Let's set a record: women who have given birth to the most children in the world. Let's set a record: women who gave birth to the most children in the world An absolute record was set: a woman gave birth to 69 children

A woman who lived in Russia in the 18th century set a “world record” by giving birth to 69 children from 1725 to 1765. This is Valentina Vasilyeva from Shuya, who was the first wife of the peasant Fyodor Vasilyev. Of these, she had 16 twins, 7 triplets, and 4 quadruplets. In total, there were 27 births. And in total, 67 children survived in infancy.

Fyodor Vasiliev and his second wife had 18 children (of which: twins - 6, triplets - 2). The first report about this peasant and his family was published in 1783 in the London magazine. Then it was written about him in 1834 in the book “Panorama of St. Petersburg”. The story is truly amazing. But was she really there? The online publication Yenata.blitz.bg suggests looking into this.

Dubious record?

Fyodor Vasiliev and his first wife Valentina lived in Russia, in the city of Shuya, between 1707 and 1782. According to some reports, Valentina died when she was 76 years old. Of her 69 children, only two died in infancy. According to the Guinness Book of Records, this woman is the most fertile mother.

If you try to calculate the years in which she could give birth, then it could be the period from 1725 to 1765. That is, her 27 pregnancies could have occurred over a period of life equal to forty years. At first glance this may seem possible to some, but at second glance it seems doubtful. Yenata.blitz.bg offers to perform a series of calculations.

A whole 18 years?

It is known that in general, pregnancy in humans takes 40 weeks. However, the more embryos in the mother's womb, the greater the likelihood that the birth will be premature. According to some estimates, the peasant woman Vasilyeva could have had 37-week pregnancies with twins, 32-weeks with triplets, and 30-weeks with quadruplets.

The total is 936 weeks. One year includes 52 weeks. Dividing 936 by 52 equals 18 years. Thus, Valentina Vasilyeva had to spend 18 years in a state of pregnancy. Isn't that a very impressive figure? If we take into account the opinion of experts, they question this assumption.

Reasons to doubt

Theoretically, one can talk about physiological characteristics, inherent in some women, which could also be present in a fertile peasant woman. And they need to be taken into account:

• Firstly, there is a phenomenon called multiple ovulation, when several eggs mature during one cycle. Although this is not the most common occurrence, approximately 5 - 10% of periods are. This phenomenon could be observed in Valentina. But at the same time, she still managed to avoid the “twin syndrome,” when one of the fetuses is absorbed by the other or by the mother’s body itself. At multiple pregnancy it is observed in 25-30% of cases.
• Secondly, both pregnancy and childbirth are always a certain stress for female body. If pregnancy follows one after another with an interval of less than 18 months, then the risk of complications for both the woman and the child is quite high. The mother does not have enough time to recover from her previous childbearing. So, if even two pregnancies in a row are risky, what about 27?
• Thirdly, experts doubt that with such an intensity of the birth of children, even in modern world, with today's development of medicine, the probability of survival of both mother and offspring is not high. Obviously, in a provincial town in the 18th century it was much smaller. At that time, any pregnancy was accompanied by risks.

Children still need to be fed

At the same time, one should not lose sight of the fact that peasant women, as a rule, were burdened with hard work and did not have enough time to care for children. At the same time, in order to feed such a horde, it was necessary large number food, plus clothes, a place in the home to put it. It is unlikely that an ordinary peasant family could provide everyone with such a number of offspring.

Publications about an unusual family

However, there are a number of publications that can speak in favor of the described phenomenon of a large family of Vasiliev peasants. These include, for example, the following:

1. In 1782, a letter was sent from the Nikolsky Monastery to Moscow, which stated that Fyodor Vasiliev had children from two marriages. His second wife had 18 children (12 twins and 6 triplets). These data were published in 1834 in the St. Petersburg Panorama.
2. In 1783, Gentleman's magazine published an article about unusual family Vasiliev. Its author reasoned that such “extraordinary fertility” could be explained by a phenomenon inherent in both men and women, or both at once.
3. One of the French publications said that the French Academy of Sciences became interested in this family and contacted the St. Petersburg Academy to clarify the issue.

In conclusion, it should be noted that the family depicted in the main photo is by no means the Vasilievs, as one might think. In this photo you can see Joseph Smith's family. He was co-chairman of one religious organization, which is the largest branch of Mormonism. He was married six times and had 45 biological and five adopted children.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the record for the number of children from one mother belongs to Valentina Vasilyeva, the wife of Russian peasant Fyodor Vasilyev, Jesus Daily says.

She lived for 76 years and from 1725 to 1765 gave birth to 69 children - 16 pairs of twins, 7 triplets and 4 quadruplets. 67 of them survived infancy (one twin did not survive).

It is known that Fyodor Vasiliev was a peasant of the Shuisky district in Russia in the 18th century (now a district of the Ivanovo region of the Russian Federation). But his wife got into the Guinness Book of Records. Valentina is considered the most numerous mother in history.

1 mother and 69 children:

27 births, 69 children

The first mention of the children of Fyodor Vasiliev is found in an issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1783 (No. 53, p. 753, London). It says that this information, “although amazing, deserves complete confidence, for it was transmitted by an English merchant from St. Petersburg directly to his relatives in England; he also mentions that the peasant will be presented to the Empress.”

The second wife gave birth to Vasiliev 18 more children - 6 twins and 2 triplets. Thus, Fyodor Vasiliev was the father of 87 children, of whom at least 82 lived to adulthood.

Unfortunately, there are no reliable photographs of the Vasiliev family. The photo in this article is often published as an illustration of this story, but there is no evidence that it depicts Fedor, Valentina and their children.

