WOW

[DianaCanada]

re doddsie4's comment:
 
My gt-grandparents had 11 children, 4 girls and 7 boys.  Only one of the boys, my grandfather, survived infancy.  Some were stillborn, others survived for hours, days or even months.  All 4 girls survived into old age, but  my grandfather died in his 50s, having had poor health for several years.  Are females tougher than males, I wonder?

There have been many studies in this topic, and the conclusions seem to point to females on the whole being constitutionally and genetically stronger than males.  This is likely due to the fact that for the survival of the species, women can only bear so many children in her lifetime, whereas a male can father many children and there is no health risks for him to do so.
More baby boys are born than girls but by the age of 20 or so, the ratio has dropped so that females outnumber males and this continues for the cohort through the rest of their lives.  Some of these deaths have to do with risk taking (again, more of a male trait that is seen to benefit the species in the long run, back in our primitive past, anyway), but also do to males more likely to die of genetic issues and succumbing to disease than females do.

[Gillg]

Top-of-the-hill

They lived in industrial Lancashire.  All those mills puffing out smoke......also gt-grandfather worked as a lad in a woollen mill, sorting fleeces alongside his father.  By his twenties, though, he had taken up a very different profession as a music teacher and performer.  Gt-grandmother had never worked, being the daughter of a relatively well-off shop owner.

[bevj]

My g-g-grandmother married at 16 and had 13 children over the next 28 years. 
What is remarkable is that all 13 survived to adulthood.   Quite a feat.
Her husband was 19 years her senior and died shortly after the birth of the last child.  Not surprisingly, I suppose, she quickly remarried, but she only lived to 60 years old.
Bev

[Enumerated]

My maternal grandfather was one of 15 children. The first was born in 1875 when great grandmother was 23, and she didn't leave off until she was 46. The menopause must have been a great relief to her. She must have had the constitution of an ox because she lived until she was 92. My mother remembered her as a tiny woman dressed all in black and looking like Queen Victoria. Her husband, a blacksmith and farmer, had died many years before when he was 72.

On the other side, my paternal grandparents had three children in three years. The doctor told granddad if he didn't ease up he would kill his wife. They had only two more children at longer intervals. Grandmother died aged 68 before I was born.

[Annie65115]

One of my gt- gt- grandmothers had 16 children, and I suspect could have had more were it not for the fact that she was in the asylum for 18 months in her late 30’s  and her husband dropped dead within a fe weeks of her discharge home. There had been no drop off in her fertility prior to this.

Another of my gt-gt- grannies declared 17 children on the 1911 census, though I’ve “only” identified 16 of them.

[Biggles50]

My Wife’s Great Great Grandfather had at least 18 children by three different Wives.

Live as a female was dangerous in these times.

[pharmaT]

My MIl is one of 18 from 2 different wives so not that long ago.

[BumbleB]

My lot must have been very good OR what!!!! 

Parents - father = 1 of 2, mother = only child
Grandparents - grandfather = 1 of 3, grandmother = 1 of 7
Great grandparents - great grandfather = 1 of 10, great grandmother = 1 of 4

OH and I are only children, and we have only 1 daughter (who has 3 children).

[Rena]

I've only found a few of the eighteen children Elizabeth Ward declared that she'd raised and two of those were in a WWI cemetery.

Not that it matters really, because as a general rule, due to the size of paper, I usually only have direct ancestors on my trees.