Best Age Gaps?

My brother and I are 19 months apart. We fought a lot when we were younger but now are pretty close. We might even be able to go to college in the same city.

Personally I don’t think I’d want kids that close in age but I also plan on fostering and possibly foster to adopt on top of having bio kids so
There’s not much say in that. Preferably though between the first two id like 2 years apart and between the youngest and the oldest I’d prefer a much larger gap. I wouldn’t mind having an infant and a college student.

Then you’d have a reliable babysitter, speaking as the high school student sibling of an infant :grin:

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Honestly I feel the answer to this question is so subjective based on your children’s personalities.
There are 20 months between my only sibling and me, and while we always technically had a playmate/confidant in each other we never wanted to play the same things/rarely saw eye to eye, etc. We have remained very different through adulthood but it goes unspoken that we’d do anything for each other.

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No personal experience with this, but the most common answer I hear from parents in my life is 2-3 years. [name_f]My[/name_f] sister and I are 2.5 years apart and have a good relationship. [name_f]My[/name_f] boyfriend and his brother are 9 years apart and speak to each other maybe 5 times a year LOL. But they also have nothing in common, whereas my sister and I do. I think it all depends on your kids’ personalities.

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A year apart was my favorite. I was already in baby and pregnancy mode so I just kept going I wasn’t having to try and remember what I did last time. And my kids are really close and play really well together.

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I wouldn’t want more than a six year gap between my oldest and youngest. I think one of two years is best in terms of closeness, three for having a different but still close relationship. I am three years older than my little brother and when we were younger it was sometimes hard to relate to what he wanted to do and his interests. Ideally I’d want a one year age gap between the first two, and two years between the second and third and third and fourth.

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Both myself and my husband are only children, so we know nothing about age gaps. We’re also open to another child while valuing our own experience as only children. Our son is going to be 4 this year and I’m not pregnant, so any child that might come along won’t be within the next year. If we did have another one, I like the idea of a five or six year age gap. You’ve passed the hump of the infancy and toddler-hood stage with the one, so it wouldn’t be two children in a state of complete dependence. You’d have two children, but with more of a sense of each having their own experience with life and a unique experience with you as parents.

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I come from a big family. I have a sibling 2 years younger and a sibling 20 years younger than me. I fight most with the sibling closest with me and get along best with the sibling farthest from me.

In regards to sibling relationships, I think personalities play more of a role than age.

My husband has 2 siblings (1 and 3 years) older than him. They are all very close.

Thinking of myself going forward, I think 3 years is good between siblings. That way you’ll have the older kids in school before the next one. And they’ll be close enough to grow up together, but in different stages of life at different times. So nobody feels like they didn’t get enough attention. What the parents can handle is most important.

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I would say 5 years apart we are not close growing up.

[name_f]My[/name_f] siblings and I are all staggered by 2 years which to be honest is a fairly decent amount of time. I’m 2 years older than my brother, he is 2 years older than my sister and I am 4 years older than my sister.
Given the fact that I’m envisioning 2 children for myself and not 3 like my parents had I would actually rather them have a 3-3.5 year age gap. The reason being is I think 2 years is great if you’re having 3+ kids but if you just plan on 2 like I am then why not enjoy as much individual time as you can with each baby? The oldest will get more alone time with the parent and I believe this will allow for certain things like potty training earlier, learning to read/write very basic things earlier, looots of attention at their most needy time, etc. And once the youngest comes around since the oldest had that extra year of instruction and supervised growth they may be more independent than they otherwise would have been (I’m talking by a small amount here, not advanced by leaps and bounds by any means, toddlers are still toddlers). And I think this could do a lot towards reducing jealousy, sibling rivalry, and ensuring that there is no “middle child syndrome” taking place aka where baby #2 receives significantly less attentiveness from the parents than baby #1 did