Don't Say This To Parents Of Only Children

I was in the pool with my daughter and had struck up a conversation with another kid’s mom when she invariably asked me: “So, how many others do you have?” I winced as I heard the words “just the one” come out of my mouth, as if my daughter is not enough. As the number of only children in America have only increased over the last half a century — 22% were only children in 2015, compared to 11% in 1976 — you might want to consider what not to say parents of one child: “Don’t you want to give her a sibling?” You don’t know what a parent has gone through to have their child. Let’s just retire that “selfish” word when it comes to parenting, because it’s thrown around all too often at moms: Plenty of OAD parents believe that having a second child to entertain the first is “selfish.” And many childfree-by-choice people think the whole enterprise of having children in general is a selfish one. “Who will take care of you when you’re old?” Some people are real long-term thinkers, and they don’t want the burden of elder care to fall on one child. “You’re not really a mom” “Someone told me I’m not really a mom unless I have more,” one mom wrote in a OAD Facebook group that has nearly 40,000 members.