The Case For The Only Child...

“When are you having another one?”

We get this question a lot, and usually it’s not referring to another round of cocktails. It should be phrased, when are you going to do this all over again? And for the past year (I’m just going to assume people were joking when they said it the first six months), our answer has been steadfast. We’re not.

It seems that this is the wrong answer, or at least an unpopular one, because when I say it I'm usually met with a scoff or surprise followed by the standard, You can’t just have one!

But see, you can. You can have just one kid. You can have no kids. In fact, some people shouldn't have kids. They should stick to the meth cooking and the paint huffing and just avoid the whole child rearing all together. And then again, some people are in a place where they can have five or six, maybe they have farmland that needs plowing. 

My point is that every one's situation is different. Everyone does not need to have X amount of kids. I don’t buy into the whole without-siblings-the-kid-will-grow-up-sad-and-lonely-or-socially-awkward argument. Trust me, I have a brother, two sisters, and I’m a freak. 

That being said, I’m not totally against having another child. My mind could change. (Mind changing, how radical!) But my wife and I have discussed having another kid and we remain around 80/20 against it. Okay 70/30. Sure, there are traps, sometimes I'll come across a little outfit that my son has outgrown, or maybe a toy with a song that transports me back to those sleepless nights of rocking him to sleep in the chair and my memory paints this nice, fuzzy glaze over what in fact were some seriously trying times.

And I see the nostalgia hit my wife too, like over the weekend. We were driving out to see my Aunt and Grandmother and I watched her take more than a fleeting glance at the minivans on the road. I gripped the wheel nervously on the only recently paid for Subaru, while she ogled those vans from front to back, pausing to appreciate those sleek sliding doors before moving to the self-closing hatches. 

But still, why push it? We got lucky with this guy, he’s healthy and fun, and with only the occasional bouts with lunacy. And what about Dad? I’ve got one last year left in my thirties, all the more reason not to flood my house with screaming babies. I’m finally at the age where I love sleep. Rosy memories aside, we have finally established a schedule and some very fragile quiet time. Why would we go messing with this? I could go on and on with reasons, but I just looked at a baby picture of my kid and drained myself of testosterone.

So one it is. He has dogs, and he can always make friends with those other crumb crunchers at daycare. And he has me. I'm a good buddy, I mean, not to brag but I’ve been told on several occasions that I’m highly skilled at being childish. Also, as though not having to compete for my attention wasn’t enough, there will be more money to go around without another drooling mouth at the table. At least if my wife can stop thinking about fifty shades of grey minivans.

And yet, when the house is quiet, like last night when I went to check on my little dude and found him sleeping peacefully on his side--not screaming at the top of his lungs or trying to scale the dinner chair to the table like a shirtless Sir Edmund Hillary--and I listened to his raspy little breaths, overcome with a near crippling love that made me blink a lot and I thought, Well maybe, maybe there is enough of this love to go around. But then I crawled into bed and my wife was already asleep and preseason football was on and I got really comfortable and thought, Do I really want to sacrifice this again?