It was reasonable that responses which emphasized the disadvantages of many children were not dominated by economic aspects. Although the highest frequency of first disadvantages was related to general financial costs, only 26 per cent of wives
and 36 per cent of husbands stated this reason. About 11 per cent of respondents put financial burden as the second disadvantage while about 5 per cent of respondents stated that they could think of no negative aspect associated with having many children. The proportion of respondents having no ideas at all was relatively high when compared with the frequencies of every other statement. Most disadvantages could be regrouped into four categories: the
emotional burden, the economic burden, the educational problem and the restriction on parents' activities (Table 4.2). Since noise and nuisance, emotional strain and tiredness caused by children, could be regrouped into the emotional category, the highest frequency of all statements was the emotional burden. The statement that
TABLE 4.2
GENERAL DISADVANTAGES OF HAVING MANY CHILDREN (NUMBER OF RESPONDENTS BY SEX)
Disadvantages
Female Respondents Male Respondents
FR SR TR FR SR TR
1. General financial costs
increase 38 15 3 50 16 3
2. Noise and nuisance 27 7 4 16 15 3
3. Emotional strain, worry
when children get sick 16 17 2 20 20 6
4. Tiredness caused by
children 10 9 3 10 10 1
5. Children cannot be perfectly
reared 4 2 - 4 1 -
6. Educational problem 11 18 2 10 16 9
7. Restrictions on opportunity
to work or travel 10 5 3 12 6 1
8. No disadvantage 7 - - 7 - -
9. No response, could not be
envisaged 24 19
147 73 15 148 84 23
Source: 1978 Cibodas - Cikajang Case Study (Q48/W and Q53/H)
"children could not be perfectly reared" could, however, be interpreted from either the educational or emotional point of view.
The proportion of respondents who mentioned up to three disadvantages was slightly less than respondents who stated up to three advantages and the same also held for the respondents who mentioned two disadvantages. Wives and husbands expressed fairly
similar feelings about tiredness, educational problems, rearing children and restriction on their activities. Husbands were more
concerned about the financial cost of having children. This statement was consistent with the reasons given by husbands for limiting the number of children (see Table 3.10). Wives were more concerned about noise and nuisance when the children were at home as an emotional burden. "Noise and nuisance" caused by children referred to
unpleasant aspects of parenthood which included disorder, disobedience, quarreling and fighting, which caused more work for parents. Those statements confirmed the findings of the VOC survey among the rural Sundanese respondents which showed a comparison of the percentages between husbands and wives on the "general economic expenses" statement of 39.9 per cent to 26.4 per cent and that of "children being a bother" of 12.1 per cent to 27.8 per cent (Singarimbun, Darroch and Meyer, 1977:38).
The mothers' concentration on "noise and nuisance" as a disadvantage of children may be explained by the fact that wives remained at home more often than husbands and children were more likely to contact their mothers than their fathers. This feeling was mainly experienced by the respondents who lived in the estate housing and the wives who had more than five living children. Each dwelling house for the lower class workers consisted of three small rooms, a living room, a bedroom and kitchen, but it was common for two nuclear families to live in houses of this type. There was even a case of three nuclear families living in one house. The houses were situated very close to each other, and they were relatively smaller than most houses in other kampungs (except
estate housing for the staff) that were usually surrounded by large yards with crops and sometimes with sheep-pens.
The education aspect was stated for two main reasons: (1) the problems of how to give sufficient family education and (2) the cost of sending children to the school. The first reason was stated by the respondents who did not agree with the opinion that children were born each bearing their own good fortune. Forty-two per cent of female respondents and 59 per cent of male respondents who
disagreed with that opinion considered that success was only
achieved with some effort and that children had to be given a good education. When respondents were asked about expenditures other
than food that were considered expensive, the school-fee/school expense was the third most mentioned among both wives and husbands. The
general opinion regarding the education problem was connected by all key-persons interviewed with traditional and religious morals.
Before respondents were asked about the advantages and disadvantages of having many children, they were asked about their feelings before and after having children. One of the questions was: "What was your feeling after you had had many children? What we mean by many children is after you had more than three children." This question was only asked to the respondents who had three or more children. There were 61 wives and 53 husbands who gave their
impressions. The others had no idea or gave the "nothing" response. Although less than 50 per cent of respondents were asked this
question, the first and the second highest frequencies were "worry about children's cost of living" and "noise and nuisance in the house". Of the overall responses, 85.3 per cent of the wives and 84.0 per cent of the husbands considered those two responses as their main feeling after having three or more children. This means that there were some consistencies between the disadvantages of having many children perceived by all respondents and the feelings experienced by respondents who had three or more children.