Reply to Convince me to have more than 1

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Convince me to have more than 1"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We have one almost 5 year old and I will say life really is SO much easier at this point for us than literally everyone else we know with 2+. Part of it is the pandemic, but in general it's just easy and pleasant to have one "big" (meaning, out of the toddler/early preschool years) kid. I really don't know anyone with two kids that would say parenting is "easy and pleasant" at this point. We may spend more time playing with her, but it's much nicer to spend the evening taking turns making up and performing songs about loving your family than dealing with sibling bickering or juggling divided attention even if the kids play together. Our only child was due to circumstances, not by choice, but now that we're a few years in there's a LOT of positives that are becoming more and more obvious. And her class is 1/4 - 1/3 only children, so they're not as uncommon as they used to be.

That said, if you'll regret it, then you should probably just go for it. We still feel like there's a piece of our family missing and that feeling is hard. Not everyone with an only feels that way, particularly if you made the decision not to have another, versus the decision being made for you. But whatever you do, ignore the one million questions/suggestions you're getting about having another. I got them too. They started around 1.5 years, peaked (they were really just constant) around 2-2.5 years old, and were pretty much done by 3.5. Some people are making conversation, some are genuinely trying to "help", and some are just nosy. Regardless, don't let external pressure guide your decision. It's your life and your family, and either way, you and your child will be just fine. [/quote]

Thank you for sharing this. We are in the same boat but with a slightly younger kid. I think one of the hardest things is that I'm not really interested in having conversations with people about fertility stuff. The door is not 100% closed for us but the amount of money we'd have to throw at it to exhaust our options feels impossible, so instead we are shifting to thinking of our family as complete at one kid. But that's not how a lot of other people think about it. People seem to think it's very binary -- either you want another kid or you don't. But it's not that simple. We are happy with our family as it is, we love the idea of growing it bigger, we aren't sure how much more time and money we are willing to spend on making that happen, and in the end we might wind up in the same place. When people ask "are you going to have another?" or even "do you want another?" I wish they would realize that the answer is often not as simple as "yes" or "no".[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics