Why do you parents feel the need to do this?

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Before I was even pregnant, I wanted two healthy children, born close together. I am truly blessed. I got my wish. My brilliant AS daughter is 15 months older than my creative genius son.

I always wanted more then one child. My oldest is on the spectrum and has a hard time getting along with his younger sister. A few years back he told me he didn't ask for a sister. I told him I didn't ask him if he wanted one, it wasn't his decision it was mine! I think for my son having siblings is HUGE. He thinks and WANTS the world to revolve around him, and the best life lesson is sharing his life with siblings. He also has a baby brother now too, whom he ADORES (for now, he adored his little sister till she was about 3).

I have relatives and friends who are only children, and I see as they grow up alone how that is. I NEVER wanted my kids to be alone as adults. ESPECIALLY when I am gone. I don't know if my son will marry or have a family of his own, but he will have his siblings, and most likely some nieces and nephews.

As the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side! Those with no siblings wish they had one to play with, those with siblings wish they were alone...what is better then being angry with parents over their choice to have more children, is to learn to work it out with your sibling, life is not always going to be the way you want it and instead of getting angry at others learn to work thru it!

I don't know the OPs situation, but for my son, the oldest, his biggest issue with his sister is that she has wants and needs that differ from his own and he doesn't want to see her perspective on anything. It is an issue that spans his life, not just with her. I want him to get along with her and with others as well.

I dont think that there is an absolute necessity for siblings. So you dont die from having none. But I think it has benefits for a kid to have a sibling. If you have typical troubles with your parents, then there is at least someone at home, you think you can talk to, that you can freely share your oppinion. As well if you are not a total loner, then whenever your parents dont have time to play with you it will suck. So its not about total lazyness, that I was not willing to play with my kid, but around here as a mum you typical work halftime, so you come home around 14:00, then you do cooking, then you do homework with kids, then you do housework, so you hardly can play with your kids daily for hours. So if you have a kid, that simply cant play alone, he will be quiet unhappy. Just as it is more fun playing something with someone, that truly likes that game or an story or an film, and knows hell what. Definitly I plan going with my kids to watch kidsmovies in cinema. If I will have as much fun with those movies, as kids have, is the other thing. XD

Just like the teenie years, when you dont trust your parents anymore, and know anything better. My older sister sometimes sneaked out of the house at night or she came on time from a party, only to return to it after my parents went sleeping. At least she told me always, where she was going, in case of emergency. As well that you have someone to bash yourself on eyehigh. A parent always has the status above you. So he can argue with him, if he wants, but in the end he has the power to decide if an argument ends, and what you must accept. (In younger years.) While with someone on your same level, you need to train to argue, argument, convince, ... None of both can simply now decide, so you need to find agreements. Additional, if you wait about 2 years, the second is anyway much cheaper, because you already have baby cloths, baby bath tube, baby carseat, babywaggon... and can gives bikes and games from the elder to the younger. XD And I think it helps ypi to basically understand, that "you are not the center of the universe". You simply basically understand that your sibling have the same needs as you do, help for school, this and that. And that this needs time. And so that people cannot always focus on you, because there are others to focus as well, and that there needs to be a balance.

Just like caring for the olders becomes more comfortable. My french grandaunt has 6 kids and more then 20 grandkids. She gets visited twice a week from family relatives, and is very happy about that, while for the relatives that means visiting her maybe once every two months. If you are still working you are happy, to have someone visiting your mom, so she isnt alone all the time, but as well not being forced to spend every minute of free time with her to do so.

To Lighten Things Up, Some Funny Reasons For Siblings:

1) You can screw the first one up and do a better job on the next ones
2) If you have a boy that somehow winds up on Tosh.O, you have a chance at the other one will learn from that stupid lesson
3) If you lose one in the supermarket, you'll have the other one there to remind you of it
4) They can learn good fighting skills by duking it out with each other!

Anyone else have any other funny ones to add?

My two oldest are only 15 months apart. The timing was not intentional, although I always wanted more than one. It was actually very good timing, I think. And the particular order fits extremely well with their personalities. The oldest is very passive and was developmentally delayed, so once the younger was talking and walking, they were developmentally on the same level. The oldest hadn't had time to develop a sense of territorial-ness. Even now they tend to be thought of as a unit by us and others, and to think of themselves as a unit. They temper each other and challenge each other. It has definitely been for the very best for them to have the very close in age sibling.

The youngest is 7 years younger than the younger of the first two. He's five and the middle child still hasn't gotten over the insult of having a younger sibling added to his world. Oh he loves his brother and loves taking care of him and having him look up to him, but he still resents the attention the baby got and etc. They are far enough apart that I doubt they will ever have that much in common even as adults. Maybe by the time they are in their 40's and 7 years isn't quite as much of a difference as it is even in the 20's and 30's.

