'Balancing the family'- what does it mean to you?

[Enid]

After reading another thread where a poster with two boys would like a girl to 'balance the family', I wondered what on earth that phrase really means. As the mother of three girls I don't feel that my family is 'unbalanced', nor would I if they were boys. I have a friend with four boys and they are all different and pull against and with each other in the relentless tide of family dynamics.

Are families with two sexes of children more 'balanced'? What does the phrase mean to you?

I think she meant that she wanted to complete her fantasy- but I always think that setting up a child to have to fulfill lots of expectations (at which stage I would expect everything to go horribly wrong) is not good imo.

I think a balanced family is one where every child feels equally important and one where there is enough time for everyone. I think our family has been unbalanced for the last 8 months or so (with ds2 losing out)- since ds3 became mobile as ds3 and ds1 in particular need so much attention. Now ds3 is walking well, running and almost as safe as the other 2 on stairs it's balancing again. Ds2 and ds3 form one kind of block, with ds1 forming the other.

I see your point jimjams bit except in difficult circumstances like yours a lot of that is down to parenting. We are probably going through a brief, trivial period of unbalance on those grounds because of potty training DD.

ds2 has not reacted well to it either tbh, think its important that one doesn't continually lose out.

I think it's sad if people have this image of a perfect family, whether that is a certaing number of each sex, certain age gaps, whatever. If you have such strong ideas about what you want your children to be like, surely you are destined to be disappointed by the reality. We might all like a certain "type" of child but, thank god, we get what we're given.