By NATALY KOGAN
You know those moms who are easy-going and just take parenting in stride?
I am not one of them.
From the day my daughter was born, four and a half years ago, I’ve been a little obsessed with doing the right thing, parenting-wise. For example, when she was three months old I went back to work, and, even though my milk began to dry up almost immediately, I spent 45 minutes, three times each day, connected to the loud monster (a.k.a. breast pump) in my office, my assistant watching guard outside and some male colleagues making cow jokes in just-loud-enough voices. My doctor, my friends, my mom, my husband and my assistant, who was probably getting tired of the daily watchdog routine, all told me to just chill and give it up. No way. I had this artificially made-up goal to make it to six months and I was going to do the right thing and get there.
I tell you all this to show how hard I try to be a good parent. But apparently, my husband and I are completely messing up our daughter’s life anyway because we’re thinking she might be our only child.
The questions from, well, everyone, began around the time when our daughter turned three. I’d meet another mom who would ask me, a few minutes into our conversation, when we were having another. (It was usually “when”, and rarely “if”.)
“Oh, I am not sure, we might just have one,” I’d say, only to see the other mom’s face turn into one of disbelief, at best, and instant negative judgment, at worst. This would be followed by a range of comments, from the passive-aggressive “Are you serious?” to my personal favorite, “I’m sure you’ll change your mind soon.”
I got the same response from an OB GYN I visited recently, after we moved. When I said we might have just one child, I was given a look that made me feel like I’d just announced I planned to leave that child starving and alone in the house for days. I switched to a different OB, but I kept running into women who made it sound like having an only child is borderline criminal parent behavior.
This is probably a good time to tell you that I am an only child.
If you’re conjuring up images of a self-absorbed narcissist or a total loner without any friends, I’m going to disappoint you because while I have my quirks and “issues,” I’m actually quite nice. I like people; I am pretty good at sharing, unless it’s a piece of delicious dark chocolate for which you might have to fight me; I love my parents dearly and don’t think they ruined my life by not “giving” me a sibling. O.K., I’m a bit of a perfectionist and can’t sleep if the house isn’t clean, but I have enough friends from large families who are the same.
The other day I told a friend that I am getting really tired of the presumptuous “more kids” comments and she told me to just ignore them and do what’s best for our family.
She’s right. But first I have to figure out what IS best for our family. As much as my husband and I have talked endlessly about the reasons why we think having one is best, this is a ridiculously difficult and emotionally charged decision, and I obsess about it all the time. I hear a friend talk warmly about visiting her sister and I immediately think about how nice it would be for my daughter to experience that warmth when she is older. I see my daughter play with a little baby at the park and my eyes almost tear up as I daydream about her playing with her own sibling. I go through the good-things-about-having-siblings checklist in my mind, and come out convinced that yes, we should definitely have another.
And then I remember all the reasons why we think we may just want one. Some of them I hesitate to share here, but most have to do with worrying about maintaining our sanity, our relationship with each other and our daughter and having any time for horribly selfish things like our non-family and non-work interests.
It isn’t that I don’t think those reasons are good enough, but that I am struck at how many others don’t seem to think so. Sometimes I wish that I had a more “acceptable” reason to give them. If I were older I could say that, well, we’re too old to have another. If, like during my childhood spent in the former Soviet Union, we lived in extremely difficult conditions and literally didn’t have enough means for another child, I could use that as a justification. But we’re young, we have the means and, on top of it all, we appear to have gotten this parenting thing under control – we’ve got no “excuses.”
Which doesn’t mean, of course, that anyone has any business telling us what horrible parents we are for raising an only child or for well-meaning folks to give us endless insight about how great our daughter’s life will be if only she had a sibling. (This always makes me want to start telling them about all the people l know who don’t get along with their siblings, hate their siblings, don’t talk to their siblings or swear that their life would be so much better if they didn’t have to deal with their siblings. Last I checked, sibling love isn’t guaranteed.)
Like other parenting decisions — to breastfeed or not, to let kids cry it out or not, to go back to work or to stay home — figuring out how many kids to have is an extremely personal process, but it’s also one that causes others to share advice and opinions without much invitation.
My daughter recently asked me why we don’t buy her a brother or a sister. I tried not to laugh at the buy comment and asked her if she wanted one. “Nah,” she said, “I like being with you and Daddy.” And for that little moment I had no doubts — whatever we decide, we’re all going to be O.K