Although Valentina Vasilyeva's record large number of children can hardly be considered an indisputable historical fact, it is quite possible that she had a genetic predisposition to hyperovulation (when many eggs are released simultaneously during the ovulation process). This increases the likelihood of multiple pregnancies.

More detailed analysis the likelihood that the story is true, .

The historical record belongs to Russian family Vasilievs, who lived in the 18th century. The wife of Fyodor Vasiliev, Shuisky, gave birth to 69 during her life. The woman is still the record holder for childbearing and is listed in the Guinness Book.

For more than 200 years, no one in the world has been able to repeat or beat this record. The advantage of the peasant woman was her genetics, which made it possible to produce children in 27 births. Vasilyeva gave birth to twins 16 times (another world record), triplets and four quadruplets were born seven times. Unfortunately, only 67 children survived to conscious age.

It is worth noting that this record is not the final point for Fedor Vasiliev himself. The peasant was married twice. In his first marriage, he gave birth to 20 more children. As a result, in big family there were 87 children. This fact was appreciated even by Catherine the Great, and information about such a numerous offspring was included in the book “Additions to the Acts of Emperor Peter the Great.”

Historians are still arguing about the order of birth of the children of the peasant Vasilyev. However, facts gleaned from house books and issues of the Vedomosti newspaper indicate the excessive fertility of the second wife.

The largest families of our time

If the record of the peasant Vasilyeva to this day has not been broken by a single woman, Fyodor Vasilyev himself was ahead of the modern Indian Zion Chan (Zion Khan) with a noticeable advantage. The polygamist will give birth to 94 children.

The Indian man was able to conceive so many children thanks to his wives - Zion Chan has 39 of them. Huge family lives in a shared multi-storey building. The wives of the sons and grandchildren of the hero father also live in it. According to the most conservative estimates, about 180 people live in the house.

According to the father of the family, they begin to prepare for dinner in their house before breakfast. As a rule, wives take part in cooking. To feed so many people, more than a dozen chickens and several carts of vegetables are spent on one meal.

In those countries where polygamy is prohibited, the records are “modest”. The closest person to Vasiliev's record was a resident of Chile, Leontina Albina. She managed to give birth to 55 children and was also included in the Book of Records.

IN modern Russia There are birth heroes. Today they are Elena and Alexander Shishkin. The Pentecostal family (a branch of Christianity where abortion is strictly prohibited) gave birth to 20 children. Nineteen of them still live with their parents, and the eldest son already has his own family and three children.

Active supporters of Christianity, Americans Bob and Michelle Duggar did not think about having a large family. Initially, their plans were to give life to two or three children. However, after the birth of her first baby and subsequent contraception, the woman suffered a miscarriage, which almost cost her life. After this, the husband and wife decided not to interfere with “God’s plans” and surrendered to the will of fate. As a result, they became one of the largest families in America, giving birth to and raising 19 children. There could have been more babies, but three of Michelle's births ended in the death of the babies.

The debate about how many children a family should have will never stop. Someone judges this based on the political situation in the country, someone draws their conclusions based on the health of the nation, there can be a lot of options. One thing is clear and clear - a family has as many children as it sees fit.

There are exceptions when there is no desire, but there are certain principles, such as those that prohibit abortions and oblige you to have a minimum number of children. Somewhere this is a tribute to tradition, somewhere religious considerations, family traditions. One way or another, there will always be those people who will break the record for the number of children.

Today, according to official information, the most large number The number of children that one woman gave birth to was 69. The wife of the peasant Fyodor Vasilyev gave birth 27 times, this happened in the period from 1725 to 1765. 16 times the woman gave birth to twins, 7 times she gave birth to triplets, and four times she gave birth to four twins, only two children died as babies, the rest all survived.

For the 18th century, this is a very, very strange statistic, maybe someone wrote about it so that you and I in the 21st century would believe it. It is impossible to verify this information now; all that remains is to believe the words. If we talk about the twentieth century, we can remember Leontina Albina from San Antonio, this woman gave birth to 55 children on her own, they are not adopted, they are not foundlings, she personally gave birth to these children. The births took place between 1943 and 1981, the first three pregnancies resulted in three triplets, all of them male.

Moving on, there is a certain record for the number of births, a woman named Elizabeth Greenhill gave birth 38 times. She lived in Abbots Langley, in the UK, she had 39 children, 32 of them daughters, seven sons.

This brave woman died in 1681. Another record tells us about 15 triplets in one family. Again, it seems like someone wrote a joke that later turned into historical fact. This woman's name is Madeline Granata, she lived in Italy. No less interesting is that in the state of Pennsylvania, the city of Philadelphia, 11 twins were born in 1971. The same goes for Bangladesh, where 11 twins were born in 1977. In both the first and second cases, none of the children could survive.

We are talking about a 35-year-old patient who came for an appointment after taking fertility pills, as a result of which she became pregnant with 15 children at once. But on June 13, 1971, in Australia, Geraldine Broadrick gave birth to five boys and four girls, 2 boys were stillborn, all other children could live only 6 days.

If we talk about positive cases, then in January 2009 American mom Nadya Suleiman gave birth to eight children, their weight varied from 800 grams to 1.4 kg. 6 boys and 2 girls were born; it was the 31st week of pregnancy. The woman was never married, but at that time she already had six children.

After this, the woman was literally torn apart by American television projects, she was able to earn huge money from her children, this topic was actively discussed on the Internet.

But the peasant of the village of Vvedenskoye, Yakov Kirillov, was recognized as the father with many children in Russia; in 1755, he even became assigned to the court at the age of 60. The fact is that the peasant’s first wife gave birth to 57 children, these were 4 times of four children, then another 7 times of three children, then again 9 births of two children each and, finally, 2 times of one child each. The peasant's second wife gave birth to 15 children. This is how dad ended up with 72 children in total.