I Always Wanted a Sibling—And Then, One for My Daughter

“Is she your only?” a new friend asked me innocently enough the first day we met at a prearranged playground date. Her 3-year-old buried her face in her wide-leg khakis as she bounced her 18-month-old on a pronounced hip, hair from her bun falling chaotically—beautifully—into her eyes. 

“Yep,” I said in a chirp, trying to sound unbothered by the question, “Just us!” 

I watched as her face absorbed my answer, her body still juggling and sheltering her brood. My daughter was already off on her playground journey, shouting commands at the wind, flying through space the wrong way on a swing. My new mom-friend smiled at me, her hands enviably full with daughters.

It was just us—my daughter, my husband, and myself. After two years of trying for a second child, three miscarriages, unsuccessful IUIs, and two failed rounds of IVF, it really was truly, officially just going to be us. Our family size was hopelessly out of our hands, a fact that is at odds with what many people think when they think about families with only children—that having one child is generally a deliberate decision.

Indeed, more and more these days, it is a choice households are making. An amalgam of crises currently conspires against people interested in starting families. The dearth of affordable childcare, the closing of rural hospitals, the lack of good healthcare, the costs of the housing market so at odds with income, and the climate emergency together make the idea of having a child not only existentially fraught but also prohibitively expensive. As a result, family size is shrinking. Between 1976 and 2015, the percentage of households with only children doubled from 11 to 22 percent, data from Pew Research Center shows. But despite all the factors that told me rationally, one child was really all my husband and I could support, as an only child myself, I wanted more. 

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Secondary infertility—not being able to conceive or carry a child after easily having your first one—is bewildering for those who experience it, but perhaps more so for those who haven’t. In the years while we tried for a second child, many of my well-meaning friends expressed puzzlement about my predicament. “But you got pregnant so easily the first time!” was a common refrain during that time. In fact, secondary infertility is as common as plain old infertility, affecting 11 percent of families in the U.S. It just presents itself as more of a mystery because it seems as if you’ve lost something you once had.

And the odds were stacked against me. I started trying for my second child at 38, during a global pandemic when I was constantly stressed. The best medication was the comfort of new pasta recipes and bottles of wine I had never tried before from the local wine shop that never closed its doors. Time slowed to the pace of those infinite nights draining away on the couch as we awaited a signal that it was finally safe to go about our daily lives again. The way my life crept to a halt in that period obscured the truth about time, the biggest factor in terms of fertility. It was actually hurtling off a cliff. 

In addition to destroying my odds at having a second child, time was doing something else. It was making my daughter grow up. As she turned three and then four, I saw her world fashion itself into that of an only child’s—so recognizable that it could’ve been my own. Bunny Bear, O’s ragged little stuffed rabbit, took on an outsized role in our family, suddenly needing naps and baths, almost as if the toy animal had animated into a sibling.

Growing up in Seattle during the ’80s and ’90s, my childhood was saturated with soggy solo adventuring. I explored the mossy understory of our backyard daily, burying little pieces of treasure like fimo beads, swirly glass marbles, and slammer Poggz to discover later, seeding fortune for myself. I played “Restaurant” with a carbon paper waitress pad that I lifted from our local diner where we had breakfast every Saturday, my parents reading the paper while I filled coloring book after coloring book. I emptied the bookcase in my bedroom and turned it into an apartment building for my troll dolls, making furniture out of boxes and papers I pulled from our recycling. 

But as enchanting as my universe was, I was keenly aware of the fact that I was its lone resident. While I chattered to myself under my breath about trolls getting married and flying on airplanes to London as my cat looked on, I knew other kids were playing with their own species—their siblings—with whom they could pass a soccer ball (I kicked mine against our fence), watch America’s Funniest Home Videos together (I watched in my parents’ bedroom with a big bowl of ice cream while my mom ironed and watched Murder She Wrote in our living room), and even fight with. One of the most thrilling moments of my childhood was when I was over at a friend’s and her brother became so angry with us for making fun of him, he chased us around the house with a butter knife. My friend was rightly horrified, but I was delighted to be participating in what seemed to be a classic sibling fight.

Did I want this for my daughter? I couldn’t decide then and still can’t. 

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Frequently, when people find out I’m an only child, they’re incredulous. They offer platitudes like, “You don’t seem like an only child” and “You are so social!” I do think my childhood self would love these compliments, but as a parent of an only child, I mostly find them worrying. So much stigma surrounds only children—that they are spoiled and selfish and socially awkward. These stereotypes exist mostly thanks to the work of a Victorian psychologist who coined the term “Only Child Syndrome.” He ended up casting children without siblings so negatively that many people still believe those cliches today, despite many studies showing that there is no difference between children with siblings and those without.  

Without a doubt, my childhood was privileged in part due to my only child status. I received undivided adult attention most of my life and went on vacations that were affordable, likely because my parents only had to buy a plane ticket for one child. When I peer through the looking glass at my own future as the mother to an only child, I am reassured by this same idea—that my resources will hopefully be able to provide a comfortable life for her.

But so many apprehensions eat away at this allowance: I was lonely as a child and believed in the stereotypes about children like me, frequently feeling paranoid that I wasn’t quick on my feet socially because I had no one to joust with at home. And I tend to be lonely as an adult, too, especially when it comes to matters of family. I am the only one to worry about my dad’s shaky hands or the brain injury my mom endured a few years back. I have no sibling to share these concerns with—they just exist in a feedback loop within me. 

How do we give the good parts of our past lives to our children but not the bad? Parenting my only child has been the process of unmaking an image I’ve held of myself for decades. The experience of secondary infertility often makes me feel minimally equipped as a parent. When families with kids (plural) are late to meet up with us or mom friends can’t grab coffee because they are racing between two different soccer practices on the opposite side of town, I feel like my job is too easy—that having only one kid makes me less of a mom somehow. For the most part, all my instincts are scrambled except for one: Being an only child myself positions me to mother one with capable hands.

On a recent Saturday morning, I woke up late and encountered my husband and our daughter in our living room. We alternate weekend mornings to sleep in and this had been my morning to linger in bed. As I poured myself a cup of coffee, I asked them what they had been up to. “We’ve been playing a game called ‘Rules’ all morning,” my husband responded. What was Rules? I wondered.

“O tells me rules: Bunny Bear sleeps on this washcloth and her favorite food is fish and we are also running a cat ‘Take Care,’ not ‘Day Care,’ where you can leave your cat for the day while you go to work,” he elaborated.

I immediately knew that the game they were playing wasn’t Rules, it was make-believe: the mind of an only child at work diligently spinning the web of a world only she herself knows. Our daughter had built an entire universe in our living room and was asking us to enter it. I hesitated, wishing to the sky that she had someone her age to share it with, but I also knew those worlds, having lived in them myself all those years ago as a child. I was so sad and didn’t know what else to do, so I got down on the floor with her and played.

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