My cousin who is the same age as me has got a daughter aged 11. We met up for the first time in years last weekend and talked about life etc and put the world to rights. My cousin has one 11 year old child and said that the reason she didn’t have any more was that she -
“didn’t want there to be any jealousy between them”.
I find this a bit strange and controlling because I’m someone that thinks an only child can thrive without siblings and doesn’t need siblings per se - although not denying that having siblings can often be a wonderful experience- but so can only children have a ‘wonderful experience’ imo - but I think her reasons for having one child are a bit controlling - she doesn’t want to deal with any negative emotions from her child and will be very controlling and demanding to her child if the child expresses any kind of emotion her mother doesn’t like. The child does come across as a bit unhappy and subdued in my opinion.
As I say - having an only child can be wonderful but having one to ‘prevent jealousy’ raises a few alarm bells with me. I feel like with any child, whether they’re an only or one of a huge family with 10+ siblings - will experience negative emotions and they’ve a right to express them and it’s part of their development to learn how to manage them.
AIBU?
For what it’s worth I also wince when people have many children ‘so they can all look out for each other’. I mean it can be a blessing to have a large family as it can to have one child but realistically children from a large family at the end of the day are also individuals and may scatter in adulthood and even if they are geographically close - and in any case it’s not a bad thing for kids even in a huge family to learn how to deal with things on their own!