My sister and I are 4 years apart. I largely hated her all during my childhood. I do think it was good for me to have had her in the family as a kid, particularly because my family grew up in a very rural area, and we would frequently spend all summer without ever seeing another child. There was definitely a lot of learning to deal with other people, as my sister is very, very NT. We get along well now that we are grown and she lives in another state.

I can't imagine being an only child. I would feel left out. In fact I wished my parents had a little girl so I would have a sister instead of brothers. My mom told me I would hate having a big sister or a little sister and told me the reasons why. It all sounded annoying. We would both be fighting over the bathroom because she is taking too long in there with her hair and make up or us fighting over our clothes or us fighting over our girl toys and her getting into my girl things. My mom had four sisters.

I planned on only having one but then I decided I wanted another one because having one is no fun. Gee would I change my mind again after my second? I told the doctor I wanted to get fixed after my second but he told me I am still young and I might want another down the road and told me about that thing that goes in your uterus.

When I was a kid I actually wanted more than two and then when I was an adult I decided on one when I found out how expensive kids are and then after my first one I thought we can afford one more and then we're done because our son didn't cost us that much and how did he even cost $1,000 a month to take care of? I was breast feeding and I didn't have to buy clothes for him every month and toys so no way he costed that much a month. Maybe that was a scare tactic in the Parent magazine to scare women out of having kids and make them think before getting pregnant and having sex. Lot of people do have babies without even thinking. All it did was it made me think you had to be rich to have kids and how do the poor have kids?

Parents Magazines is selling a lifestyle so that it can sell the readers who aspire to such a lifestyle to its advertisers much in the same way that bridal magazines and The Knot do. The "average" wedding or baby expenses depend really on your income and social-economic status (For some NTs and I guess some Aspies, what peers and family think you are supposed to do can be really important factors)

So they are not just figuring in diapers and formula and such. They survey their readers (some of whom probably exaggerate how much they spend) and people are including things like mommy and me yoga classes and stuff that are really socializing outlets for moms, babysitting for nights out, all sorts of spendy stuff most moms don't have; heck they might even include stuff like spa treatments for stretch-marks.

Anyway, as far as the OP goes, it is hard to get to the heart of the question without more background, as someone else said, but I agree with a lot of what was already said.

1) Some people really do believe you "have to" have more that one child, or you are doing the 1st child a disservice, somehow.
2) Some people say it b/c they don't know how to just say that they wanted 2 (or more) kids.
3) There is a cultural tendency to believe it is necessary as it used to be difficult to avoid having a ton of kids due to a lack of good birth control. Some people just parrot the cultural line.


Anyway, we have one kid. I don't think it is a disservice to him. He doesn't have to share financial resources,space or attention with a sibling. He doesn't have to deal with the sensory issues of another child in his space. A sibling is not a guarantee of a friend for life b/c they could just as easily hate each other as not. Given that I don't know how functional my first is going to be,as an adult. I don't know if I would have resources for more than one. It would be unfair to "expect" a sibling to take care of him, later, assuming the second had that capacity.

All of this has a double-edge to it. Sharing and dealing with a sibling might not overwhelm him and he might acquire more skills than as a singleton. They could be supportive of one another. I am assuming my first is not going to be the one dealing with my husband and I's eventual death, so it is isn't amount of sharing the burden as much as it is maybe having a child who could deal with that at all.

Anyway, you make your choices, you take your chances.

Parents feel pressured to have another child after their first.
People don't see you as a real parent until you have more than one kid.
A parent may not feel like a real parent and a real family if they only have one child.
A parent thinks their kid will be lonely if they have one.
People think it's selfish to have one child for the reason above.
A parent was an only child and they always wished they had siblings and felt left out because of what they were missing what their friends did with their siblings so they decide to have more than one child giving their kid they didn't have in their childhood.


Reasons why parents have more than one kid.

I was an only child; both in childhood and in adult life I have often-- and I do mean OFTEN-- wished for siblings.

I've adopted friends as siblings; since my father's death my cousins and I have started to refer to each other as sisters (we look a lot alike and are often confused for sisters anyway).

My friends from large families generally envied me as kids, but I don't think any of them would change places with me now that we're grown up.

Most of the time, I think, when parents make comments like "We need to give Bobby a sister," or whatever, I think they are projecting their own wish for another child. It's considered socially acceptable to want another child "for Bobby." It is considered selfish to just plain flat out want another child (and, at least for people who like kids, babies are like potato chips-- you always want just one more, and one more is never enough).

I have 4 kids. The first two were more or less planned, the third one may or may not have been a bad decision, and the fourth was a flat, complete, utter, and total accident (don't believe the box about the effectiveness of Plan B, and don't take a negative on a pregnancy test for a definitive answer). Based on the fact that, from 2007 to 2011, I got pregnant about every 15 months like clockwork (there was a miscarriage between the third and fourth children), I made a command decision-- with some grief-- to get my freakin' tubes tied after the fourth.

