Remember: One kid is a carry-on bag—portable and manageable. Two or more is checked luggage—costly and likely to get lost.
People get annoyed if you stop at one child. They say you’re selfish for not giving your kid a sibling, that your kid could turn out spoiled and awkward. These people are usually called “grandparents.” Beware the grandparent! They are a vengeful folk who enjoy the schadenfreude of watching their grandchild inflict on you the same pain that you inflicted on them. And they want more of it.
The other second-child evangelists are friends who’ve just had their second child. They are desperate for someone else to sit at their two-kids table, and they’re jealous that you only semi-ruined your life. They look at the wreckage of your present and want you to bulldoze what’s left of it with another kid.
And they will lie.
“The kids play together!”
Yeah? Well, that sure looks like fighting to me.
“We’re trying for a third!”
No they’re not—the husband just had a vasectomy. And the second kid was an accident.
“We finally feel like a real family!”
Uh, thanks?
Don’t fall for it.
One kid can be chased after, overpowered, and subdued. One child can be pawned off on a relative, taken to a movie, or hidden under a desk in the office at work. One child will play by herself, quietly. You can nap on the weekends with one child (and a locked front door). Just one child to dress in the morning means you won’t be too late for most things. You are agile and portable.
You can bring one child to Paris. You won’t, but you can.
YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT.
Only two kinds of people have big families: the very poor and the very rich. The poor have limited access to birth control, while the rich have unlimited access to IVF and surrogates. You probably aren’t either.
THINK BIG PICTURE.
You can spend the entire college fund on your one kid, instead of splitting it among three kids. And remember that, in the future, you will be an old person who needs help. One grateful Harvard grad will put you in a four-star nursing home, near her house. Three pissed-off community college dropouts will shove you out on the streets.
Your choice.
SIBLINGS SUCK.
How is it that siblings have such a great reputation? Has everyone forgotten how awful brothers and sisters are? They hid your toys, borrowed your Walkman/iPod but then never returned it, told Mom that it was you who drank Dad’s bourbon and wore your favorite blouse without asking. Even now they will mention at the Thanksgiving table that this is your fourth boyfriend-free holiday in a row, and insinuated that your kid isn’t as verbal as theirs.
Oh, and one of them keeps putting your seventh-grade class picture on Facebook. Who needs these people?
THE WRONG SIBLING CAN RUIN YOUR CHILD’S LIFE.
Just ask David Dahmer. Well, you can’t. He changed his last name and went underground after his brother got busted for eating people. As did Paula Hitler, sister to Adolf. Oh, how quickly the “brother who played with me” becomes the “maniac I was never close to.”
Conversely, what if there was a smart, talented Kardashian sister? A strange sibling to Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney, born with a high IQ and the capacity for shame. A Kardashian who had sex off-camera and worried about doing something meaningful with her life. A Kardashian with the kapacity to komprehend kalculus, khemistry, or psykhology. Imagine the wretched loneliness of such a kreature. Perhaps this kursed Kardashian exists and, like Paula Hitler or David Dahmer before her, she saw the irreparable damage done to her surname and changed it. Maybe she lives among us. A kollege graduate enjoying a kuiet life in the kountry.
DON’T GET COCKY.
It’s OK to quit while you’re ahead. Just because you had one great kid doesn’t mean that the next one will be worthwhile. You aren’t special because you made a good one, you’re lucky. Imagine if the Baldwins had stopped after Alec, or the Sheens after Emilio.
Remember: One kid is a carry-on bag—portable and manageable. Two or more is checked luggage—costly and likely to get lost.