Sky News presenter Colin Brazier tells why bigger families are best

The Sky News presenter throws open his front door, offers a warm greeting and balances the newest addition to the Brazier brood on his hip.

The 42-year-old is more casually dressed than we’re used to seeing him on screen, wearing a baseball cap to protect his skin from the sun (he has just undergone radiotherapy following the removal of a cancerous growth on his head).

Even with one of the clan out on a play date, there are children, quite literally, everywhere.

They flit from dining room, to lounge to kitchen. They toddle, they crawl, they skip.

One girl toots on a recorder, another waves cheerily on her way to the garden where yet more girls – two dispatched from the neighbour’s house – jump and squeal on a trampoline.

The smell of cooking wafts from the kitchen where Colin’s wife Jo – once Sky’s foreign editor and senior manager at news agency Reuters – is making dinner.

With six children (five under the age of seven) the 47-year-old has given up her career to dedicate herself fully to family life.

“Sometimes I think we need an interactive white board to log where everyone is and what clubs and activities they’ve got planned,” she laughs, clearly only half joking.

Narrowly avoiding the dog, we negotiate our way to the dining room where Colin pulls up a chair and hastily clears some space on the table. He is still juggling the baby, apologising profusely for the ‘mess’ and tasking one of his daughters with locating a dummy.

These are not the surroundings we associate with intrepid reporter Colin.

Sky News viewers are more used to seeing the award-winning journalist, suited and serious, reading a bulletin or broadcasting from the midst of a war zone (he was covering the American invasion of Iraq when his second child Agnes was born in 2003).

But today he is the picture of domesticity.

He and Jo never really planned such a big family, he says, although as practising Catholics (“which clearly makes us mentalists”) it was probably inevitable.

“We both wanted three children, actually. But we saw how much the kids got from each other.”

He’s so convinced of the benefits of larger families, he’s written a research paper on the subject.

“Because of the explosion of only children, we’re starting to see a culture develop where children are absolutely wrapped in cotton wool,” he says.

“When parents put all their eggs in one basket it adds to that pressure cooker in which a generation of children are becoming increasingly risk averse. I think that’s really damaging.

“There’s a growing body of serious statistical data showing looming problems with children who have not had the corners knocked off by abrasive contact with siblings.

“You learn stuff from your brothers and sisters: how to negotiate, how to defer gratification. You don’t get spoiled, because there’s a queue.

“If you’re a younger member of the family you have to learn how to crack jokes to avoid being oppressed. You learn communication skills in bigger families.

“Edith, our eldest is 11 and was an only child until Agnes, 7, came along. There’s definitely been an evolution in Edith’s character which I suspect is from having to share things.”

And, he continues, there are medical benefits too.

“Our kids share bedrooms out of necessity but we’re very relaxed about that. A doctor told me recently that sharing bedrooms and sharing germs from a very young age has benefits for the immune system. Asthma, eczema and hay fever are all at much lower rates among children with siblings and there’s evidence to suggest it may even lower the risk of certain types of cancer.”

So the kids are happier, healthier and better adjusted. But what about mum and dad?

Managing the laundry, mealtimes and simply keeping on top of after school commitments must be akin to a military operation.

“You have to industrialise parenting,” says Colin who grew up in a family of six.

“You find the older kids all pitch in. They are forced to learn domestic skills.

“Travel is a big problem. We’ve just bought a big VW transporter, which is a mini bus really. We can’t do holidays so day trips are very important. A holiday for us is when a friend or a family member stays for a few days to help a little bit.”

Other people are often quick to pass judgement on the Brazier’s large family.

“There is an element of people making fun, of coming up to you and asking if they’re all yours.

“It would be very easy to take offence but it’s completely understandable – people feel able to comment.

Often it’s done with humour but sometimes there’s quite a sneering tone. Jo gets asked if she’s a childminder quite regularly.

“My grandmother had nine children and not that long ago it would have been relatively normal but it’s not anymore.

“Recently people have started saying ‘Oh you can stop now you’ve got a son’. But we wanted a big family, it wasn’t a quest for a boy.

“I don’t want to snap to offence nor do I want sympathy when I talk about the hardships. We’ve chosen to have a big family and the privations that go with it are privations that we’ve chosen.

“And the consolations are there long term. We fully expect, by the time we stop work, to have this unfolding soap opera of our children and their friends and their partners and their children, which as a journalist excites me.

“Watching this domestic drama unfold should hold my interest – it beats getting an allotment.”