Is there a number of kids that you know you don’t want / can’t see yourself having?
For me that is 2. I can see myself having 1 kid or 3 kids, but it never crosses my mind to have 2 kids. I think I’m swayed more to an odd number. I was wondering if anybody else has a preference this way. You’ll either stop before or have another.
[name_u]An[/name_u] even number appeals to me more. That way everyone can “buddy-up.” That said, I wouldn’t be opposed to 3 if it feels complete to me when the time comes.
We thought we’d have 3 however our first 2 came closer together than we had originally planned (they are not quite 2 years apart) and due to our current life circumstances its likely we wont have our 3rd until our youngest is closer to 4. Which makes me worried if we stopped at 3 the youngest might feel left out… so we’re now considering the possibility of having 4 so everyone has a sibling to go through life/ school/ growing pains together.
I always thought I never wanted 3, but that was based on my mother’s experience. She was the middle of 3 and never missed an opportunity to tell us how awful it was because with 3 there’s always one that’s left out.
But since I have children myself, I realized that this makes no sense. No matter the number of children you have, there’s no way of knowing if your children will get along, who’ll be closer to who and how they will “team up”. You can’t plan a thing like that, and you can’t predict it.
[name_u]An[/name_u] even number has always appealed to me for the whole “can buddy upn no one’s left out” idea. But I’ve found that’s not a guarantee. We’re done with two due to having two very strong personalities – who don’t mesh at all. Maybe we’d be less stressed if we had a third and s/he bonded with one of my older ones and they entertained each other. I don’t know. I’m not brave enough to try to find out. 
I’d always thought I wanted 3. Both my parents were from families of 3 kids, I’m from a family of 3… when families stopped at 2 I couldn’t understand why, it didn’t seem ‘complete’.
But watching my 2 together now… and also thinking about the realities of 3 (I think one of my siblings DOES get left out, not intentionally, but being the only boy and having different life experiences and interests)… I’m scared to add a third and change the dynamic and risk one being left out. But we also can’t afford 4 and don’t have the space.
Old or Even… I want 4, but probably will stop at 3. I 100% don’t want just 1 kid though… I feel like being an only child is kinda sad because they will never experience having a sibling whether to look up to or to play with. Only children are also usually spoiled since they have all of their parents’ attention. I just cant see myself only having 1.
I’ve always said I wanted an even number of kids, both because of feeling like it’s easier for one child to be left out, and because I generally have a strong preference for even numbers 
This being said, in the past year, I’ve been wanting odd numbers (5 for a while, and 3 currently), but that’s not because it is specifically odd, mostly because at those times, it’s what I felt I could handle! I have never wanted only one child, and two feels like so little, obviously the next number is three which I feel like balances on the line of being a small family and a big family perfectly! So while I would prefer to have an even number of children, I can also see myself having an odd number.
ETA - I’ve also recently been having strong vibes that I’ll have two boys and then a girl, so maybe that contributes to me “wanting” three kids!
I like odd numbers, 3, 5, 25 
Let’s see what life brings. 
I definitely always wanted more than one child. [name_m]Even[/name_m] though I am the “left out” one of three, I think having siblings was such an important and enriching part of my childhood especially, and I can’t imagine not passing that personal experience on to my children.
I have always been more inclined towards an even number, too. [name_m]Even[/name_m] though we had decided we were done at three for a while, it was always a head over heart settlement for me.
Now we are lucky enough to have our wonderful four and I feel 100% happy and settled with our little gang 
I’ve always wanted 3! So I guess an odd number doesn’t bother me. I have one sister and we’re two years apart, but we’re not super close, while my dad is one of 3 with eight years between the oldest and youngest and they’re all very close. I’ve always thought each personality has the greatest impact on whether siblings are close, and as for one being left out, my sister always said she was left out despite there being just two of us!
We’re at this weird place where we feel complete having one child yet we do long for one more. It isn’t an easy path for us so I want to be grateful in my heart for whatever number we do end up with.
That said, I don’t think we’d have more than two. Taking into account factors such as finances, our existing child’s well-being, mental load, etc., that’s about all we could reasonably handle.
I don’t really care about even or odd numbers. I experienced both sides of that story growing up, being third out of six kids yet the oldest of the three still left at home. The three of us barely all got along at the same time and now the six of us as a whole barely talk. You can’t avoid distance and you can’t guarantee closeness.
I’m thinking we’ll have 3-4. It used to be 4-5, but now that we know how much work is involved, 5 seems out of the question to me haha! One or two kids feels like too little to me, but now it doesn’t feel as s compared to how I felt before our child was born. It didn’t seem possible to be as fulfilled or satisfied with just 1 or 2, but now I realize that’s not necessarily! Still though, I think we’ll have 3-4.
