In a nation with a declining birth rate and many one-child families, Lyubov Golyak is becoming more of an anomaly all the time.
She has 12 children – four boys and eight girls, ranging in age from 6 to 26. In Soviet times, a mother with lots of children was hailed as a heroine and was entitled to special privileges and stipends from the state. She also got medals of honor, and Golyak’s are from the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. ‘We were considered rich,’ Golyak said wistfully, recalling when she had money in the bank and was considered well-off.
But now the 47-year-old Golyak inspires envy from no one – not herself, her children or her nation. In independent Ukraine, Golyak is just another poverty-stricken, overworked mother trying to keep her plentiful brood fed and clothed. Her current husband – her third – is not much help, she says, and has undergone unsuccessful treatment for alcoholism. Neighbors derisively say that she breeds poverty.
When Golyak is not working as a cleaner or taking in laundry for meager wages, her time is spent making ends meet and making food last. She rations – and sometimes withholds – food from her ravenous children. Despite getting a monthly government allotment of Hr 50 worth of food, there is almost never enough to go around.
‘I have started to hide food from my children,’ Golyak said. ‘When I come from the shop where we receive our ration, I say that I have received less than usual, and put the products somewhere else, not into the refrigerator. When they see that there is something in there, they know it is ours and eat it very fast. I cannot forbid my children to eat. That is why I have to hide it. And then when the month is ending, I take out the rest, and we are able to eat properly.’
This hardship depresses her, but she has no other choice. The usual family meal includes potatoes, pastry and soup. There are no leftovers.
‘The family gathers at the table and all the pots and pans are emptied immediately,’ Golyak said. ‘Nothing is ever left until tomorrow.’
Although she says her children are generally healthy, she thinks ‘something has gone wrong’ with the stomachs of her younger children recently and now she cooks a special diet especially for them.
Not surprisingly, eating and cooking are among the favorite fantasies of her younger daughters. They dream of becoming cooks, and their mouths water when they talk about what they would cook: pies, cookies and salads.
And they don’t want to repeat the same mistakes as their mother – or have as many children, or any children, in the case of 13-year-old Irina. ‘I do not want to have children at all,’ the teen-age girl says. ‘When I grow up, I will only have a Siamese cat. That’s it.’
Not even Golyak would go down the same path again. ‘If I were given the chance to live my life one more time, I probably would have less children and go to the university,’ she said.
Sometimes Golyak cannot believe how a life that started out so well got so out of control.
She lived best with her first husband, with whom she had four children. Golyak said the family ‘used to receive a huge, judging by those times, pension plus my big salary as a teacher in the kindergarten. All these let us live on a better than average level.’
Then he died in 1978. She made a mistake with her second husband, with whom she had another three children. He only used her, she now believes. ‘Once when we were quarreling he told me directly that he only needed my money and apartment,’ she said.
Life with her third husband, with whom she has had five more children, is only getting worse.
Unfortunately, her two oldest daughters started down a similar track. Each gave birth to a girl, but neither has a husband. Part of the reason why the oldest daughter, Natalia, had a baby was to escape her home life. But it backfired.
‘I wanted to leave this family and start my own life, create my own family,’ Natalia said. ‘But it did not work out, so I had to come back home with my daughter.’
Galyak is proud of what she has accomplished: Her children are honest and hardworking; her apartment is kept tidy and she considers herself a very loving – although tough – mother.
Thing are not always gloomy. The children clearly adore their mother. And sometimes they jealously compete for her attention. But whenever she brings home something special, such as a sweet, everyone gets an equal share. They are very glad to help her around the house, and proudly boast about the work they have done for her every time she walks in the door.
But lately, life seems to be slipping more and more out of control. The bills are piling up. Sometimes they are able to rent out one of their four apartments, but it is not enough.
The utility bills alone have gone unpaid for three years and now have reached nearly $3,000. That’s a staggering sum for a family whose combined income, from an assortment of odd jobs, sometimes never hits more than $100 or so each month.
Money troubles forced Galyak to keep her youngest daughter, Katya, out of school for a year. It is just one more regret. ‘If I’d known that nothing would change, I would have sent Katya last year to school,’ the mother said. ‘Nothing changed and we are still in the same situation.’
It is the tough times, she said, that really make her wonder why she had so many children. She thinks she let it happen out of loneliness. She lost her mother and beloved first husband when she was in her 20s.
‘I am not sure, but sometimes I think that I gave birth to so many children because I was left with no really close people very early,’ Galyak said. ‘And I always loved children. I dreamt about becoming a teacher and working with children even when I was a small girl.’
But now the tiny woman is tired of life and her inability to provide well enough for her children, in whom she still finds comfort and joy.
‘I hope that it will get better, that something will change,” she said. ‘But I hope and rely only on myself. I do not know what to expect.’
