I don’t have any kids, yet.
I am a twin and so is my husband
Yes, we think it would be great for our future wee one to have a brother or sister, cause we can’t imagine our childhood without our brothers. But it isn’t written is stone that it must be this way.
What is this assumption that the kid will be somehow ‘damaged’ if there are no siblings?Women too often do what society expects of them instead of making their own choices. Now there is a quota on babies? Gee, maybe you should have 10, then your whole life and identity will be wrapped up in your kids and you won’t have anything else to talk about at lunch except how many diapers you change in a day. You will become such an interesting person.
I think having one and getting on with your life is a wise decision. The next time someone says to you, 'but your kid won’t have anyone to play with…" tell them that’s what cousins and neighbors are for.
I had only once child. She’s going to be 19 this
summer and coming here to visit in Sweden.
She’s a little eccentric and very much her own person…
I like to think she takes after mom…
[[I basically got mixed opinions, but I told them if they wanted to carry a baby for nine months puking every day and go through the horrible labor and delivery that I did, that they can go right ahead. ]]
Well, I got two kids, but only produced one of them. With the adoption process, you go through a different kind of hell.
There are few generalizations you can make about the “best” family situation. Having a sibling who torments and ridicules you constantly is not necessarily better than being an only child. Having two parents who fight all the time isn’t usually better than having only one parent.
Wow. Touchy people. The title of the category is “in my humble opinion,” and that’s all it was, I’m not judging anybody, but was just a little bugged by the idea of a woman with more than one child being a ‘baby making machine’ and did a bad job hiding it.
Some wonderful parents have one child, some have 5. Whatever. Don’t bother to reply to me, I’m not coming back to this thread anyway.
tlw: I am happy for you. For me, however, I feel I am too old to have one myself. I had to wake up every 3 hours for 3 years to feed my son. Yes, he was on the bottle that long, my mistake.
!
The day I took him off it, he slept thru the night!
Cranky Jr is an only child. Granted he’s only three, but right now we intend to keep him an only. I was on a moms list with about 40 other moms who had babies at the same time, and now he and only one other child born in April/May of 1999 are “onelies.” Everyone else has either had another or their April/May '99 baby was not their first.
I’m not buying it. For every benefit of having a sibling, there is also a cost. More time with siblings, but less parental attention, etc. I know normal onlies and spoiled non-onlies. And I know adult children who aren’t getting any help from their siblings when it comes to dealing with elderly parents. So none of those arguments are compelling enough to me, personally, to sway me from my opinion about what happens to feel right in our particular family.
My sons’ godparents are considering having a 6th child, and I have two good friends with six right now. They’ve got great families and a big number is as right for them as a small number is for us. I really see it as a personal decision and a personal issue, and I get a mite bit annoyed when people think they must try to talk us into having baby #2. But maybe that’s another “cost” of having an only: lots of people secretly (and not so secretly) thinking you’re messing your kid up. LOL
