Rin M

It astounds me that this came out in 1968, before Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda showed up on the Dean Martin show, I grew up with this movie even though it's about 30 years older than me. The movie focused on the comedy and awkwardness that comes with a large family, and even though I understood that this movie was made before women were allowed to be independent of men I was more shocked at how it wasn't older in age than it is. This movie made it into a love story of sorts, but my dad actually experienced a similar situation when he was a kid, large family and all, and the kids really were awful to the new mother, for a very long time. There was no time for kids to mourn their mother, but they really needed someone to take care of them and the dad certainly couldn't manage it on his own even if he did learn a few things. For that big of a family, if it wasn't run just right all of the time, there could easily be a mountain of nightmarish situations - and it is certainly a wonder my dad even survived past childhood because of it. And lately, I keep finding reminders at how fairly new female freedoms are, and it shocks me to think that my own mom went through that limited world, at least until I realize just how painfully lacking the medical system still is presently when it comes to female care - it's the equivalent of ignoring abdominal tumors and treating them with birth control and psychiatric treatment instead of running some actual tests first. And she has to bring a man, or at least a friend, into the visit with her in order to make sure the doctor listens to her without dismissing everything, including dismissing her ability to make independent adult decisions regardless of her age. So, no matter how much people might complain about this movie's ethics and whatnot, I'd like to remind them that we haven't yet escaped that mindset completely and your own parents may have gotten the ball rolling and raised us inside a better world than what they lived in, but it's up to us to keep it going in a positive direction and finish the job.