I Am Not A Bad Parent For Only Wanting One Child

And if you want more than one, you are not a bad parent either.

I know this is dramatically different from another post, where I stated we would love to have a brother for Wendy, but after truly thinking about it, as of now, unless something dramatic changes, we are stopping at perfection.  Everyone seems so determined to be a multi-children family that I think they can sometimes lose sight of what is really important.

When Zed and I got married, I wanted three children. I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and raise my babies. Everything changed when we had Wendy. Wendy takes up most of my time, just like all babies do. But after having Wendy, I began wondering if I wanted to bring a new baby into the world that would take up so much time, because no matter what I do, the amount of hours in a day are not going to change, and unless Wendy ends up with no developmental problems and goes to school, I am not going to have that quality bonding time with a new baby that I feel is so very important.

I’m writing this blog because many people I know are getting pregnant with their second or third child. And I don’t look down upon those people, because each family is different and each family needs to decide what is best for them. But I get tired of the pitying looks and people saying “Oh, you don’t want another baby?”, as if I am doing myself and my child a disservice by only having one. In fact, I see it as quite the opposite. I feel like I am doing Wendy a huge service by not having siblings for her. Zed and I want to give her everything she ever needs and try to give her anything she ever wants. I want her to be involved in as many activities as she’d like. If she is mentally and physically capable of driving and going to college, I want to be able to buy her a new car and send her to whatever school she wants to go to. If I had two, or more, children, we may not would be able to do those things. And honestly, financially, Zed and I are only prepared to handle one kid!

And again, I don’t want people to be defensive and think I am attacking families who chose to have more kids. My opinions may certainly be different if I didn’t have a special child and your opinion may be very different if you did have a special child. I am just putting this out there because it is statistically shown that only children are not any more spoiled or lonely than other children and they make friends just as easily as children with siblings. Besides, the trend of having only one kid is on the rise! It has gone from only 10% of families in 1976 to 18% of families in the United States today. Our culture says that the perfect family includes at least two children, but I am here to say, my daughter is pure perfection and she doesn’t need a sibling to complete our perfect little family.