Reply to Having a Sibling is Overrated

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Reply to "Having a Sibling is Overrated"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Offering a different perspective. I’m a doctor and seeing elderly patients who rely on their siblings in their old age and that bond enduring decades, has made me want to have at least two kids. The bottom line is nothing is guaranteed but the way this country works, usually your family is your support system. Having a sibling *can* mean you have a support system for life. Plus with your siblings comes nieces and nephews, which also serves as a support esp if you don’t have kids of your own. I don’t see as many friends fill that role. [/quote]

I'm an only. Dealing with my aging parents without any siblings is absolutely horrible. I have three kids and would have liked a fourth. Everyone only I know (and I know several) has 3 or more kids, precisely for this reason. For those of you who had onlies, I'm sorry if it worked out that way. But I really don't want to hear "oh it's so much better!" from [i]anyone other than an only child[/i], because kindly, you have no idea what it's like. [/quote]

Kindly, maybe it would be easier if you had fewer kids and more bandwidth? My sibling was zero help and made end of life for my parents harder, and DH is an only and his father dying was as easy as possible because his parents planned really well. Point being, many of us with and without siblings know what it’s like to deal with aging parents on their own and the grass is not always greener.[/quote]

+1, I have three siblings and dealing with them is actually the HARDEST part of my parents getting older, two of them are feuding with each other and use it as a way to lash out at each other, it is miserable.

I don't think being an only is automatically easier, but having siblings does NOT make it automatically easier.

My guess is that having a functional family unit, regardless of size, is the most important thing. If that's one kid and then everyone has a good, functional relationship and the parents make sure they don't financially or emotionally burden their only as they age (which should be easier with fewer mouths to feed and colleges to pay for), I don't see any reason why it would be worse than the situation I am currently in. And if you have multiple kids, I hope you do a better job than my parents did in creating functional sibling relationships, because IME, however you interact as kids follows you into adulthood. My brother and sister have always been hyper-competitive with each other, I've always been the one to quietly fade into the scenery to stay out of it, my little brother has always been the one to crack jokes to mask crushing anxiety and depression caused in part by all the conflict. Well guess what, I just described my life at age 5, age 15, and also the last three visits with my family.[/quote]

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