fyodor Vasilyev himself, with a noticeable advantage, was ahead of the modern Indian Zion Chan (Zion Khan). The polygamist helped to give birth to 94 children.
An Indian man was able to conceive so many children thanks to his wives - Zion Chan has 39 of them. A huge family lives in a common multi-storey building. It is also home to the wives of the sons and grandchildren of the hero father. According to the most conservative estimates, about 180 people live in the house.
According to the father of the family, they begin to prepare for dinner in their house before breakfast. As a rule, wives take part in the cooking. To feed so many people, more than a dozen chickens and several carts of vegetables are spent on one meal.
In those countries where polygamy is prohibited, records are distinguished by "modesty". Leontina Albina, a resident of Chile, came closest to the Vasilyevsky record. She managed to give birth to 55 children and was also entered in the Book of Records.
In modern Russia there are heroes of childbirth. Today they are Elena and Alexander Shishkin. A Pentecostal family (a branch of Christianity where abortion is strictly prohibited) gave birth to 20 children. Nineteen of them still live with their parents, and the eldest son already has his own family and three kids.
Active supporters of Christianity, Americans Bob and Michelle Daggar, did not think about a large family. Initially, their plans included giving life to two or three children. However, after the birth of the first baby and subsequent protection, the woman suffered a miscarriage, which almost cost her her life. After that, the husband and wife decided not to interfere with "God's plans", and surrendered to the will of fate. As a result, they became one of the largest families in America, having given birth and raised 19 children. There could be more babies, but Michelle's three births ended in the death of babies.
