Vera Hyde is interviewed about her life growing up in a family of twelve children in Napier.
She talks about how her mother coped with having so many babies to look after at once. She remembers her mother being placid despite so many children.
Vera was number six in the family and loved babies. The children did a lot of work in the house. She started cooking breakfast, as the other children did, at age eleven. The boys helped as well as the girls.
They did not feel neglected. Their father played games with them every night and they were all in bed by 7:00 p.m. until they reached the age of fourteen.
Vera recalls when five of the children had chickenpox at once and her mother gave them half an Aspro each, so that she could get some rest - they all slept so soundly her mother thought she had killed them!
Although her father worked, they were not well off. They only had butter on Sundays and during the week it was beef dripping. Vera talks about the financial situation and how they grew all their own vegetables. The girls had to leave school after only one year of secondary school and then help their mother in the home for the next 3 years before they could go out and get a job.
Everybody in the family helped with the housework. Their father made the chore lists and taught them how to clean the home properly. Both parents were fairly strict but had to be because of the number of them.
She recalls the huge amounts of washing, including washing the nappies. She and her sister arose at 4:30am on Monday morning to do the washing.
She describes the sitting arrangements for eating and doing homework. Arguing was not allowed and they had to sing whilst doing the dishes. They took turns doing the dishes, including her father.
She talks with great admiration about how they all received one toy each at Christmas.
As they got older and had boy and girlfriends there was little privacy in the garden or house because of the quantity of people in the house. She had her first date when she was 19, but feels her parents were quite modern in their attitudes.
She thinks it was wonderful to be part of such a large family.