An irreverent, inclusive, alternative parenting community
For all the many folks with more than one child...
Which is most all of y'all. :)
Why did you decide to have more than one?
I'm really looking for answers and opinions here out of genuine curiosity.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by wookie on -
I've always really liked kids, but I wasn't sure that I would be a good parent. Hell, I'm still pretty sure that I'm not a good parent... on my best days I'm good but most of the time I'm mediocre at best.
But then I met and married someone who had a stable (more or less) family and no abuse and was an awesome dude and I wanted to have kids with him, figuring I could bank on him for modeling what appropriate discipline/reactions should be. It's worked out pretty okay.
Barring medical complications, I always wanted more than one, and was leaning towards three. Now I've got three and while I still want to scoop up wee little babies and snoodle them and smell them, I am SO HAPPY not to still be in the diaper/midnight feeding/being needed so much insanity.
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Permalink Reply by ks on -
No problem. Sometimes it just needs to be said.
All my growing up, motherhood was presented to me as this sunshine and roses thing and like nothing else was needed to make a woman feel fulfilled and all that crap. And I totally bought it, until I had kids myself. Then I felt like a total failure because my kids *weren't* my entire world, I didn't love them immediately, and I absolutely could not hack it as a stay home mom. It wasn't until an older friend, one of the secretaries at work, pulled me aside and told me that not everybody gets to feel that way and that it is totally okay that I didn't and that it didn't make me love N any less or make me a horrible person because I didn't want to spend every waking moment mooning over him (didn't have A yet at that point).
Since then, and because I'm one of those horrifyingly straightforward types who doesn't mince words and also doesn't that much care what other people think of me, I've made it a point to bring up my feelings on the matter in these types of conversations instead of just staying quiet because I might offend. I've also made it a point to make sure that my kids know that, while I love them completely, they are absolutely *not* the center of my universe and that being their mother isn't always fun happy times (I also periodically threaten to sell them to the circus, mostly joking). Because those things need to be said and I will do my part to make the next generation of moms feel less guilty about not being all supermom all the damn time.
ruth said:ks, I appreciate your honesty SO much. Really. I feel exactly the same way, about not caring for motherhood nearly as much as I thought I would, but to most people saying that would make me some kind of monster in their eyes.
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Permalink Reply by kommishoner on -
Yes, thank you. That is very very much how I feel. I think I'm a pretty good mom, but I'm not the mom I thought I'd be, and I like it a lot less than I thought. Or maybe I like it in different ways than I thought. I am someone who really needs a lot of stuff going on - right now I work f/t, manage a bimonthly legal clinic with a team of 10ish volunteers and 30ish volunteer attorneys, am on a (deeply dysfunctional) nonprofit board and have a few very very close friendships that take me out of the house about one night a week. And the life duet has the car, so I commute by bike/bus pretty much all the time. I love the little man with everything I have, but our relationship is part of a much bigger picture, which is different than I thought it would be. I'm pretty happy, though I feel a lot more guilt about not being a more present mom than I want to.
I also tend not to be shy about talking about the "full picture" of momming and how it's not always super awesome, and how I completely do not ever want to be a stay-at-home mom. Some folks (many of you) want to do it and are super awesome at it (seriously. I've seen some of you up close. It's rad.) I get the Seattle Side-eye a lot (our local version of passive aggressive disapproval). But I figure, I can only be who I am. Oh well.
ks said:No problem. Sometimes it just needs to be said.
All my growing up, motherhood was presented to me as this sunshine and roses thing and like nothing else was needed to make a woman feel fulfilled and all that crap. And I totally bought it, until I had kids myself. Then I felt like a total failure because my kids *weren't* my entire world, I didn't love them immediately, and I absolutely could not hack it as a stay home mom. It wasn't until an older friend, one of the secretaries at work, pulled me aside and told me that not everybody gets to feel that way and that it is totally okay that I didn't and that it didn't make me love N any less or make me a horrible person because I didn't want to spend every waking moment mooning over him (didn't have A yet at that point).
Since then, and because I'm one of those horrifyingly straightforward types who doesn't mince words and also doesn't that much care what other people think of me, I've made it a point to bring up my feelings on the matter in these types of conversations instead of just staying quiet because I might offend. I've also made it a point to make sure that my kids know that, while I love them completely, they are absolutely *not* the center of my universe and that being their mother isn't always fun happy times (I also periodically threaten to sell them to the circus, mostly joking). Because those things need to be said and I will do my part to make the next generation of moms feel less guilty about not being all supermom all the damn time.
ruth said:ks, I appreciate your honesty SO much. Really. I feel exactly the same way, about not caring for motherhood nearly as much as I thought I would, but to most people saying that would make me some kind of monster in their eyes.
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Permalink Reply by The Oracle on -
So much to say here, but I'm headed out for the evening because I've spent all day with people under four feet tall and now I get to go decompress with grown-ups.
I will say, though, that staying home by no means makes one immune from guilt. That and annoyance are probably my predominant emotions these days. Crap. I should probably get a job.
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Permalink Reply by Kiwi on -
I did this recently during a girls scout meeting. The parents were having a conversation along about sleep away summer camps. I said that I was excited about Thing 1 and Thing 2 going to camp. "Won't you miss them?" one woman asked me. I said quite plainly to her "Not for a second. I will have 10 straight days of having no one to answer to but me. That hasn't happened since 2002. "
I love my children with all that I am but 2024 cannot get here fast enough most days.
ks said:I'm one of those horrifyingly straightforward types who doesn't mince words and also doesn't that much care what other people think of me, I've made it a point to bring up my feelings on the matter in these types of conversations instead of just staying quiet because I might offend.
