'Why one child is enough for me - and might be for you, too'

This may be true now, but it's a recent development. As early as the first half of the 20th century, children were seen as economic necessities in a family, particularly in rural/agrarian families. Families needed them to work the fields and so forth. I've read that once children flipped over from adding economic value to a family into draining it is when the birth rate dropped, particularly among the educated classes.

Another thing: You can track the progress of a given society/culture based upon the birth rate. For example, things may seem bad in Bangladesh, but cultural anthropologists and economists have both noted that the birth rate among women has plummeted there in recent decades. And that's a great sign.

 

My wife and I just had our first less than two weeks ago. We can easily see how our daughter will be the center of our lives, even when the 2 a.m. feedings stop. Even while my wife was pregnant, we began having discussions about only having one (originally we had decided on two). A major part of that discussion revolved around losing our sense of identity, and losing the opportunity to do things we've always wanted to do in life, such as travel. My wife and I are both well-educated people in our early 30s with a strong marriage and a strong sense of self, but she in particular is a little worried about being only seen as "Lucy's Mom." While that is a very important title for her, I think she's afraid of losing other parts of her identity.

We've casually mentioned these thoughts of only having one to family members, and the reactions have ranged from, "oh, you don't know what you want now, you just had a baby" to "how could you be so selfish and leave Lucy with no one to play with?" Obviously the stigma is there in our family, but I'll be damned if we get pressured into having another child just to appease Grandma.

 

The consideration is also a cultural one. Asian families (and Latino, I think, but Asian is the one I'm familiar with) don't believe in sending the elderly to nursing homes or letting them fend for themselves financially or otherwise. In many families it's seen as abandonment. The burden, then, falls on the kids; and sharing it among four is a lot better than putting it on one.

 

Great for economies that tend not to be able to support so many kids, but the most advanced nations (economically) are losing their shit over falling birth rates. Basically, in a lot of nations, there aren't enough babies born to replace the population, and the recession has kicked U.S. birth rates down, too. In fact, if it wasn't for immigration, U.S. rates would look more like Europe's.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/12/us-births-decline/1880231/

There are pension crises now because what looked like OK benefits at the time are unsustainable mainly because there aren't nearly as many workers to support a booming number of retirees. Plus, there are all sorts of economic negatives associated with the number of young uns falling behind the number of seniors.

And, as I mentioned with the recession, if people don't feel they can support kids, they're less likely to have them. If you don't feel stable in your job or career, or you don't feel have the workplace support to balance kids and a job, you're going to think twice about kids. http://www.npr.org/2011/10/03/141000410/how-declining-birth-rates-hurt-global-economies

I'm not saying, get out there and breed, damn it. But there is a large school of thought that while low birth rates initially can have an economic benefit, they also can cause issues over time. I suspect part of the reason for low economic growth in the U.S. is not merely that we're coming out of a recession, but because consumption patterns are changing because the population is aging. Your grandmother has less of a need to buy a new house with all new stuff than a family that just had its first baby.

 

A new family that just had a baby probably shouldn't be buying a house with all new stuff, either. Unless their parents give them the money (which many do and, IMO, should not) which in turn draws down the pool of money the parents have, which drives up their eventual need for government support, etc.

It sounds, on its face, ludicrous, but the conversion of wants into needs among people under 40 is a huge drag on our economy.

 

Japan is probably the world's leading example of an aging economy. There just simply aren't enough people working to sustain the elderly population, particularly given that the Japanese live forever.

 

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nothing-gets-me-wetter-than-a-monotonous-domestic,32779/

It’s like he’s hitting my G-spot every time he texts me at precisely 6:30 to ask what we’re going to do about dinner. Just knowing that it’s Monday and we always, always have spaghetti on Monday is enough to make me drip buckets. But when I’m waiting in line at the same CVS I go to about eight different times a week, I practically have to clamp my hand over my mouth to stifle my moans as I buy milk and some poster board for one of my daughter’s science projects.

...

Oh, God, I could listen to him snort himself awake right now.

But then watch what he does to me, the sexy bastard: He’ll see that I’m in agony, he’ll see that I’m right there on the edge—and then he’ll push me even further. He’ll respond to a few work emails, check his fantasy baseball on his phone, and then floss.

Bingo.

 

This is the reason that I waited so long to not only get married, but also have kids. Growing up poor in a split family left me determined that I would not have kids until I could afford them. I will probably pay the price on the back end in that there is a good chance that I will never meet my grandkids but the trade off to be able to enjoy more fully my family now is the trade off.

I never travelled as a kid and generally did not get to do a lot of fun things with my parents as money worries and poor planning left them miserable and broke. I want to be able to take my kids on trips and do lots of activities and if I had married in my 20s when I had the opportuinity I would not have been able to do that.

 

There's nothing wrong with spoiling them as long as they don't feel entitled or that the world revolves around them...

Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule, but things I've noticed are that the brattiest kids you tend to see are either middle children or only children.

We have neighbors who have kids who are 9, 7 and 5. The 9-year-old and the 5-year-old are great, great kids... The 7-year-old is a serial killer in training... Great parents, I can't explain it...

 

What? Why shouldn't that family do that, if they have the means to do it? My point, anyway, was that younger people tend to be bigger consumers AND producers than those who are of retirement age. And it's not merely because grandma is smart with her money, and a young family isn't. Also, I'm not sure how you can talk about a certain population's "need for government support" when we have, rightly, enormous public resources devoted to seniors.

 

I think the "losing one's identity" comes more when one parent stays at home. If your entire life revolves around feeding, changing and taking care of someone it's easy to see how that could happen... If it works for you, great... More power to you... Even if you have three kids, if you're working every day, you still have your identity, you still get to have conversations with people that aren't about formula, diapers and Sesame Street.

 

The two may have a corollary.