Your take on age difference

My son and my daughter are 3 1/2 years apart, and we find that it makes it much easier! They each have their own interests and activities, but they are also close. My son helps my daughter with her homework sometimes, and he will run with her to encourage her, as he is on the middle school track team. They do argue, as most siblings do, but I think they will grow up respecting each other.

My oldest is gonna be 6 in [name]June[/name]. My middle just turned 2 in [name]March[/name] & my youngest (and LAST) will be here sometime in [name]July[/name]. Not the way I had planned it. My older sister had her 3 pretty much back to back, they are now 14, 13, & 12yrs old. I spent ALOT of time babysitting them when they were babies & it seemed so easy. So naturally I thought I could do it that way too. Get it all over with & then have the rest of my years just having fun with them. I am so thankful God had other plans!! It has been difficult enough getting through this pregnancy with one in school & one home with me all day.

I don’t think there’s a “perfect” spacing & if you plan on certain # of yrs apart, that likely won’t happen.

I have a good relationship with my siblings, even though we grew up in different countries and only share the same dad. My older sister is 15 years older than me. Then I have two younger ones, 7 and 9 years younger.

I want my children closer in age. My son is now 1 year and 5 months. We are planning #2 now, hopefully to be born next summer. In that case D would be about 2,5 years. Seems perfect for us!

My sisters are 22 mos. and 5 years younger than I (there’s a 3 year gap between them). We are really close, and while we had the normal sibling rivalry, we loved playing together and growing up. The youngest is definitely my “baby” sister; I loved taking care of her and being mom-ish, but I’m glad that I got the close-in-age, best-friend sister bond with the middle sister, too. My boyfriend is 4 and 8 years older than his siblings (partially worked out that way, and partially for financial planning). He wishes he were closer with his siblings; they get along, but the age difference has put them in really different places in life (at least right now). It’s true his parents don’t have to pay for two kids in college at the same time, but they will be paying for 12 straight years!

I personally want not too much distance between my future kids (just under 2 years - 3 years). Maybe I’ll reevaluate when the time comes, of course, but that would be ideal. I do agree that it’s a person-to-person preference, not a set right timing.

My sister and I are 5 years apart, and we were never able to relate to each other when we were younger. It wasn’t until we were both young adults that our friendship finally took root in a real way, and now we are very close. For that reason, I want my kids to be a little closer in age–maybe 2.5 or 3 years.

My own mother had my siblings and I separated by at least 4-5 years and we never fought growing up since there was a difference. When I start to have children I plan to go with 3 years apart :slight_smile:

I want my kids to be aged 2-4 years apart because i want my kids to be friends and play together

I want my kids to be aged 2-4 years apart because then they will be close in age but not too far to share things and be friends but still have their own interests

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Our kids won’t be any closer in age than 3 years just because of the timing of my PhD program, and 4-5 is more likely. I like the idea of kids closer in age for playing and growing up together, but I’m also glad we won’t have two in diapers, more one-on-one time when they are little since the older will be in school, etc. And age doesn’t necessarily correlate to being great friends–my sisters are 4 years apart and super close, whereas I’m only 2.5 years older than the middle sister and we’ve never really been buddies.

If I have kids, I’m hoping for a small age gap or to have a couple kids, wait a few years, then have another couple kids because I think the companionship is nice.

I have three God-brothers and the oldest are two years apart, while the youngest is about six years younger than the middle brother. The youngest isn’t nearly as close as the others and it’s not something I’d like to happen with my own kids.

The same thing happened to my mum (the fifth of six kids) whose oldest sibling is twenty years older than her, and the fourth sibling, my aunt, is about six/seven years older than her. As a result, she doesn’t have the same relationship with her siblings.

Anyway, overall, I’d prefer for the age gap to be 1-2 years, but that depends on health risks, financial situation, what I could handle, etc. Or have something like a seven-year-old, six-year-old, two-year-old and one-year-old.

My sisters and I are about 4 years apart. I used to be close to my middle sister but she’s a freshman in high school and is going through a much different part of her life from me. She’s also decided that her family is uncool and wouldn’t listen to anything I have to say anyways. My youngest sister is 11 (today!) and we’re close as far as siblings go but not like friends. We don’t talk about important things but we annoy and tease each other lovingly. My two younger sisters, however, fight like cats and dogs, and can’t be trusted in the same room as one another alone.

My cousins are almost exactly 2.5 apart and are two peas in a pod. They’re in kindergarten and second grade, and both were so excited to go to the same school. Whenever they see each other in the hall, they hug. I never went to the same school as my sister but I know I wouldn’t have been excited, even at age 5 or 7. I wouldn’t be upset but I wouldn’t hug her in the hall. When my middle sister was on the dance team with me, I wanted nothing to do with her and spent most practices actively ignoring and avoiding her (we were 12 and 8 at the time).

I think closeness isn’t exclusively based on age. My cousins have compatible personalities unlike my sisters, and it’s also only them and my aunt since my uncle passed a little over a year ago, so they’ve needed to be close.

Still, I’d rather have kids closer in age. I want to have a couple in a row, then another couple a few years later. And as hard as it would be, every set of twins I know are thick as thieves, which I think would be nice. Health and money permitting, I’d like 1-3 years between my first kids, then wait 5 years, and have two more around the same.

I think 2-3 years would be good. Possibly even closer. There’s 8 years between my sister and, and although it’s been helpful for our family (mum worked a lot), it meant we weren’t very close. We’ve really only started getting along since I moved out for university 5 years ago. It’s been great getting closer, and it would have been nice if we’d been this close growing up. I would never choose to have a big gap between my littles.

As close as possible. This way, they have more chance of being close growing up.

My daughters will be 3 years apart, which I think is as good a gap as any.

I have a sister 12 years younger than me, and we’ve always been super close. I think a lot of it comes down to the personalities of the individual kids, in terms of what works and what doesn’t.

My two children are 3 1/2 years apart. We are now in the teen years, and it is quite helpful; my son (who is in college) can give advice to my daughter (who is in high school). Plus, we can help pay for college one kid at a time! :wink:

Our daughter will be almost 3 when her sibling is born, and though we didn’t “plan” it this way I think it’s a pretty good gap. My bother and i were just over 3 years apart, and it worked out great for us. My husband’s brother and him are 7 years apart and it was just too big of a gap for them to ever be very close. I prefer the idea of them being closer, but not TOO close.

In a perfect world I’d like to have 2-3 yrs. between kids and we’d like 3-5 ideally.

I think 3 years is best for me.
If I were to have multiples first, I’d wait about 5 years and then have my kids after that about 2-3 years apart.

This is interesting! I have stepchildren and my own experiences as a) the eldest cousin and b) the youngest sister to go off of.

Hubby’s children from previous marriage:
SD1 (adopted, half-sibling) and SS1 are four years apart.
SS1, SS2, and SD2 are all two years apart between them.

They have a half brother who is between 11 to 20 years younger than them, approximately.

I can tell you that the two boys (SS1&SS2) are the closest out of all of them, even when they all lived together. They fought constantly, but they also trusted each other more than anyone else. They have inside jokes that most people wouldn’t get. The youngest girl was always catching up to them or doing her own thing, but they have their usual sibling rivalries and protectiveness. None of them are particularly close to the eldest girl, but they do their best.

The youngest girl is basically a parent to their half-brother. She isn’t close to him in any sense of siblinghood, but in a sense of responsibility instead. She views him as her son in a way, although she’s a young teenager. I don’t think this is good for their future relationship, but I try to optimistic anyway. He’s a sweet kid.

I’m the youngest ‘sister’ and an only child, having been raised alongside with my aunts who were both 12 and 16 years older than me. [name_m]Trust[/name_m] me when I say there was an experience of being both a baby for them to care for and an experience of being an irritated sibling. They locked me into or out of places, did things to my toys, and I was always barging in on their times with friends. I annoyed them when they shaved and got suffocated by their toxic hair spray (yay, 90s!). I saw all of their illegal activities and was playing with toys in the same room they partied with their friends. Then the eldest one moved out and I always felt distant from her because of it – she had her own life, got married, had a kiddo. The younger one moved out a few years later but we stayed close because I was always at her house and reading her books. They were all young, irresponsible mothers in a way. I think having a sibling closer to age would’ve either made it worse or made it better in that united way.

I want to say the age gaps only matters to an extent and depends on what you want. [name_f]Every[/name_f] child finds their own way whether that means they remain close to or apart from their siblings when they become adults. It also depends on how you raise them. [name_f]Do[/name_f] you intend to have older children helping you raise younger ones, making them view the younger ones as responsibility rather than sibling relationship? [name_f]Do[/name_f] you believe that age gaps account for or impact maturity levels as they grow, their changing views about relationships, etc? Do you think it might be easier to have all of them closer to age so you didn’t have to start over too much later, especially have them all out of diapers within x amount of years?

Personally, I wouldn’t mind kids close together 2 - 4 years apart because that does cement a bond of surviving childhood, lol. On a child psychology level, the youngest would be learning quickly from the oldest on socializing and attachments. In a bigger age gap, the youngest might be witnessing more advanced socialization and behavior than they are ready to comprehend but that’d stick in their mind as they advance to the age appropriate time for that stuff they learned. Either way, everything balances out.

I also don’t mind the fact that if I had a kid, it will likely be an only child and incredibly young compared to it’s half-siblings. I’ve seen situations where very large age gaps didn’t stop close bonds – mostly because that’s how they were raised and how the gap was treated. I can only hope I would do as well to encourage a bond.

My sibling and I are 2 years and 9 months apart, and that has it’s positives and negatives. We have always been very close but there were times during adolescence that we struggled a bit. Personally I would want to have children closer fo two years apart than three.