Movies, shows, and books about big families?

Cafe Society
1

I’m looking for books, movies or tv shows that feature large families with five or more kids. I don’t particularly like comedies, though as you’ll see below I’ve seen a fair amount. And musicals are right out.

Like:
Brothers & Sisters
Bloodline (I realize the 5th sibling is dead, but we occasionally see her, so it counts)
Dirty Sexy Money
Harry Potter
Anne of Green Gables
Daughter of the Forest
The Conjuring

Meh:
The Brady Bunch
Cheaper By The Dozen
Yours, Mine, and Ours
Captain Fantastic
The Little Friend
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
Angela’s Ashes
Pride and Prejudice
The Beans of Egypt, Maine
The Fosters (I liked the first season or two…)

Based on what I’ve liked, and what I haven’t, what can you recommend in the way of fiction with five or more siblings? The siblings can be adults or children; full, half or step-siblings.

Oh, and it’d be awesome if anyone can think of any more horror with a big family. You’re Next is close, but I believe there are only four siblings.

Thank you :slight_smile:

2

What’s up with Anne of Green Gables? I was a big fan as a kid. I don’t remember a big family, just Anne and her two foster parents.

3

Which Cheaper by the Dozen are you referring to? The Steve Martin movie is nothing like the Clifton Webb movie, which is very different from the nonfiction-ish book.

4

When she grows up she has has seven kids with Gilbert, starting in book 5, Anne’s House of Dreams.

5

Either. Both. I didn’t get much out of them, though I found Martin’s take less jerkish than Webb’s.

6

Gotcha, thanks. I figured it was in a book I hadn’t read…

“Just the Ten of Us” was an American sitcom in the 80s (they had 8 kids) but I never see it in reruns. And it’s a comedy of course.

The show “Shameless” is a dramedy. The original version is British but the American version is quite popular. They have 7 kids .

7

Spencer’s Mountain

8

Eight is Enough (6 kids)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

9

There are eight kids in Eight Is Enough.

There’s the program Step by Step with six kids.

By the time of the book The Arm of the Starfish, we learn that Meg and Calvin (from A Wrinkle in Time) have seven kids.

If you’re including reality shows, there’s Jon & Kate Plus Eight (later Kate Plus Eight) and 17 Kids and Counting, which became 18 Kids and Counting, which became 19 Kids and Counting.

10

D’oh! Thanks.

11

Parenthood. 1989. Directed by Ron Howard. A great, great movie with Steve Martin. It’s funny, sad and very touching.

12

Here’s a website listing 187 books about families with more than five children:

Oh, and there’s the movie The Sound of Music.

13

Even at the end of the movie Parenthood, the family only has four kids.

14

Game of Thrones?

The series started with 5 official Stark kids. Started.

15

Party of Five had five kids.

16

Oh yeah Reality shows. “Sister Wives” has 13 kids and now a grandkid.

17

I haven’t seen/read enough of your list to guess whether you’d like this, but have you read the All of a Kind Family books? They are a series of chapter books featuring a poor New York Jewish family in the early 1900s.

Btw - I loved the Cheaper by the Dozen BOOK when I was a kid. Never saw either movie, so I don’t know how it compares. I recall that one of the most interesting parts (to me) was the way the parents applied the principles of industrial efficiency to managing their family.

18

The Hotel New Hampshire, by John Irving, is about a family with five kids (though not every character survives to the end of the novel).

19

The novels Spencer’s Mountain and The Homecoming by Earl Hamner, Jr., the movie S.M. starring Henry Fonda and James “Book-'em-Dano” MacArthur, the made-for-TV movie The Homecoming and the TV series The Waltons are all fictionalized works based on Earl Hamner’s childhood in rural Virginia. The real Hamners had eight kids, but there were fewer in the adaptations. The Henry Fonda movie, for some reason, was set in Wyoming.

20

Sydney Taylor’s All-Of-A-Kind Family starts with 5 daughters, and at the end of the first book their mother has a son.