As chat-up lines go, says Becky Chapman, it was quite unusual. When she met Steve, now her fiance, seven years ago in their local pub one of the first things he said was: “I’ve got four children and they all live with me, do you still want me to buy you a drink?” She laughs. “He said most women usually made an exit after that.” But Becky saw it as a positive point. “I thought it was nice. It made me like him more as a person.”
Steve, a maintenance engineer, has four – Karl, 25, Chloe, 21, Robyn, 20 and Jake, 19 – and Becky has two, Alys, 17 and Lily, 11. Three and a half years into their relationship, they all moved in together. For Becky, who grew up as an only child, going from a family of three to a family of eight was, at times, overwhelming.
“Once there are quite a lot of kids in the house, another two doesn’t really matter to me, whereas I think Becky found it harder,” says Steve. “There were two of us now, so half of the workload was taken off me, but Becky’s workload probably increased threefold.”
Before they started living together, the couple had long conversations about how it would work. There were emotional issues to be worked out, such as how Becky – as a mother figure – would fit into the new family, and practical ones too. They decided that each child should have their own bedroom and, realising it would make more financial sense to move to Steve’s house rather than buying a new place, they brought an architect in to remodel and extend it, building extra rooms and another bathroom.
Living together has been an adjustment for everybody. Steve can be a bit of a shouty dad – “with four, you’ve got to be” – although Becky says they were both a bit soft with the children in the beginning.
“We did everything for them instead of telling people off. We thought: ‘It’s not their fault we put them together, so let’s make it as easy for them as possible.’”
Before the older children went to university, mornings could be chaotic, with everyone needing to be fed and washed, “but there were never really any long queues to get into the bathroom”, says Becky.
Steve does most of the cooking, and they always try and eat together at the table.
The new family works. The girls, especially, are close and borrow each other’s clothes and help each other with their homework. There are still moments, says Becky, when she comes home from her job as an office manager for a foster care agency, and just wants five minutes of peace.
“I go in the garden and have a glass of wine.” But then she looks around at her huge new family and realises how great it is. “Everybody gets on and it’s nice when you’re all having a meal and having a laugh, all of you together.”
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