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Anyone here have more than one child, and why did you decide you wanted to have more?

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
Once you decided to have more than one, what was your determining factor in deciding when to stop having kids? Was it pre-planned or did you just arbitrarily decide to stop? Or how many were you fucked, your girl got pregnant, and just kinda decided to keep it and that was that?

My sister had her first child not too long ago and talking to her recently she said she wants to have another. Labor was really hard on her. Like really hard. It caused some medical issues and some psychological shit she had to deal with. I asked her why and she just kinda responded with "I just want to have another one." It made me wonder if couples just love the feeling of seeing how cute a newborn baby is and out of nostalgia and some innate human thing that helps us parent, they crave that experience over again and want that feeling of raising a baby more than the actual child itself. Labor is so fucking intensive and I'm always curious what makes couples, especially the woman want to go through all that again.

I don't have any kids, but if I ever do, I can't see myself ever desiring more than one. But maybe that will change if/when I experience becoming a father. Some of my woman friends who are mothers only have one child and say they are perfectly fine with one child and just don't want to go through pregnancy again, so I'm always curious to what drives couples to keep pumping out kids.
 
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Tschumi

Member
First one wasn't cute enough.

For real though. My wife and I don't have kids (yet) but if my first one isn't a cute as cute can cutely be Eurasian doll, or twins, I'm going in for another seeding.
 
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I have two great looking sons from two different mothers.
Both very beautiful women.

First one was black haired and blue eyed. Little bit of a Eastern Europe type.
Second one was scandinavian looking with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Sometimes you just feel those perfect genes matching and need to take action.
 

DonJorginho

Banned
In the words of Kanye West:

I'm a sick fuck, I like a quick fuck.

I have no kids, just wanted an excuse to use this line, forgive me Father for I have sinned.
 
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notseqi

Member
Don't have kids, my experience is while a child with siblings can be a shit, a only-child will be most definitely be shit.
Not sure what brings that about but most mothers with an only-child I have met seemed not quite right in the head.
 

TheContact

Member
I have two biological (7 and 5) and we adopted a girl who’s 2 (had her since she was a week old). The two biological were planned, and the baby was through dcf but after over a year of having her and the mom and dad wanting nothing to do with her, we adopted her rather than putting her in a new home. My max is 3 though as it’s a lot of work especially at these ages.
 

Mossybrew

Member
Labor is so fucking intensive and I'm always curious what makes couples, especially the woman want to go through all that again.

I don't think this is much of a factor. Of course giving birth is an ordeal but it's a one time thing and then it's over and you have a child for a lifetime.

Our second was five years after our first. There was no type of calculation or logic to it, suddenly we were both just ready and were like, let's do it. Kids need at least one sibling IMO.
 

Duellist

Member
We always wanted a son and daughter. We agreed we would try until we had both. Luckily we had a son on first try and a daughter 3 years later.
 

Ornlu

Banned
We had our first at 19, then 5 years later had #2 and 5 years later had #3. The first wasn't really planned, but we definitely weren't trying to avoid pregnancy. With the other two it was literally 1 "try" each. Now we're in our 30's and happy with three. They're all at different stages in life, so they aren't really competing for the same attention, etc. I really like the way our plan has turned out over the years. Also, not being super old by the time they are out of the house should be a plus.

In my personal opinion, 2 people having 1 kid (or, even worse, none) is just inviting all of the bad societal implications that comes with that. Western society is set up (whether rightly or wrongly) that the young must bear the burdens of the old. If you have entire generations deciding to just not have children, the equation naturally fails, as is currently playing out across the entire developed world. All the nice things we enjoy in our societies are based on the assumption that for every adult man and woman, there is an average of 2 children.
 

NecrosaroIII

Ask me about my terrible takes on Star Trek characters
The concept of the heir and the spare. Your first is your trial run. If you get it right, great. But if you get it wrong you have the back up.
 

teezzy

Banned
I grew up an only child

Would not recommend raising your kid that way. People need someone to bounce off of and share early fundamental life experiences with. Someone who understands why your parents are crazy. Someone to vent to who is gonna kinda be there always. To this day, I wonder what having a sibling is like
 
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I have 3 biological daughters (2 from precious marriage) and we adopted 2 more and are ages 7,10,13,14,17. My wife and I have been blessed with successful careers and we both loved the idea of having a large family. Originally we went through training to be foster parents but ended up adopting our first 2.

