To think lots of people have a second child just because it's 'the done thing' ?

[DairyMilkMaid]

DS has just turned 3, which means the question of whether or not to have another baby has been coming up a lot more recently. DH and I are leaning more towards being one and done (for lots of reasons) but we're still not 100% certain.

I met up with a friend this morning and she asked if we thought we'd have any more DCs. I said I wasn't sure and asked her how she knew she was ready for her second. She sort of shrugged and said 'I wasn't, but it's just what you do isn't it?'. When I asked what she meant, she basically said that it never even occurred occurred her to stop at one, and she never felt the urge to have a second, she just....did.

I was a bit surprised, but thinking about it, I've seen this attitude a few times. Another friend of mine really struggled with PPD and her relationship nearly broke down, but she went on to have a second. Her whole pregnancy she was depressed and was dreading the baby being born, and though she loves her DD2 dearly, she quite often says life would have been easier if she'd stopped at one. She never wanted a second either, she just didn't want her DD to be an only child.

You see threads on here sometimes where women had a horrendous experience of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood, but are reluctantly going for a second, and I can't help but wonder why. It's like for some people it's not even an option to just have one child.

For me personally I didn’t want an only child as when we go who will my daughter have? She is an IVF baby and years in waiting for her. I have struggled with not giving her a sibling, to be fair though it’s not all about her I really wanted a big family. Recently I’ve made the decision not to have anymore due to health related issues and my age. It’s not worth the possibility of making my meds not work or me becoming ill and the impact it would have on the daughter I do have. I think that people are entitled to make the decisions they want regarding no children/5children it’s their life! If you feel happy with one then there should be no need or pressure to go beyond that. We have friends who made the decision to stop at one after some very tricky health scares with mum and baby. They both said if that happened again they don’t know if their relationship could survive and that’s their decision so good for them! My dd is extremely happy and now doesn’t even want a sibling she’s getting older and can definitely see the pros and cons for her friends 🤣 2 of my close friends are only children and both really lovely women. One of them once told me you can’t pick your family but you pick your friends and everyone in my life is someone important to me and someone I chose. This has been a really comforting thought to me.

We are one and done, entirely down to quality of life for everyone (space in London is expensive), nursery fees were like a separate mortgage. If you are fussy about education, you’ve got private school fees to contend with. If you want your kid to have extra curriculars, another load of monthly direct debits. The whole thing feels like a con to us, though we adore our DD. I wouldn’t want to compromise on quality, so for us, so it wasn’t the right choice, without adjusting many outgoings. A friend said to me that their sister has been a lifelong best friend to them, so they couldn’t bear to imagine their DC without a trusty co-pilot. I didn’t have this relationship with my sibling, so maybe that too influenced my feelings.

Well I had my first child because it seemed like the thing to do I can't say I ever felt a huge longing to be pregnant or have a child but it was always something I knew I would do and once I had one I knew I wanted another because i wanted my first child to have someone to share their childhood with.
Some of my close family members have died and having siblings to share those memories with was extremely important to me. I didn't want my child to have to go through something like that without siblings to share their memories with and help with arrangements etc
So for me having my first child wasn't a conscious decision but having my second definitely was

I’m an only child and really didn’t want my DC to be an only child. When I was growing up all the attention was on me. And therefore all the pressure, all the frustration, all the anger too, nothing to dilute any of it. For my parents, they obviously struggled with me not having a sibling to spend time with, everything was on them, for example on holidays I had no ready made play mate, weekends all them. Now I’m older and my parents are getting older I am really feeling not having a sibling bond. My parents have been through some harder times recently and there’s no one else there to help. Really didn’t want this for my DC it was no kids or more than 1 for me.

As a only child I was made very comfortable when Iost my parents , I would have swapped every penny for some one to share the heartbreak with

I think there is a certain amount of guilt/pressure that we don't want to leave our first born without a sibling, 'company'. Now there is no guarantee that they will get on and enrich eachother's lives but that is the hope. I come from a big family (5 siblings) and we annoyed eachother growing up but we all get on really well now and socialise regularly and our kids (cousins) are friends. I love coming from a big family now. I had a second and it did actually make life easier once they were up a bit because despite being a girl and a boy and over a 3 year age gap they play together (mostly 😂) well. They share all those magic moments of Christmas, holidays, days out etc. To me, more children is more love and more fun and I know that also brings more money needed and more work. I had my kids late. They both make me laugh and smile every day (as well as occasionally make me want to tear my hair out 😂) If I was younger I would have considered a third.

Having had our sons here over Christmas, I can’t imagine having only one. Seeing them bear-hugging, laughing like drains over in-jokes and shared memories definitely warmed our cockles.

To be honest, we should all start considering it a sort of civic duty at this point. Have you seen the birthrate? We're heading for disaster if it doesn't increase.

