5 Things You Should Never Say To Parents Of Only Children

I was in the pool with my daughter and had struck up a conversation with another kid’s mom when she invariably asked me: “So, how many others do you have?”

I winced as I heard the words “just the one” come out of my mouth, as if my daughter is not enough.

In my nine years of parenting, I’ve had various responses to the fact that I have an “only” — or a “singleton,” as some of us like to say. Some parents are oblivious, asking me when we’re going to try for another (never?). Others are extremely un-shy about sharing their “expert” opinions on the subject of having one child.

As the number of only children in America have only increased over the last half a century — 22% were only children in 2015, compared to 11% in 1976 — you might want to consider what not to say parents of one child:

“Don’t you want to give her a sibling?”

You don’t know what a parent has gone through to have their child. It took me and my husband four years, ten doctors, nine rounds of IVF and four miscarriages to finally have “just” the one (costing tens of thousands of dollars!). You don’t know how much fertility, money or space a person has, so you can’t assume that they can have another child, even if they wanted one.

Besides, having a sibling is no guarantee that the siblings will get along or talk to each other when they’re older.

Some parents are one and done (“OAD”) by circumstance, others by choice. We might be happy to talk about it, if you can have the conversation in a curious, non-judgmental manner.

“Isn’t she lonely?”

This reminds me of the questions that married people used to ask me when I was single — I got married at 40 — as they projected their own feelings onto me. Yet I was happy to be single for most of my life, and I