Seeing lots of single child family

[Guffpuff]

We went for a long walk today around a reservoir. It's quite a popular place. We saw a large number of single child families. We feel that it's becoming more and more common now. Could be due to Cost of living and inflation or mix of lots of reasons.
Is this something you're observing as well?

@bopbey i suppose there’s more intervention as the interventions available, iyswim.
200 years ago women just died in childbirth and that was the risk everyone knew about, but now we can (thankfully!) pretty much all be saved but with the trauma that comes with all the procedures.

But you and @PumpkinBum3 are right, the push for birth plans and telling us we can all have a ‘birth experience’ are horseshit. Perhaps we all just need to be told it’s probably going to be horrible so we can be mentally prepared!

Plan: calm home birth

Reality: 2 weeks late, induction, assisted birth which left me with PTSD and both of us with permanent damage (hers is minor, mine took the best part 10 painful years To become bearable ).

Bur even the friends who had the perfect home birth only had one child.

I have a 14 month old and would LOVE a second, but financially, we cannot afford it despite our joint household income of £95k.

Do you rent? You can afford it once the oldest is in school

I had a planned CS with my 2nd & honestly I thought it was going to be easy & pain free. Loads of people on here say it's a dream but I guess I didn't have too bad a first experience to compare the two. I hated it & then thought there was something wrong with me for hating it because some women desperately want one

I'm pretty certain we're sticking to one. For many reasons;
Pregnancy was genuinely the worst time of my life, I had HG they whole time and I now suffer from PTSD from that whole experience, I'm talking hospital several times for iv and bedridden for weeks due to extreme motion sickness (and I'm 80% likely to suffer the same or worse than the first time).
Birth is just, well you guys know!
The newborn phase is tough, breastfeeding issue, tongue tie, sleep deprivation, colic and silent reflux all rolled up into one non stop screaming ball.
Post natal depression is fucking horrible and I never want to experience it again.
The childcare costs, mortgages, cost of living is absurdly high.
The environment, and the state of this world makes me so nervous to bring any more children into it, I already feel guilty about bringing my dd into a world that seems to have little hope.
Honestly other than wanting a sibling for dd, I can't think of any reasons to have another.

We are a single child family by choice. To be honest it still feels like a bit of a ‘brave choice’ in our circle - the standard two children is very much the norm around us, and DD is the only single child in her class at school (which we and she have struggled with a little).

However this summer we spent two weeks in Germany/Austria/Italy and it was very marked how normalised one child families were there - we barely came across any families with 2+ children and the standard ‘family’ ticket for most of the attractions we visited was for two adults and one child, rather than the 2 + 2 that’s normal here.

I’m stopping at two because of age and no support network, but if I was younger and extremely wealthy (personal chef, nannies) I might’ve had 1-2 more.

Amongst my peers by far the biggest group is childless in long-term relationships.
Second biggest is marrieds with 2-3.
The rarest group is those with an only.

@bopbey no, we do own our own house. However, the 6% interest rates and the increase in everything makes things tough. We couldn’t afford two in nursery when it costs £1,100 a month (ours is in the cheapest nursery around too).

@PumpkinBum3 does anyone actually get their birth plan even opened!

@NameChangeAsICouldBeOverReacting hence why I said yoh could when one is in school

I'm a lone parent. One child was a choice. I could have afforded another.

I wanted us to be able to travel easily together and send her to private school etc.

None that I know of! Bring fake flamed candles to soothe you….. 😂

Exactly what I was going to say. There was once a time women just knew they would be the ones to bring up children and keep the household running. They might as well have a few as they certainly didn't have careers.

Now women want more than that. I certainly do. I'm not content just being at home changing nappies. I have goals and dreams and having more than one would massively slow that down, especially now my DD is nearly 4.

I’d also add that I suspect that the shift to having just the one child, if it’s a thing at all, is a very recent phenomenon.

My core group of friends all had their children younger than us, so there’s a 10 year gap between their DC (who are now teens) and our DD. Whenever we discuss anything child-related: nursery fees, schools, housing, availability of extra-curricular opportunities or even just the the general ‘vibe’ and politics around child-rearing, it is clear that the landscape has completely and utterly changed over the past decade. I assume this is due to an unholy cocktail of austerity, the cost of living crisis, the pandemic, environmental concerns and Brexit, but whatever the cause their experiences are almost unrecognisable compared to ours, and I think new and prospective parents are assimilating this.