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Permalink Reply by Joe Mama on -
PF and I are probably closer to siblings then we are to anyone other than each other so it was hard to imagine raising a singleton. PF wanted to have 6 or more...but that only lasted until the first week after #1 was born, then 2 sounded fine.
We had actually talked about having three but always assumed we would adopt if we wanted a third (I started thinking about that zero population thing early too!)...but our family feels right so we stopped.
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Permalink Reply by Joe Mama on
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I also have to say that I didn't know if I would like parenting and there is a lot of parenting that bores the bejeezus out of me. I am amazed at how good my kids are doing under this careful plan of benign neglect.
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Permalink Reply by Boring User Name on -
Also, tons of thoughts here, but on the original topic quickly. We always wanted two, but I hated pregnancy and babyhood. I think I was also caught off-guard by the "mom enough" kind of societal crap. So for 2 to 3 years I said, "no way" to another. I think the kid finally got to an age I liked, twos and threes, that I was willing to endure pregancy and an infant to get to have another three year old.
And yes, a big thanks for the honesty around here. I owe all of you thanks for my (occasionally shaky, but most days solid) confidence in who I am, as a person who happens to be a mom.
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Permalink Reply by kommishoner on
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In re-reading my comment, I realize that it could read like I'm saying folks who stay home don't have a lot going on, or don't have a "bigger picture" outside of their kids. I hope it didn't read that way (especially to you, Oracle, as I have so very much respect for the work you do and the balance you strike for yourself and your family). I think one of the things that I struggled with in thinking about staying home with the little man was that I just had no idea what to do with him, and no concept or skills to develop any of the social stuff he would need. It felt like work I wasn't qualified to do. And that's what impresses me about homeschooling - it's so much work, away from the kids, to develop a curriculum and do the documentation and meet the required standards and coordinate with other homeschooling families and do the legislative advocacy and all of that. The planning and paperwork strike me as a full time job.
And I'll just say that I struggled so hard to talk about being a working mom in a way that didn't inadvertently belittle other ways of working/parenting, and I still feel like I didn't do it right. And I blame all this "mom enough" crap - we get so beat up by all the stupid media-fomented catfights that we can't have a conversation without accidentally participating in it.
Sorry to threadjack, btw. Especially since I only have one, and pretty much only want one, so I don't really have anything to contribute. I would love to be pregnant/give birth again, but I don't want to parent another kid (hello, "mom enough" guilt - whaddaya mean you only want one?? ;) ). So until surrogacy gets a lot more legal support in my state, my uterus is dormant. ;)
kommishoner said:Yes, thank you. That is very very much how I feel. I think I'm a pretty good mom, but I'm not the mom I thought I'd be, and I like it a lot less than I thought. Or maybe I like it in different ways than I thought. I am someone who really needs a lot of stuff going on - right now I work f/t, manage a bimonthly legal clinic with a team of 10ish volunteers and 30ish volunteer attorneys, am on a (deeply dysfunctional) nonprofit board and have a few very very close friendships that take me out of the house about one night a week. And the life duet has the car, so I commute by bike/bus pretty much all the time. I love the little man with everything I have, but our relationship is part of a much bigger picture, which is different than I thought it would be. I'm pretty happy, though I feel a lot more guilt about not being a more present mom than I want to.
I also tend not to be shy about talking about the "full picture" of momming and how it's not always super awesome, and how I completely do not ever want to be a stay-at-home mom. Some folks (many of you) want to do it and are super awesome at it (seriously. I've seen some of you up close. It's rad.) I get the Seattle Side-eye a lot (our local version of passive aggressive disapproval). But I figure, I can only be who I am. Oh well.
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Permalink Reply by bethany on -
I could have stopped at one. Definitely thought we'd stop at two.
We wanted a boy; had a girl. 16 months later we had another girl. Decided to give it one more try, for the hubs. Had a boy 16 months after that.
We could afford it; hubby's career allows him to work nights and be home with the kids during the day. He's also a partner in every sense of the word, so the household work is done by us equally.
I often have pangs of guilt about not being home more, and that I wasn't cut out to be a SAHM, but I try to have as much fun with them as I can.
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Permalink Reply by Mamaluv on -
I initially thought we would have 3 or 4 but pretty quickly came to realize that 2 was the right fit for us. Part of this decision was financial, and wanting to be secure in our ability to provide for them. If my husband had pushed to try for a 3rd in hopes of having a son, I would have went along with it, but the thought of having three teenaged girls in the house at some point was enough for him to agree that we weren't going to have anymore. We've thought about becoming foster parents (possibility for more babies, which is very exciting for me!) but want to wait until our bio kids are a little older.
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Permalink Reply by The Oracle on
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kommish, I didn't take your comments badly and hope my response didn't suggest that. I read it as your experience with no other implication. That said, I have been thinking a lot lately about going back to work half-time and just saying it feels so liberating and exciting that I know it's the right decision. We'll continue to homeschool, as it's clearly the right path at least for the Dragon, but I need a lot more than my one evening out per week to balance out my constant presence in my kids' lives. I really, really miss being a psychotherapist, so will look to get back into that field within the next few months.
As far as the original question goes, I always knew there would be two. I thought for a while there would be three, mostly because I was surprised Ducky was a boy, but I was never attached to having one of each, just had an intuition that there would be. But we don't have the youth, the health, or the finances to have a third. Also, my depression took a serious nosedive after #2 (see guilt, above) and I don't want to tempt fate and possibly make it worse. Finally, I have always been concerned about the eco-impact of having more than two. So as much as I wonder about (and sometimes long for) the third that we'll never have, our family feels right at this size.
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