My daughter will turn 4 in a few months, and I've already lost count of the number of times we've had family members ask “When is she going to get a sister or brother to play with?”
Sigh.
At this point, I'm 99.9 percent sure that I don't want to have another child. But my wife, you see, is undecided, which technically makes me undecided. Surprisingly, it appears that many parents in the U.S. have decided, and they're increasingly coming down on the side of “one and done.” Single-child families have almost doubled since the 1960s, to about one in five, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
The economic climate is a factor: It costs $235,000 to raise a child to 17.
Statistics are fun, but they don't necessarily help us make decisions. After all, those commonly referenced only-child stereotypes (spoiled, self-centered, introverted, etc.) don't show up in pie charts or percentages. So I decided to gather a few expert opinions.
