Foundation For Large Families
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All in the Family
A Full House, $700 Grocery Bills and Unmatched Socks
"Pierre, Pierre," he yells over the system. "Time to get up.... Pierre, make sure Paris is up. Paige? Paige?"
But the three boys are just part of the picture. Bell is just getting warmed up. He still has to rouse their four brothers — Palmer, Percy, Preston and Parker — and nine sisters — Patiana, Patia, Penae, Paree, Passion, Palynn, Portia, Tiffany and Camilla.
With 16 children, 14 of them adopted, Lewis and Tanya Bell are raising what is known as a megafamily. At a time when the average American family has shrunk to just 3.2 people, including parents, some families are swelling in size, often by adopting children without a home of their own.
The Bells did not originally intend to have so many children. "I always said I would at least adopt one," Tanya says. In her first marriage, she had two biological children and adopted three. Then she married Lewis, and their family kept growing.
Together, they adopted another 11 children, including one group of six siblings. Many of the children had been bounced from home to home, some abused or neglected .
Every Morning a Major Operation
Life in the Bells' 10-bedroom house in Harrisburg, Pa. can be hectic. Once the kids are up, the chores begin, the older kids helping the younger kids. Baths have to be run, teeth brushed, hair braided, the dog walked, clothes ironed, and outfits inspected ("We don't wear drooping pants" is one of Tanya's rules). And that's all before breakfast.
The family eats at four dining tables, with no assigned seating. They run through huge amounts of food, $700 of meat and $700 of staples every month. They once ran up a $1,200 bill on just one visit to the grocery store.
Laundry is major operation, and the family has two washers and two dryers. There are so many pairs of socks flying around that they found it was impossible to keep them in pairs. They tried pinning them together, then color-coding by child — but nothing worked. Now the rule is: if you see two socks that are your size, no matter what color, take them — they're a pair.
The Bells, who run an adoption agency, get some financial assistance from state and local subsidies — $300 to $500 for each older or minority child they adopted — and they manage to get by. "When we take kids in, we may not always be prepared ... but God has definitely made a way every single time," says Lewis.
Adding Wheelchairs to the Mix
Over in Cincinnati, Ohio, another megafamily has all the complications the Bells face, plus another one: where to put all the wheelchairs.
Nancy and Joe Kayes have 17 children, three biological and 14 adopted from overseas. Twelve of the adopted children have major medical problems, and three need wheelchairs to get around.
Like the Bells, the Kayes did not set out to have such a big family. "We've just done it one at a time," says Nancy. After they had three biological children, they adopted a little girl from Korea named Barbara. When she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy four months after she arrived, a doctor recommended that they not go through with the adoption. But the Kayes wouldn't think of it abandoning her, and soon started asking adoption agencies for children with disabilities, who are often difficult to place.
"A child with a disability should have as much right to be a member of a family as any other child," says Nancy. The Kayes adopted a little girl named Sarah, who had polio, from Mother Teresa's orphanage in India, and a little boy named Mark, who was born in Hong Kong without arms. Mark needed extra help at the beginning but today, at 23, he gets by with his feet, typing 35 words a minute with his toes and battling his siblings at Nintendo. They ended up building an addition to their home, adding a laundry room, a huge family room, and a storage area for the wheelchairs.
Giving Back The Bells and the Kayes, who are both religious, enlarged their families out of a simple conviction that children should be helped.
"We think that every child needs to be valued. Every child ought to be entitled to a family," says Nancy Kaye.
"Everybody has a gift. My gift is to give back to the community," says Tanya Bell. As well as giving a home to children without one, her mission is to persuade African-American families to adopt, even if it is just one child. She has a simple formula for life that she tries to instill in her children: "You graduate from high school. You go to college. You get a job. You buy your first house. You get married. You adopt your first child, and then have a child. Because we all have to give back. That's the rule of the house."
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