12/28/2023 0 Comments One and done meaningHaving multiple children helped the family with the many tasks required to survive. Even just two centuries ago, more than four in 10 children died before their fifth birthday. For millennia, the preference to have more than one child made sense. Widespread ideas about the ideal number of children are also changing. "Well, that is a way of making this choice, too, right? You're saying, 'There are all of these other things that are really important to me as well, and I am going to prioritise them, and hopefully I'll get there.' Instead of, 'Those things don't matter and what comes first is my motherhood'." "There are a lot of people who will say, no-one wants to have just one kid – that all because of delayed fertility," she says. But there's also an element of choice involved, says investigative journalist Lauren Sandler, author of One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One. The fact that women are having children later is a significant piece. And looking at mothers near the end of their childbearing years – arguably a better way to measure the popularity of only children, since census data gives only a moment-in-time snapshot – 18% of US women in 2015 had one child, up from 10% in 1976. In Canada, only-child families make up the largest group, ticking up from 37% in 2001 to 45% in 2021. In the EU, the largest proportion of all families with children – 49% – have one child. In many countries, those trends are shifting towards fewer kids. But there have been clear social and cultural trends, too. Particularly after the contraceptive revolution of the mid-20th Century, which gave many women some real control over fertility, the choice of how many children to have has been personal. On social media, mothers post adorable moments of their broods with captions like, "This is your sign, give them the younger sibling" and " I never met a mama who regretted having that one more".Įven as deciding to be one-and-done becomes more common, this background noise means parents who make this choice often find themselves having to convince other people – and even themselves – that they've done the right thing. Parents say they feel pressure to have more kids from everyone from family members to perfect strangers. Stereotypes about only children being spoilt or lonely persist, despite consistent debunking. Even though, in many countries, only children are becoming the norm, pressure to have more than one remains. It's not surprising that Dalton started to question her decision. "It really made us think like, 'Yeah, we could do it again'," she says. And social-media algorithms kept pushing content showcasing big, beautiful families. She felt if she had PPD or PPA again, she'd have more tools to manage it. Close friends had a new-born, who reminded them of their daughter. She and her husband moved into their "forever home". "I'm an only child, and I'm very happy," says Dalton. It was also that they knew there wasn't anything "wrong" with not "giving" their child a sibling. It wasn't only that Ontario, Canada-based Dalton and her husband didn't want to risk her – and their family's – wellbeing by going through it all again. But even when life became easier, the decision felt right. Part of it was their struggle with sleep deprivation and mental health Dalton dealt with a traumatic birth, postnatal depression (PND) and postpartum anxiety (PPA). That’s because, just two months after her daughter's birth, she and her husband decided they were 'one and done'. "I look at it once in a while and I giggle at how naïve I was," says Dalton, 31. Taking into account maternity leave, family-spacing health recommendations and even potential family holidays, she planned out when to have each of the four kids she thought she wanted. When Jen Dalton got pregnant in 2018, she made a spreadsheet.
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