What are you thinking?

She could end up like me.

(Um, only child stereotyping above?)

I respect your choice to have one child or none, but at the same time I think we need to respect the Duggar’s choice to have 17 children. They seem to be happy, healthy, and blessed. The children aren’t unattended and ignored. I think it’s great that some people can have that many children, provide for them, and still be sane. I certainly couldn’t. It would be like having a classroom full of children all the time. No thanks.

I wouldn’t consider myself “religious”. We are followers of Christ though and we believe in God’s word, the Bible. With that said, I certainly will protect myself from pregnancy. You can’t go 9 years of marriage and not have a baby without it. Most Christians I know do use contraception. There are a minority that say that we should leave it in God’s hands. To me, that’s like saying we should not wear seatbelts in the car. God gave me the sense to know how to protect myself.

As far as the only child thing . . . I’ve been a teacher for quite a while and I can usually pick out an only child in a classroom. It took me a few years of teaching to figure out why some children were so demanding, interrupted a lot, and did not want to wait their turn. At the same time, there are some only children that aren’t like that. I think the key is to just teach your child that the world doesn’t revolve around them, teach them respect others, to wait their turn, and not to give them everything they want.

Thanks for the conversation.

When my wife and I were dating, the question was ‘when’s the wedding?’ After we were married, it was ‘when are you going to have kids?’ When we were expecting our first: ‘boy or girl?’ usually along with ‘what are you going to name the child? So now we have the socially acceptable minimum number of children (two, as you’ve found) hopefully we’re done with the nosy questions.

Don’t be afraid to tell the nosy people it’s none of their business!