One kid it’s a hobby, and two children is parenting

[nov202]

From an article about Meghan Markle’s recent appearance on Ellen:

The duchess told chat show host Ellen DeGeneres that “Someone told H (Harry) and I that when you have one kid it’s a hobby, and two children is parenting.

I was a bit taken aback by this comment. I have one child and very much consider myself to be myself a parent, not a hobbyist.

www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/people/arid-40747842.html

It's obviously bollocks. Most people find parenting their first hardest but the second has to slot in with the first.

I've heard "it's more than double the work" (it's not) and before I had dc was told "one changes your life 2 ruins it completely"

People say some shit.

There’s no need for the sarcasm at all @middleager

Twins is a totally different kettle of fish. Megan doesn’t have twins AFAIK.

I think twins is different again to two children with an age gap. It’s so much more expensive, you don’t get double maternity leave (imo, you should or at least extended) and a thousand other issues that you know more about than me I am sure

but none apply to MM with a 3 year age gap.

I think hobby is a really crass way of describing a child. Having one child was nothing like a hobby.

However, it was a very real experience for me that one child fitted in to my existing life and two children utterly subsumed me and became my life. I couldn't have imagined how profound the shift was when I had one child. I imagine the number of children it takes to overwhelm you varies from person to person (clearly because I would simply lie down and die if I had 7 kids, whereas some people actively choose that many).

I still wouldn't say this to someone with one child because I'm not a total dickhead.

Well, at least it makes a nice change from ‘An only is a lonely!’ which was my famously tactless MiL’s response to DH and I telling her I was pregnant at an age that made it unlikely we would have another.

Said with an air of great profundity, too, as if she were quoting Voltaire on some existential dilemma.

It's an ignorant comment and despite her private education and university degree, Meghan's grammar is poor. It should be "Somebody told Harry and me".

I can't comment on how hard 2 are compared to one as I couldn't have a second, but all I can say is that having a child who never slept as a baby and was constantly on the go/requiring entertainment/needed close supervision so as not to kill/harm herself (she's currently being assessed for ADHD), along with crippling PND (and a full time job and failing marriage) certainly didn't feel like a hobby.

I agree with the poster above who said that, as a vocal supporter of people with mental health problems, it was a stupid thing to say publicly, and pretty offensive as it completely dismisses the effort and experiences of parents of one child.

@MeanMrMustardSeed

Such a smug and crass thing to say.

I agree. But that’s like most things she comes out with!

To be fair to the Royals, this is why they’ve always been very guarded about the pronouncements they make. If they make a speech, it’s been very carefully considered. These off the cuff remarks are fraught with danger; why should Meghan or the Duchess of Cambridge or Princess Anne (or whoever) be some expert on parenting? And when you come from a position of privilege, it’s very easy to make comments that other people find smug or out of touch. But that’s why the Royals should stick to public speaking and supporting charities, rather than giving “look at meee” interviews.

She should be ashamed of herself as someone who has experienced miscarriage. Reprehensible.

To those posters jumping on this with comments about millionaires and childcare - MM was just quoting what someone told her. She wasn't saying that was her view! We don't know who actually said it!

@33goingon64

To those posters jumping on this with comments about millionaires and childcare - MM was just quoting what someone told her. She wasn't saying that was her view! We don't know who actually said it!

So, just to get things straight, if Meghan repeats something she has been told when we don’t know who originally said it, we just ignore it?

Two might be harder, but it doesn't make having one any less of parenting. You could also argue with two, they can entertain each other and play together, especially the age gap she has, whereas with one, you don't have that luxury so you are by default the playmate.

I can’t get worked up about this. I do often think that for some families the first baby doesn’t have that much impact on daddy but the second really does. So maybe that’s her perspective, as someone who might not be doing all the caring responsibilities. Maybe she had the ‘fun stuff’ which tends to be more ‘daddy territory’ and didn’t worry about naps and weaning and all that crap. I know from our household and watching friends have children that baby #1 is oh so much fun for daddy and when baby #2 comes along things are quite different.

@33goingon64

To those posters jumping on this with comments about millionaires and childcare - MM was just quoting what someone told her. She wasn't saying that was her view! We don't know who actually said it!

She chose to use the quotation and said it out loud in a publicly aired interview.

She wasn't raising it to dismiss it, so there is no reason to assume it is anything other than a view she is endorsing.

I do kinda agree with the nature of the comment, going from 1 to 2 has been mental as I have to now sort out stuff going on between the two kids etc but using the word hobby is not right 😂😂 one child is a handful in itself 🤯🤯 x

I don’t doubt two kids is harder than one in many ways (I am stopping at one partly because I’m not convinced I’d cope with more). However describing one child as a ‘hobby’ is crass, and part of a wider cultural tendency to view one-child families as weird or defective.

I was really surprised that she said this. It is an incredibly insensitive phrase which she chose to repeat in order to illustrate how she feels life has changed since her dd's birth.

It's a very different phrase to something like 'one is one, two is twenty' which would still have irritated many to hear, but to use of the word "hobby" in comparison to "parenting" in one child families is crass. I doubt the person who said it to her, would have said it before Lili's birth.

Regardless of who said it, it’s a pretty dismissive thing to say. Mind you, I have one child with additional needs so I’d qualify for the patent, patronising little headtilt of ‘poor little you, poor little you’ Royal concern, which they all do to try and signify that they give a shiny shit about the boring little concerns of us plebs, at least for the few seconds that they actually speak to you before being helicoptered off to never give you another millisecond of thought. Which always sets my teeth on edge. So there’s that.

If anyone but Meghan had said this there would have been a lighthearted debate.
I wouldn't have used the word hobby but it's certainly true that when you have had your first baby you could, say, attend a meal in a restaurant with family or friends, with your newborn in a car seat next to the table. If they wake, cry or need feeding there are two of you to deal with it. By the time your second has arrived and is the same age, there is absolutely no chance of you being able to attend a similar event with a newborn and a toddler.

In the first example you were a couple with a baby, by the second you are Parents. Capital P intentional.

Leaving out the crassness of the statement and who gave it and obviously child rearing isn't a hobby for anyone!

Isn't it just that your parenting is different for different children due to them being individuals? That what works for one in terms of discipline, education, encouragement, support etc doesn't work for another and you have to adapt your approach.

If anyone but Meghan had said this there would have been a lighthearted debate.

I really disagree. It’s worse that it is her who repeated it but it would be a shitty thing to say whoever was saying it. I think a lot of people expected more of her because they expected that her understanding of finding parenting her first child difficult and her experience of miscarriage would have made her more sensitive. It’s because I expect more of her that it’s worse.

Your Parent with a capital P comment is pretty fucking crass too and you’re not Meghan, to my knowledge.

Just stupid.

I know another saying "1 child makes you parents, the 2nd child makes you a family"

I can't decide which saying is more toxic, but whoever came up with them can go to hell

As a parent to one child (and we won't be having anymore) referring to our parenting as a hobby is pretty offensive but it was meant as a joke although not at all funny. She's just a bit of an idiot.

I wonder if she would have repeated this saying after her miscarriage. And what if she had found out that she couldn’t have another child, as many people do

I don't care what she said but I do care that despite wanting to distance herself as much as she can from the RF and appropriate RF behaviour she still liked to be referred to as the Duchess of Sussex. Fucking weird.