22 Kids And Counting’s Sue Radford shuts down claim children are ‘spoilt’

Sue Radford shut down the claim that their enormous brood had ever been “spoiled” during a YouTube Q&A session together with husband Noel. The 22 Kids And Counting star read out the controversial question: “Why do you spoil your kids? Why do you think they deserve it?” before dismissing it. “I don’t think that we do spoil our kids. I think that we try to give them a good life,” she shrugged. “They don’t get gifts all the time, they get gifts when it’s their birthday or Christmas and they don’t get anything in between.” She added: “I feel like years ago when we had seven kids, we weren’t quite as financially stable to be able to give them that kind of life, whereas now we are, so it might seem like they do spoil them but I don’t think we do.” Sue Radford shut down claims her kids have been spoiled. (Image: CHANNEL 5 / INSTAGRAM) The Radfords earn a living from the family bakery business as well as earnings from YouTube, their Channel 5 show and related business ventures, giving curious members of the public an insight into how one of Britain’s biggest families live. Noel added during the latest YouTube interview that the “only treats” their children get on a regular basis are snacks on “Sweetie Friday”. He added that they do go on holidays – with Sue recently joining three of her daughters for a break in New York , when they gleefully hit the shops – but typically their getaways are less glamorous than that. “We go in the camper van and things like that [on holidays], but that’s just family time. We don’t view it to be spoiling them, you know?” he explained. Sue Radford and husband Noel have had 22 children, who are aged between three and 34 years old (Image: CHANNEL 5) Meanwhile, hard-working Noel has been a professional baker for over 25 years and runs the Radford Pie Company close to their home in Heysham, Lancashire, so holidays are far from an everyday event. The effort has paid off, and they have transformed from a family crippled with debt due to the foot and mouth related agricultural crisis, to a happy and financially successful one. Sue explained during an episode of the TV show: “I can’t even describe it, it just caused so much stress. “You used to go to bed thinking about the debt, you’d wake up thinking about the debt, you’d wake up during the night thinking about the debt… The family’s income is derived from their successful bakery, plus their TV show and YouTube channel (Image: CHANNEL 5) “If anything was going to have caused us to get a divorce, it was this… I genuinely thought our marriage was not gonna pull through that.” Sue first got pregnant at 13, while Noel was 17 – and their brood now ranges in age from three to 34 years old. Noel had originally had a vasectomy after his wife’s ninth pregnancy, but then the couple had a change of heart and got it reversed, leading to a further 13 births.