I don't know how hard it must be to raise a lot of children. In my Mom's family her Mom had 11 kids.5 boys and 6 girls. 3 of my Moms brothers married more than one time. I had 80 cousins. Out of all the girl cousins, only me and one other girl had blue eyes but many of my boy cousins had blue eyes.
My Dad's family consisted of 2 boys and 5 girls.No one in his family had blue eyes.
I don't think I speak for only my family - back then, mothers were home all day, and the older girls helped mom take care of the kids, cook, wash clothes, etc, and she helped mom teach her younger sisters to sew and knit and all that. Meanwhile, the boys helped dad fix cars and appliances, and in my case, take care of cattle, mend fences, and other dairy-farm stuff.
Plus, there wasn't any reliable birth control. My parents were different religions, but both their religions discouraged birth control anyway. And also, just a decade or so before our moms were born, no one could be sure some of their kids wouldn't die of an illness or infection.
This reminds me of a meme that went around for a while; a picture of the rear window of an SUV that had one of those happy family stickers on it with a dad, a mom, and something like half a dozen kids, and someone wrote with their finger in the dirt on the window, "Good grief, get OFF that poor woman!" (i'd have added, "use the free time to wash this filthy car")