I have a 3 and 1 year old both in nursery and have observed this. I am friendly with a fair amount of mums and among the mums with 3 year old of the 7 in the group, 3 of us have gone on to have a 2nd, 4 are stopping @ 1.

Among this group it seems to be age, they are all 35+ having prioritised careers first and saw they wouldn't want to do it again. I am under 30 so not a concern. We originally planned to have 3 but are stopping at 2 due to financial concerns

My best friend has a 3 year old, she is also 1 and done

Same dynamic in my family. Two older brothers very close in age, didn’t want their annoying sister hanging around with them.

I just have one DS. I was 36 and even though there was time to have one more, there were many reasons why we chose not to.

I’m happy with our decision to stop at one (cost alone for one) but I won’t lie, I do sometimes have pangs of regret when I see friends DC, older now, having a great relationship with their siblings.

DS now 17, has never been bothered, his cousins, who he used to spend more time with, bickered constantly (boy/girl) and DS was always relieved when he came home, stating how glad he was that he didn’t have a younger annoying sibling.

Were the parents older?
My friends with one had them late in life and either couldn't have any more/struggled to have one or decided not to due to their age.
Will be interesting to see the ONS figures in about 10 years to see if it is a trend.

Ireland is an outlier.

https://www.onlychildworld.com/blog-posts/how-many-families-worldwide-have-only-one-child

Oh sorry it was clear, but buggers up on MN!

@PumpkinPie2016 Just spotted that we both mentioned noticing all the one-child families on holiday in Austria - it’s quite striking isn’t it! Noticed the same in Germany/Italy, and I’m pretty sure there were generally no other ‘hidden’ siblings around as it was mostly other holidaying families eating meals together, or visiting child-friendly attractions as a family of three.

Having nursed mybmum through cancer last year I was so glad to have the support of my siblings who were all experiencing the same grief. For that reason I chose to have more than 1. Hopefully they will be a support to each other in later life although I do appreciate that they may well end up living separate lives.

Did you ask them if they had only one?

Some of the people I've met have large age gaps between their children. The children can be full siblings or half siblings. The older ones being 16+ especially if they are adults never go on holiday with their younger sibling as they are at a different stage in life.

This isn't actually a new thing as large age gaps were a common occurrence in large families where I grew up. What is new is the number of children where this happens is smaller e.g. 2-3 rather than 4+. (In fact one of my siblings has a large age gap between his 3 children. )

I had a 'perfect' home birth but it was still traumatic and took until my child was Year 4 before I felt ready to consider another and it's been a long journey. In a way it's the best of both worlds having a huge age gap as no.1 being a teen is more independent, and no.2 will effectively be an only from quite a young age when no.1 moves out. It spreads out the costs too. I have the same guilt over loneliness, but then in adulthood, they'll have each other. Many of my friends have been years older than me. Overall, I think it's a good way to have 2 children. I couldn't have coped physically or financially with 2 closer in age.

Looking at @VeloVixen chart, I think the 2008 recession is when the decline started so you may be right.

We stopped at 1. I remember my sibling relationship as competitive and argumentative. 2 year age gap. As adults, our relationship extends to birthday and Christmas cards and that's the closest we have ever been. I wont put my child through it. She gets two parents full attention so she is never lonely, has loads of cousins and friends, school, every class and club she wants to go to, holidays to Disney, she is the centre of our world. She is also bloody lovely.

I'm not risking complications of a second. I know I would love number 2 if they were here but I'm not risking our perfect life because we are so lucky I just dont know how things could possibly be better.

The speculation along the lines of "What if there was an older sibling who wasn't there?" is a bit silly. Just look at the ONS data, which for last year says that among families with dependent children, 44 % were single child households. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2022

For people who find this doesn't tally with their local experience, it's probably because it isn't a uniform pattern across the country. Some areas might have mostly one child families and in other areas 2 + is still the norm.

It's going to be more likely that people stick at one child if they are living in a very expensive area where housing and nurseries are insanely expensive, and most people move to the area rather than grew up there, so don't have a village/support network nearby. In other areas, where larger houses are more affordable, and people are more likely to be near extended family, then 2+ might be the norm.