I’ve never ever met people being “weird” about only children. They are far more portable and less disruptive to the adults’ lives than two or more kids, which is where the real compromise beings ime. I certainly didn’t have a second child because I was expected to, but because I wanted to (and DH of course) but equally many of my friends stopped at one and that’s fine too. Lucky to have the choice 🤷🏻‍♀️

A civic duty? What if it is something you don’t actually want?

I liked the idea of multiple kids, but I stopped at one.

First, DH only wanted one.
Second, I didn't want two (would have had 3+ but definitely didn't want to replicate my own sibling dynamic).
Third, and most important, I love my child but I'm not as patient as I'd like to be and had awful PND and know that I'd have been a worse mum with more kids than I am now and it just felt unacceptable to me to willingly become a worse mother to my kid/s even if only for a period of time.

In terms of the above, I would have been ready when DC was about 8yo but by then DC was too much fun and I didn't want to staddle the age gaps with baby soft plays vs bigger days out, lagging a pushchair around instead of riding nikes together etc.

In short, what I wanted vs what was best for me and my family were two different things.

🤣

Lie on your back and think of England, eh? 🤣🤣🤣

In all seriousness @LarryMiddleman do you really think I'd do better to bring up multiple impoverished children with individually worse quality of childhood for the sake of the taxman?

What are you suggesting, @LarryMiddleman? Fines for the childfree and those who only have one child? Or financial incentives to reproduce?

@Cakeandcardiowhat a thoughtless thing to say. I was incredibly broody and desperate to have a baby, so we did. When he was 3/4 yo I had some quite severe mental health issues, was put on medication and spent a couple of years in therapy. After I came through it all, if we were to have another one I’d have had to come off of the medication and there was a very real risk that my mental health could deteriorate again. Plus throwing in no sleep, hormonal changes, the stress of a school age child and a newborn etc, it would have been very very easy for me to go from being a good parent to our only child, to a terrible, unwell mum to 2 kids. We made the choice to have only one so that I could stay on top of my MH and continue to be a good mum. And I never felt that same broodyness again, so more than one child was never the path for me. Our DS is happy, with lots of friends and cousins, and though he has asked for a sibling before in the past, I know that what he needs more than a sibling is a stable, happy home and a mother who isn’t so overcome with anxiety and depression that she can hardly raise him. And as someone whose brother has only ever brought stress into my life, I can confirm that having a sibling is not a guaranteed route to a happy childhood.

I'm not suggesting fines or anything, maybe just that we as a society stop burying our head in the sand about it. What do you all expect to happen in the next 40 or 50 years if the birth rate doesn't go up?

And yes, the first response which said "what if I don't want one" pretty much sums up the problem. That's a very individualistic answer to what is actually a societal problem. You might as well say "and what if I don't want to pay tax?"

I don’t think increasing the number of unwanted children in the world is a sensible answer to any societal problem.

It’s against the law not to pay tax if you earn enough. It is not against the law to not have/want a child. Some of us are unable to.

What's your answer then? An endless loop of increasing taxes and mass immigration which repeats ad nauseam as the population ages?

Of course people who can't have them is a different issue altogether. This thread is about the decision on whether to have more than one. Not a single poster above me considered that there might be anything other than personal, individualistic reasons to say either yes or no.

What is YOUR answer? How do you propose we make people have more children?

I don't know! But maybe if people started thinking about it as a societal time bomb that would be a good start, instead of only ever talking about the very individual concerns of "oooh, I might need a bigger car" etc etc.

Absolute nonsense. Completely agree OP. It’s incredibly societal and expected - I know quite a few people who have had another child and should have stuck at one, they are miserable. I have one and have never felt the desire to have more, she is a happy social outgoing child. I think saying parents of one are not suited to parenthood is utterly insulting. MNetters like the above love the narrative that siblings are going to be ‘best friends’ and only children are lonely with selfish parents = not true. I would rather be a great mum to one, happy and raising a happy child, than a less than average, stressed out and less present mum to two!

One was enough and our daughter loves being Queen. No sibling to threaten her rule

Are you actually proposing people have children they don’t want ‘for civic reasons’? And are you planning an extra tax to pay the therapy bills of those unwanted children who were born because their parents obeyed an initiative to ‘solve a societal problem’?

Absolutely. The amount of judgement we get for wanting only one child is insane. We have always said one and done.

We’re both not onlys ourselves but may as well have been. There’s a huge age gap between myself and my other siblings and DHs parents divorced and kept a child each. We both have no complaints.

We are able to give our child everything they want and our quality of life hasn’t been impacted at all by one child but I can’t say the same if we were going to go on to have another. I’m not sure why people can’t understand that because everyone declares “oh you must have another”!