Am I being selfish only having one child?

On the pressures and guilt surrounding raising an only child

Jan 21, 2025

girl running near black bench — Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

Everyone around me is having another baby.

Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it feels like baby season is well and truly back, with friends and family boosting their broods with baby number two. And while I am overjoyed at their news, it’s also left me with some complicated emotions around our choice not to grow our family further.

For a long time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted kids at all. Daydreams of my future featured an adult me, wearing a chic outfit and dashing around a city for my highly-paid, highly glamorous job as a fashion journalist. Children never made an appearance in those dreams. I distinctly remember playing ‘teachers’ as a child, and very much enjoyed making my younger sister and friends do what I told them, but what doesn’t stick in my mind is playing mums and babies. I’m sure I did, my own daughter is constantly carrying around her slightly battered and grubby collections of dolls, but it’s not something I remember being obsessed with, in the same way that I’m not the kind of gal who had a ‘dream wedding’ mapped out in her mind.

And then I met “the one” (cringe) and the concept became something I could actually see happening in our lives. After a test-run of keeping a dependent alive with our fur baby, Dylan, we took the plunge and added a human one into the mix. For the last two and a half years or so we’ve formed a neat little unit, a balanced household of two guys and two gals with appeals very much to me ordered Virgo mind. It feels manageable, enjoyable and sensible. It feels right.

But as I start to see those around me adding to their families and giving their once only child a sibling, seeds of doubt begin to take root in my mind. My firm “one and done” stance feels slightly squidgy, as I consider whether, as a family, we’re making the right decision.

G. Stanley Hall, PhD, the first president of APA, wrote that being an only child is “a disease in and of itself.”

One aspect of it that reassures me I’m not setting my daughter up for a life of maladjustment and mockery is the fact that the negative stereotypes about only children seem to have dissipated in recent years. Those long-standing stereotypes have deep roots in psychology. G. Stanley Hall, PhD, the first president of APA, wrote that being an only child is “a disease in and of itself.”

Thankfully, the outdated assumptions that an adult who was raised with no other children in the house is strange or selfish are no longer prevalent, particularly as the discourse around conditions such as autism and other neurodiversities becomes more mainstream. Research conducted into the impact of being raised as an only child hasn’t proven that it’s damaging emotionally, cognitively or in any other way, and in fact highlight a plethora of benefits of having the undivided attention of a parent or parents:

“They get the precious gift of full attention from their parents without distraction, which is beneficial for their cognitive development, in particular linguistic development,” said Linda Blair, PhD, MPhil, a clinical psychologist based in Bath, England, and author of the book Birth Order.

Other research suggests that overall, only children tend to have more positive relationships with their parents than children with siblings. It also says that the skills developed in those relationships often translate into healthy interactions with adults outside the family.

“The greatest gift of being an only child is that you learn to be content with your own company and spend a lot of time with yourself. And that’s huge,” psychologist and author Carl Pickhardt said. “After all, our primary relationship in life is with ourselves.”

While the parental structure is no longer beholden to heteronormative stereotypes, a typical picture of a family still contains multiple children

Despite the evidence dispelling the myths around only children, there are other subliminal messages which reinforce that a “normal” family comprises multiple children. While the parental structure is no longer beholden to heteronormative stereotypes, a typical picture of a family still contains multiple children. A quick google image search of ‘family’ elicits photos of (slightly inane) looking groups of people, containing adults and children. In fact, of the top 20 results, only two depict a family with a single child.

What will the impact of these stereotypes have on my daughter in the future? When she’s asked to draw her family at school, will she be comparing her sketches to those of her peers, which depict their siblings? Time will tell, I suppose.

happy birthday greeting card beside green pen — Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

I also can’t help but think about the impact later down the line for her, as she becomes an adult. When it comes to taking on any caregiver duties for myself or my partner, she will bear that burden alone. Decisions around our health and care may also be left for her alone to make; an extreme amount of pressure and stress for a single person to take on. Obviously I’m thinking of worst case scenarios; here’s hoping my partner and I live long, healthy lives where we retain our faculties and independence well into our older age, but it isn’t guaranteed. As I witness my parents wrestle with the difficult decisions around my remaining grandparent’s ongoing care (she is in the early stages of dementia) my mind wanders to a potential similar situation 50 years into the future. My parents have multiple siblings to share the weight of this burden - my daughter will not.

I can’t fathom trying to find my way through the heavy fog of those newborn days with a young child to take care of too

Worries around the responsibilities my only child might have thrust upon her aside, there are a plethora of reasons why not expanding our family feels like the only logical decision. From the environmental (a 2017 study published in Environmental Research Letters stated that the biggest ultimate impact on reducing carbon emissions was to have one less child), to the financial (need I even go into it?) it just doesn’t make sense to my rational brain. The planet is on fire, how can I add fuel to it? We’re overwhelmed by childcare costs, how could we afford more?

As well as these societal influences, I have to also think about my own experiences of motherhood. I have no shame in saying that I found the first year HARD; with those first three months in particular feeling like a constant uphill struggle. I didn’t enjoy it, and my mental health suffered. I went back on antidepressants to cope with post-natal depression, but I still felt disconnected and disengaged from myself and those around me. There were, of course, glimmers of happiness and sparks of joy, but as soon as I started to feel more like myself, I firmly declared that I wouldn’t be putting myself in that situation again. Selfishly, I don’t want to repeat the experience, but I also don’t want to inflict that on my first child. I can’t fathom trying to find my way through the heavy fog of those newborn days with a young child to take care of too. Her wellbeing would suffer, I am totally certain of that. I wouldn’t be present, or fun, or engaged, and that wouldn’t be fair on her. Depression doesn’t make any allowances for parenting, and while she is unlikely to remember how I was when she was a tiny baby, she may do if she witnessed it as an infant, and that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.

Our generation is perhaps the first that has had to consider more than just whether they want another kid or not when it comes to the size of their family

My delve into this topic has shown that I’m definitely not the only woman facing this dilemma. Our generation is perhaps the first that has had to consider more than just whether they want another kid or not when it comes to the size of their family, which is demonstrated by the data around pregnancy and childbirth. In the UK in 2017, 40% of married couples had only children and a 2020 Australian government report showed that women having one child or no children has increased from 8% in 1986 to 14% in 2016.

“Women are also waiting longer to start their families, so many are hitting a fertility wall. That’s a big factor in this huge swing toward the one-child family,” said Susan Newman, PhD, a social psychologist who has written extensively about parenting.

I’m 34, due to turn 35 in September. If I were to fall pregnant now, my pregnancy would fall into the geriatric category. Ridiculous and offensive terminology aside, not only would the process of getting pregnant potentially be more difficult, there are added risks and complications around pregnancy and labour the older you get. While women having babies in their mid-late thirties and early-mid forties is becoming more common, and health experts are recognising that there is no “one size fits all” approach when it comes to determining a woman’s fertility, there are still health implications that can’t be ignored.

I don’t think I’ll ever be 100% in my choice, but I am a pretty strong 99% that I will not be having another child. There are just too many reasons why, for our family and for myself, it wouldn’t be a good decision. I’m comfortable acknowledging that the niggling 1% may always be there, and may grow or shrink in size as we go through life and I experience more of what being a parent comprises, but I know it will always be the smaller percentage. I think it’s OK to be unsure, or to never fully be certain. We have the luxury of choice, something so many generations before us didn’t have, so we should be thinking long and hard about it; we owe it to those that came before us not to do it carelessly.

I’d love to know your thoughts on this, drop me a comment whether you’re a one-and-done, mum to multiple or childfree.

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