[name_f]My[/name_f] husband and I both grew up in odd-number sibsets. I am the middle of 3, and we did “team up” against the other a lot, but it always switched who was on who’s team, so no one person was always left out all the time. Now as adults, my brother and sister are closer to each other than to me, but that has more to do with personality differences. I’m not sure having one more sibling would have changed things much, unless they were more like me. [name_f]My[/name_f] husband’s family went B, G, G, B, B, so he did feel left out because his siblings all had someone to play with, but he didn’t. I think that if he had brothers close in age to him, he wouldn’t have had that issue though. His brothers are 7 and 10 years younger than him. Now I adulthood, they’re all very close and he considers his siblings his best friends 
although, he does hope that our next child is the same gender as our oldest just to limit a repeat of his experience haha
I really identify with this. I personally would like 1 or 3 kids. I could really see myself staying at 1 kid (no kids currently) unless other factors work out because it’s adding 2 whole kids. No reality do I see myself having 2 kids.
I know you can’t guarantee closeness, but 2 seems like way more of a toss up than 3 would be. Being from a family of 3, if it was kid 1 & kid 3 alone, I don’t think we’d be very close. I believe kid 2 and kid 3 alone would still be very close. Kid 1 and kid 2 would still get along but ultimately it’s all 3 of us that make the dynamic work. 3 kids and all 6 pairings would create different outcomes without the 3rd.
Ok but 2 boys + 1 girl is my dream dynamic too. That or 3 girls.
I have a lot of friends that are only children. And they’re a mixed bag of personalities. One was a kinda annoying attention-hog, another one is very social and pretty normal, the other is more bookish and a loner. All of them are pretty academic and smart / good students though. The one bad thing that I think they all have in common is they place way too much importance on friendships. I think they care a lot more about the # of friends they have. And I think they have a harder time moving past the small things. Whereas when you have siblings you brush past small things 1000x a day. And I never really stressed about how many friends I had / who I could hang out with, because I knew I could always go to my sisters.
But I think coming from siblings and having an only child you can create a different dynamic with cousins / relatives that true only children don’t get.
Yeah, thats what I thought. I guess it depends on the child, but I feel like if you’re a parent to an only child, you get stereotyped and I just don’t think I want that
If you’re a parent you get stereotyped no matter what. I got comments for not wanting children, when my oldest was born for only wanting one child, for wanting more children with my second husband, and now I get stereotyped for having too many children.
Yeah, that’s true… i just meant you get stereotyped for making your kid having to go through life without a sibling best friend. I’ve seen it happen especially where I live
If we ever end up having children, we will likely just have one. I have seven siblings myself, and S/O has three, and as others have said already it’s more about the personalities of the kids than if there’s an odd/even number of them. Me and my siblings are all incredibly close, and while we “paired off” at times it was usually just because that was the sibling we were closest to in age/shared a room with. As an adult, I’m now closer to one of my siblings I did not get along with growing up and never talk with the one I was closest too when we were kids. S/O and his siblings are all very close in age and none of them get along. Their personalities just never meshed. You can’t guarantee anything with people, and kids are their own individuals. They may pair off or they may not. They may be extremely close forever, or they may grow apart with age. I don’t think an odd or even number of them can deter such things, especially when you account for age differences and the like.
As far as myself and my S/O, we want just one. We both love kids, but having multiples isn’t ideal for use simply because of our own relationships with our siblings and our parents. We’d just rather not have our attentions and finances divided, and as someone who has a ton of siblings I adore, I also dont think it’s necessary. And, our kid would have tons of cousins so we won’t feel too bad about them not having anyone to play with. And then they could come home, have their own space, and their parents undivided attention. [name_f]My[/name_f] three best friends growing up were all singletons, and that has coloured a lot of my feelings on this especially in recent years. They weren’t any more spoiled than any other kid who is well loved and taken care of, siblings or not, and the fact that their parents could pretty much attend all their extra curricular functions was a major source of jealously for me. They also were never parentified being as they had no siblings, and I personally feel in some ways that becomes inevitable with oldest children when you have several (again, sneaking from mine and my S/Os personal experience), whether the parent works against it or not. [name_f]My[/name_f] parents never intentionally parentified me like my in-laws did my S/O, but I’m a nurturing, motherly type by nature and it happened any way. I just would prefer to avoid that with my own kids if at all possible, and I feel like having just one could help ensure that.
There also never seemed to be any stigma attached to the singletons I knew. If anything, my parents having eight kids draws way more judgement than any parents of a single kid I’ve personally ever known, and I grew up in an area where the “quiver full” ideology is preached heavily. There is always going to be someone who will have a negative or rude opinion on if you have kids and how many, so I’d just do what you feel fits you’re lifestyle and needs and to hell with all else 