@Comedycook I think this is true to a point - we have an only and are very conscious of not being overbearing or smothering, and ensuring that DD learns to be independent, amuse herself etc. I definitely agree that this can be a bit harder to achieve with just the one child, as you need to specifically ‘teach’ these skills, rather than having your attention naturally divided by a second or third DC.
But for me it’s two things: firstly, the fact that resources and opportunities for the average family are becoming much scarcer than they were when I was growing up (or even than they were a decade ago) - not just personal finances but education, social mobility, healthcare, housing, even environmental resources are reducing in quality, affordability and accessibility. Just one small example - my brother had free NHS speech therapy back in the ‘80s because he was struggling to pronounce one particular sound properly; now friends whose DC have a severe speech delay or suspected ASD are having to pay privately for speech therapy because we have NHS waiting lists here of at least two years and they aren’t considered severe enough to meet the threshold for urgent help. It’s not at all surprising to me that more families are choosing to focus what resources they do have available on one child.
For us it isn’t even particularly about money really - it’s more about having the time, headspace and flexibility to fight for things that you didn’t used to have to fight for, like healthcare (£175 for private hearing test for DD as she failed her NHS school one but our local NHS trust won’t do any follow up audiology) and decent school places (with one child we have the flexibility to move to an area with a good comprehensive, rather than facing the choice we have now of a super strict academy or super selective grammar school). We always have an eye to the future in terms of helping DD through university, with housing etc - it’s not that we’re wanting to spoil her or pay for everything, but rather that we want her to have the same opportunities we had, but which are now much further out of reach for the average young person.
Secondly it’s seeing how incredibly frazzled and stretched all of our friends who do have 2+ DC (still the norm here) are. If it’s a choice between being too hyper focused or being constantly distracted, torn between the demands of work and home life and feeling constantly guilty, I’m pleased we took the former route! As @NeedMyDress says, many parents nowadays don’t have local family support (most of our friends are in this boat) and are trying to negotiate all this alone. My own parents are local but too elderly to provide any real childcare help and they’re not especially interested anyway. So we’ve cut our cloth accordingly!