@5Zeds
It's true that my daughter is an only child. However, if you look at my original post I said one or two. That will depend on how much money you have. After that it becomes impossible to help them all with their homework to a high standard.
Most of the children at my daughter's school are either only children or have one sibling. She has a close friend who is also studying Medicine who has two siblings, but that wonderful girl was the only one in her family to get into a grammar school. She is the firstborn. The A-level and other requirements for some professional courses are so frightening and terror inducing for parents that some highly performing school is the only way to go.
Of my brothers and sister who have three children each, none of their children have gotten into to a grammar school.
Two of my second brother's children were doing extra curricular activities and, most importantly Kumon Maths when they were in primary school, however, when the third child arrived they dropped everything. I told him to use condoms. He said the condoms were too tight. That's how the third child arrived. Same for my first brother.
I was disappointed, hurt, furious, and my heart was being squeezed by what had happened to his children's Kumon maths. Their first son did very poorly at GCSE and hence, he did not do A-levels.The third child of my first brother did very poorly at GCSE and did not do A-Levels.
On my Ex's side their are two brothers in law who have three children each, none of who have gotten into a grammer school. The eldest has done poorly at GCSE and is now doing an apprenticeship, I believe.
Their is one highly intelligent and very well off sister in law in America who has only one child who is still young. However, she spends a fortune on his education all-round. And their is another sister in law in America with two children and one stepson, however I do not know what their situation is.
My parents are from a country where huge numbers of children do not go to school at at all due to rampant breeding. It is heartbreaking and truly soul destroying.
My dad is a chemical engineer and worked for a multinational company at a high level. He did not help any of the four of us with maths, physics and chemistry even just once. The three of us boys struggled greatly with these subjects. I was the only one to overcome the struggle with these subjects, with the help of a maths teacher at my secondrary school. My brothers did not pass maths and my older brother did not pass his A-levels. My sister was brilliant all round, and, I actually helped my sister with physics. My younger brother did not do A-levels.
My Dad went to produce two other children with a woman that already had four children, and move in with her when I was at university. I have not overcome the highly damaging trauma of the ensuing events till this day. Before that our house was in constant turmoil due to him being in one affair or the other, and my mum had no mothering instinct whatsoever. She was brutish.
How could a parent be so disconnected from the education of his children that they don't know anything about it, whatsoever, until the exam results arrive and the children do poorly. And, this is a parent who had the sheer knowledge and capacity to help, but could not give a fig.
Come to think of it, I could not spell my name at the age of seven, and my parents did not even know.
We cannot afford to let our children down, especially if we're educated. It is a heinous crime!