On the Very Personal (and Sometimes Painful) Process of Family Planning.
Lately there’s been a lot of conversation in one of the parenting groups I’m in — the conversation is about the judgment and misconceptions that many people have about families with only one child. It’s astounding to me how free so many people (and let’s be honest, it’s usually women) feel to berate their friends, co-workers, family members, or even total strangers in line at the grocery store over their choice to have only one child. The fact is that this judgmental person, whether they be family, stranger, or acquaintance, often has NO clue about why the family has only one child. The reasons can range from infertility, to financial instability, to other issues in the family, to the fact that maybe they’re just perfectly happy with ONE child. Imagine that! Yet, the reasons don’t seem to matter to these busy bodies. They still feel the need to pry into a situation that is generally private and has nothing to do with them. They think they know what’s best. And what’s best (for everyone, apparently) is to have more than one child — preferably at least one boy and at least one girl.
The claims I’ve heard people make about the personalities and psyches of only children: selfish, narcissistic, anti-social, uncivilized, deranged, entitled. The list goes on.
I once had a friend who believed that my decision to allow my child bodily autonomy and not force him to hug and kiss anyone ever (including other children, or members of his own family) was because I had a warped psychology that wanted to cater to my only child’s every whim and wish. Not true. And most people who know me and know my ex-partner with whom I co-parent — know that our child certainly does not get everything he wants in life. They know that kindness and politeness are values we consistently try to stress with our son. If we had ten children we still wouldn’t force them to ever accept a hug or a kiss from anyone ever if they did not want it.
I won’t name all the very sane and “normal” people I know and love who happen to be only children, but trust me, there are several. And though it is tempting to name all the very entitled, selfish, and narcissistic people I know who grew up with siblings, I’ll refrain. Many studies back up the idea that only children are no worse off psychologically than children with siblings. See Lauren Sandler’s book “One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child and the Joy of Being One” or her excerpt in the NYT.
It is not universally better for all families to have more than one child. In fact there are many benefits to having only one. But I’m not going to go into those now. Family planning, it seems to me, is a personal issue and one every woman and every family should decide for themselves — whether they have nine or none or one child.
But what I really want to say here is that I don’t think the decision is always such an easy one. In fact, for many of us it has been painfully difficult. In truth, I flip flopped on it for a long time. The first 2 years or so of my son’s life I could not imagine adding another child to my family. Having one was so hard and such a struggle for me. I had always imagined I’d have at least two if not three. But then I had also always imagined that motherhood would feel easy, natural — even blissful. Ha! It did not. Far from it. It felt hard and exhausting in the early years. I have enjoyed my son more with each passing year (except for 3. 3 sucked. The terrible twos have got nothing on 3, in my experience). I am a much better parent to an older child, I think, because I enjoy it more.
By the time my son was 4 I really wanted another baby. Or… more accurately, I really wanted my son to have a sibling. The idea of going through the baby stage all over again was still not so appealing. But I adore my siblings and am so happy I had/have them! I’m glad that we will have each other as our parents age and eventually pass away — if not to share the work of caring for them, which as Sandler points out typically falls to the sibling who lives closest, but to share our grief and to have a common bond of remembering our past together. As bell hooks says, “remembering together is the highest form of communion.” I can certainly see how this is and has been true already for my siblings and me.
My son won’t have that. And yes that makes me sad. But I also know that there’s a chance he might not have had that anyway even with a sibling. There are a million things that may prevent a close and loving sibling relationship from playing out through a person’s lifetime. Simply having a sibling does not guarantee, well, anything.
Once my marriage fell apart and I knew that it was over, I knew the dream of having a 2nd child was pretty much over too, and I slowly came to terms with it. I think it’s possible to be sad and mourn that but also to not pathologize it. Sometimes it’s hard to feel good about your “choice,” when it seems family and friends and people in line at the grocery store all seem to think you should not feel good about it. It has been a struggle for me to get to a place where I feel confident about my decisions, where I’ve not felt that I was lacking as a woman, as a parent, as a person. That wound can be deep for many of us.
And I think it’s OK to be sad that the life you longed for — or even the life you were kind of on the fence about — didn’t turn out the way you thought it might. (This, by the way, goes for divorce too. But that’s a story for another post). It doesn’t have to mean you failed. It doesn’t have to mean you’re less than the families that have more than one child. It doesn’t have to mean that your family is incomplete (this goes for people with NO children too, of course).
I wish we could live in a less judgmental culture when it comes to pretty much everything, including parenting. I’m doing my best to help make the world that way. One of the ways I’m trying to do that is by teaching my ONLY child to not be judgmental, to be an open and loving person, which so far, he seems to be. He’s 8 and a pretty regular kid as far as I can tell. He has his moments of bad behavior and of being annoying the way that all 8 year olds can be. But I’ve also seen and heard him on many occasions express extreme empathy and kindness even towards people who are different from him. So far he has shown himself to be a a pretty non-judgmental kid when it comes to people of different religions, races, physical abilities, sexualities, genders, and families of varying sizes. Which is more than I can say for a lot of other people I have met, presumably many of whom grew up NOT as only children.