Enebarn/ønskebarn/yndlingsbarn

Recently on a forum I frequent, a discussion of playing favorites came up. The conversation was prompted by an article at Time Magazine (I'm not a subscriber, so I couldn't read the whole thing) about how parents always have favorites among their children, and how the kids always know, no matter how hard they try to hide it. Parent/child relationships are incredibly complex, as I am reminded every single day with my son, and this discussion prompted me to reflect yet again of the myriad reasons why I chose to have no more than one child.

As I have written before on this blog, E is a fourth generation only child. I'm not really sure why my Grannie was an only. I've always assumed Great Grannie would have liked more children, and I imagine Grannie would have liked to have siblings too, though I've never asked. My dad was an only child by mistake--he had an older sister who died very soon after birth. As far as I know I was a deliberate only. My parents were aware of the population explosion, and my mother (one of five siblings) has told me that she would have had more if my father had indicated he wanted them, but he never did. I didn't have E until I was 37. I had pretty much decided that I wanted to be child-free until I met KE, who definitely wanted kids. Our compromise was one, and in terms of my own situation as a mother I have not regretted it. E, though, has never been as unquestioningly satisfied with being an only as I was when I was a kid. I don't ever remember wishing for a sibling. He has talked about it a lot.

Family constellations and choices are incredibly personal. I know on a very visceral level that I don't have it in me to manage the balancing and juggling and negotiating that it takes to have more than one child. I struggle enough as it is to carve out time for myself and maintain my sense of who I am with one child and one partner in my life. You don't miss what you've never known. I've never had siblings or more than one child, so the sense of loss that other people with larger families assume I must experience is a complete non-issue for me.

I find it provoking and irritating, though, that so many people continue to comment negatively about families with only children. About a year ago a friend of mine who currently has one child commented that she wanted more so that they could be a "real" family (ouch). I said carefully that I felt we were a real family, even though we weren't a very big one. She was sensitive enough to apologize profusely. A friend in graduate school said (half?) jokingly "oh, that explains everything" when I revealed that I had no siblings. Well, yes, in some ways it does, but in other ways it doesn't. In that case it seemed pretty clear that my status of being an only child explained only my negative characteristics for that person, and not whatever positive characteristics I might possess. (I'm guessing that person would say that the fact that the comment continues to nag at me is an example of one of the problems with being an only child: not always dealing well with teasing. Whatever.) A few years later, at a work conference, a very strange women I hardly knew who had had a baby a year or so after me accosted me at cocktail hour and insisted that I should be planning on having another child. I experienced it as incredibly invasive and rude. She would not let up, and I had to tell her to stop harassing me, and walked away from her. A few years later I found out through the grapevine that she herself had not had any more children, and that she had sent her child off to live with her mother rather than raise it herself. Very weird.

In general, being or having only one child in a family is no better or worse than any other constellation. In my specific case, it is definitely better for me. Whether or not it is better for my son remains to be seen.

But in any case, here's to the families of the world with only children! And a word to the wise: those of you who make other choices, please don't treat us like there's something wrong with us.