Had I not done so, I have every reason to believe that I would now be approximately 3 months pregnant with Kid #5-- and I'm glad for the choice I made, because I think our temporal and emotional resources have reached carrying capacity.

I never made any pretense of one child being "a gift" for the child before. I think we have been truly blessed-- and I think that, for all the pains in the fanny they give each other, they do give each other more blessings than curses-- but the simple truth is that all of them were born because WE wanted them, for themselves and for us.

"Giving" a child a sibling is, IMO, a somewhat sick statement in the light of the human race's history of indentured servitude and slavery, and significantly more idiotic than "giving" a child an unsolicited puppy.

I'm not an only child in the legal and biological sense; I have an older sister who's more than a decade older than me. However, for all practical purposes, I was an only child while growing up. Understandably, my sister was more like a third parent than a sibling. So I would have given away my soul and twenty years of my life for my parents to "give" me a same-age sibling. I had a very lonely childhood while growing up, even though I had friends until the age of 10. (Then no friends until I was 16 or so.) I had a tons of toys and even a video game system, but I hated evenings, because I was always lonely. My parents never played games with me, either to teach me to entertain myself or because they were always busy. When they did, it look so much begging and pleading, it was barely worth the effort. I played board games "with myself" on a regular basis, oftentimes by hopping from chair to chair set across from each other. So now, I'm very glad that my childhood disappeared into the past and will never return.

In fact, I wish America had the opposite of China's one-child law: every family must have a minimum of two children within four years in age from each other. (Financial aid would be available for families that need it.) Yeah, it's a pipe dream and an impractical one to boot, but it would eliminate the words "lonely" and "bored" from a lot of children's vocabularies. I'd pass it if I were president (and Congress didn't exist to block it). Hey, we successfully got Obamacare past the Republicans, so who says I can't fantasize about this law being passed?

That would mean people would have to have sex every day and hope to god they get knocked up.

And what if the parents were unable to have anymore kids after the first? Would they be required to adopt? What if they couldn't adopt a child in four years after the first? Adoption isn't easy as people make it out to be.

Nothing horrible about having sex every day. It'll even strengthen marriages as an unintended (but highly beneficial) side effect, by making sex a regular occurrence, as opposed to something husbands have to beg for; or worse, be told to shut up and do without it; or worse still, resort to cheating to get it.

It wouldn't be a hard-and-fast law. There'd be waivers and accommodations for families who really need them, in which case, one-child families or families with siblings' age difference greater than 4 years, will be required to keep a dog or a cat in lieu of having another child. (Not as good as a sibling, but still helps reduce loneliness while growing up.) Again, with waivers for allergies and such. Even China let rural families have two kids, due to needing farm hands to work the land. And requiring adoptions isn't too horrible, either: the new child gets a proper home, and the existing child gets a playmate instead of being lonely all the time. I know I begged my parents to adopt another child, since they refused to make one the natural way. Because loneliness during childhood is something I would wish only on my former boss. Having mandatory fertility treatments specifically for multiple births is probably too drastic of a step that America will never be ready for, so I won't be suggesting that idea.

Oh, so I want to have more then one child as written above, but hell, please no twins or triples or whatever. My aunt had twingirls, and I cared for them from now and then. While having kids "behind each other" gives you the advantage of reusing stuff like the crip, childbad, babycar...

While for twins its the opposite, you need everything in the double amount or even spcial stuff, like twin baby cars. Whenever there is an "expensive age" like schoolstart, both get into it at the same time. Just like stuff like school-skivacations, that are normally around here. When I got into the age, where schools do the ski vacations, I could use the "old stuff" (that was actively used four weeks) from my sister, so they only needed to get one new set, while with kids the same age you always need everything twice.

And from babysitting I remember various times, when the one already sleeping got awaken again from the other one getting awake and so on. So its not about only getting one to finally sleeping, but always about two. (Thats why as well my aunt needed babysitter help from my mom. If one is awake one half of the night, and the other one decides to be awake the other half of the night, there are not much options left in the morning, then calling your sister to come, because you simply NEED sleep or throw them out of the windows. (Not in the earnest meaning, but she was actually very honest, when she simply needed some help, because of her physically drained by it.)

