Raising a child needs a village AND village needs people to remain a village.

Never.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I do. My parents didn't approve of me having more than two children. I had 3 and I am so glad I did. I now wish we had just gone for a 4th too. I hate the anti-natalist culture of modern life.

With better social supports for--paid maternity leave, subsidized daycare, affordable college--I would have had a third. That's not the society we live in, unfortunately.

Well the societies that offer these benefits have much, much lower salaries and women have even fewer babies than here.

She wants luxuries paid for by other people's paychecks.

I stopped at one. I am a single mom by choice and i never wanted more than that, though several of my (wealthier) smc friends did go for 2 (and a couple of them had twins ). None had 3. I was one of 3 and spent my childhood watching my parents literally counting their pennies. I knew at a very young age I would never have more than 1 child so I would not have to count my pennies.

No. We have two and lavished time, resources and attention on them and it would have been hard to do it at the same level with more kids.

Also there's no guarantee you'll still be with your partner when you think you might be in a position to regret not having more. I'm a teacher and I see a lot of situations where single parents with one or two kids are barely managing. Three or more can be a complete s___show.

Anonymous wrote:Now that your kids are grown - do you wish you had more? I have 2 now and it’s hard in the baby stage but I worry I’ll regret not having a bigger family when they get older.

Adopt later?

I had two bio kids from my first marriage with a miscarriage in between. SS is from DH’s first marriage, but isn’t his bio kid. I had a health issue that made pregnancy life threatening so DH had a vasectomy. He always said he didn’t care about biology. He raised my younger daughter from age 8.

It was not planned, but we adopted a young teen relative of my husband at the start of the pandemic. The missing kid feeling went away.

We have 3 who are high school and college aged and while I don't regret the kid, it's definitely a huge additional expense. Each kid is about $400K for college. Plus all the other expenses of teenage hood: the cost of college visits, SAT prep, camps, sports, lessons, travel, clothing, driving lessons, haircuts, flights, a car (or in our case -time splitting our cars) etc.

We're in a very different spot than friends with our same income who stopped at 2 kids: we'll probably spend a million or more on this third kid over the course of their life and that's a million that people with 2 kids don't have to spend. NO--we don't regret it. But it becomes apparent when your kids are teens are older that it's the total cost per raising each kid is a LOT of money.

No, three was my hope for and that’s what we have. We can afford more but with two careers it would be way more chaotic then it is.

SIL just added an additional kid, whole family's lives are upside down.

Anonymous wrote:This system is made for 2+2 max, another +1 complicates life. Well, may be not if you are very wealthy or poor enough for freebies, not easy for middle and upper middle class.

Yes. For any activity, there is never any true conflict because one parent can go with one child. DH and I have busy careers and 2 has worked on many levels - the scheduling, the patience and time needed to deal with each kid’s problems, the amount of attention available to each kid, the college savings needed.

I had also wanted a third but if I honestly think about it, it was the image of a movie Thanksgiving and Christmas, with all the adult kids around the table. Those are two days of the year, and no guarantee that we would have even that.

I’m a better mom with two. No one feels neglected, and we have had some great times together. (Not that kids in large families are neglected. I deal with a lot of anxiety and I would not be a good mom spread across three. Two was right for us.)

Absolutely not. More babies = always better.

I love my two and do not regret stopping after they were born (twins). Life has taken a difficult turn with DH's health and we could have not anticipated it back then so I am thankful we were able to cover college. That would not have been the case with three.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have one and for a variety of reasons never tried for a second. Never regretted it for one second.

+1 He's a young adult now. Absolutely no regrets.

Same. Our one and only will be starting college in the fall. Looking forward to getting to know her as a young adult.

Anonymous wrote:Have one 'good one' and never thought about having more. If she doesn't have a kid, that's fine by me. I'm not pining for grandkids.

Same here! No regrets!

Anonymous wrote:I have one and for a variety of reasons never tried for a second. Never regretted it for one second.

+1 He's a young adult now. Absolutely no regrets.