As much as I wish for at least two kids (Third stays in reserve for accidents. ^^), but please no twins. ^^

You really need to educate yourself on adoptions. It's not that simple to adopt. There are so many restrictions about who can adopt, and birth moms are so picky about who to adopt their babies an if you are poor or don't have good enough income, they won't pick you to be their baby's parents, also don't forget that when the birth mom does have the baby, she can just decide to take it back and raise it and the adoptive parents have lost that baby and it can take year and years to adopt a child after being selected by a birth parent. Plus it's expensive and I wonder how do people even afford it, no wonder people prefer to have their own kids because it's easier and worth the sacrifice for their body and there are no restrictions on who can have their own child and there are resources for people who are low income to support their kids (eg. WIC, food stamps, TANF, Oregon has the Healthy Kids). I have read about adoptions and ooo so many restrictions and how picky birth moms are because I was someone who was wanting to adopt and couldn't believe how expensive it is and how hard it is to get a child and it's not like what you see in movies where you go in and pick out a kid and adopt and they're yours. I realized who would want to pick me as a mother if I am not rich and the fact I have a disability so I may be restricted to adopt because I have diagnosed conditions and my medical history and I read you can't adopt if you have autism. Just a reason to not even get diagnosed as an adult if you are wanting to adopt so I would have little chance in getting a child though adoption. What would you suggest for people like me? No wonder lot of people don't adopt.

Also what are you going to do about people who are not able to conceive? Fertility treatment is very expensive and it cost my cousin and his wife $20,000 for egg implants. It cost $10,000 per implant and they went for two because the egg doesn't always stay so they tried two and two stayed and they ended up with twins. Now who can afford this? My husband and I wouldn't be able to afford it and I assume my cousins make a huge bloody amount to pay for this. Some people do try treatments to get pregnant and none of them have worked. I honestly feel sorry for these people who can't get pregnant and have to go through expensive treatments and the ones who cannot afford it are screwed. Basically you have to be rich to adopt or get fertility treatments and do any insurance pay for this? Only adoption I have found that is the cheapest is adopting a kid from foster care and it's either free if they were your foster child or it costs several thousand dollars. No way could I be a foster parent because these are kids that have problems and are messed because they come from broken homes where they were abused or neglected and I don't think I would be able to handle a child with those issues and lot of people feel that way and I would hate to be forced into a situation I don't want and it's asking for more kids to be abused and neglected because lot of people want a baby, not an older child because they want to screw up their own kid, not have a kid that has been screwed up by someone else. I would hate to force people into adopting a kid from foster care they don't want because they would end up neglecting it or abusing it because they were forced into a situation they did not want and they wouldn't care if the kid gets taken because they never wanted it in the first place or if not abused or neglected, the kid wouldn't get lot of love or get paid attention to and get ignored and the kid can still feel you never wanted them even if you are giving them clothes and food and stuff for their birthday and Christmas and it's still not good for the child. I just think it would be a mess if people were forced to adopt a foster child because it was the cheapest because it still wouldn't help the child. They would still be in a home where they are not loved and not given what they need.

Also what are you going to do about people who are not able to have sex due to a medical condition? What about people who are not able to have it due to their condition because it's too painful for them to have it? What about people with low sex drives or asexuals who are not able to make their partner cum because they are not working fast and long enough to do it? It's tough having sex when you are not into it and don't have a high sex drive and I wouldn't be able to have it everyday unless my partner wants to do all the work.
I would hate to be forced to have sex for an hour or five hours a day because I couldn't get the guy to cum so I wouldn't agree with this law because there are too many holes I see in it. I bet lot of people would vote this down if it came into the ballot. Ever try making yourself do something you are not into? Did you find it hard to do? Was it exhausting? I would rather stay single then.

Also the one child policy in China has created a mess, more abortions happen and gender ones too so there are less females being born and it's harder for men to find a girl but I can also understand why they have such policy but I also think other laws need to change like about women having the same rights as men. Before making a law, I think people need to think about all the downsides about it and think about laws about those too so it's not a mess. I have thought they should make gender abortion illegal in china but then it would make parents put them in a orphanages just so they can try again for a boy and if they are forced to keep the girl, then the girl might not be given much love because she was unwanted. I think the law needs to be changed about women is all so having a girl would't be a problem anymore for parents and they would stop wanting to prefer boys only. If a law has too many holes, people won't vote for it.

I already mentioned it before. Parents who are unable to have another child for medical reasons and cannot adopt will not be forced to do so; after all, you can't get blood from a turnip. The parents will just have to produce a notarized letter from their doctor, financial planner, or religious leader. They will be required to keep a dog or a cat in lieu of having another kid; cats and dogs, even purebreeds, are available for almost free from an animal shelter. A pet is not a person, but it will still do wonders in reducing loneliness and boredom for the only child. Parents simply not wanting a pet will not be a valid reason to refuse to keep one, and fines will be levied for noncompliance, especially considering that financial aid will be available. No different than simply not wanting to pay taxes being a valid reason not to do so. (Unless, of course, one or both parents have allergies, in which case, just let the kid be lonely, I guess.)

Blood is thicker than water. If you grow up in a healthy family environment, family will always be by your side whereas casual friends don't. I wish my son had a sibling because family is important. After I pass away, I'd like to think he still had family around to give him comfort.