As far as reason why I guess the only thing that comes to mind is how much happiness it brings us to have a hectic yet loving household that always has something going down.
 

Thaedolus

Gold Member
We're having another, mostly because my wife wanted another and I don't want our kid to be an only child/not have someone to play with. We're stopping at 2 because that's enough, we're in our mid thirties and kids are expensive as hell. Also it's hard to give even one kid enough attention, the idea of giving 3+ an appropriate amount just seems like it wouldn't be worth it.
 
F

Foamy

Unconfirmed Member
I lost my second child so I only have one but I'm planning to another next year. My daughter is really lonely and she has been asking us for a sibling for a while. But even if she didn't, I always wanted to have two kids and I haven't gave up on it.
I'm so very sorry to hear that. I cannot imagine anything in life being more heart breaking than losing a young child.
My sincerest condolences.
 

MrMephistoX

Member
Don’t have two because California’s major cities are too expensive to enjoy life with two sets of daycare bills. I do worry about like what happens if my daughter grows up alone and we get sent off to the nursing home without a sibling to share the costs but hopefully she’ll have a family of her own by then and a good life partner + a few kids. Also we try to keep her in close contact with her cousins.
 
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poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
We always wanted a son and daughter. We agreed we would try until we had both. Luckily we had a son on first try and a daughter 3 years later.
Yeah we had a son and daughter pretty much back to back (they are 9 and 7). It was all planned, my wife was an only child and wished she wasn't, I had brothers and was glad I did.
Used to live next to a family that kept trying for a boy - result 6 girls. Also knew a couple who decided to have just one more - result twins.
 
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weve always discussed having more than one, even before we had our first. my wife was an only child ( i have two brothers) and she has always wanted a large close knit family and after two we didnt feel like our family was complete.

but with a third on the way we're beginning to feel that way.

its hard fucking work and you sacrifice A LOT. but we love being parents and the payoff is worth it in our eyes.

ask me how i feel once it comes out though. lol.
 
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MrMephistoX

Member
Yeah we had a son and daughter pretty much back to back (they are 9 and 7). It was all planned, my wife was an only child and wished she wasn't, I had brothers and was glad I did.
Used to live next to a family that kept trying for a boy - result 6 girls. Also knew a couple who decided to have just one more - result twins.

Yeah my wife is good friends with a Korean girl and her dad desperately wanted a boy after her older sister was born: the result was also twin girls.
 

Texas Pride

Banned
I spread my seed far and wide. My gift to the world long after I'm gone. If you ain't fuckin you ain't living
 
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quickwhips

Member
I have two sons. They are 5 and 1.5 years old. I loved the first one so much and knew I had more love to give. Wife felt same way. Two feels good for us. We respect people who can handle more. Kids are wonderful but talk a bunch of time. I try to never be selfish.
 

jsnake19

Member
I didnt particularly want any kids, but my wife wanted the first. Switch was flipped once she was born and we decided to have another so that she had a sibling. It's been a lot of work, but completely worth it. Kids are 2 years apart, and are totally inseparable. Love both my kids in their own unique way.
 

bigsnack

Member
I didnt particularly want any kids, but my wife wanted the first. Switch was flipped once she was born and we decided to have another so that she had a sibling. It's been a lot of work, but completely worth it. Kids are 2 years apart, and are totally inseparable. Love both my kids in their own unique way.

This was me as well for the most part. We were traveling and saving money, etc. I didn’t want to mess up a good thing but my wife really wanted a family. I can’t imagine my life without my kids now!

I grew up an only child, and although I never spent time as a kid wishing that I had siblings, I already knew that dynamic and wanted more myself just for a different experience. I have two boys (4.5, 6.5) and they are awesome. They are so different from one another, I love them in totally different ways. We stopped at two for a few reasons, but mostly because our second had a hard first three months and cried non-stop if he wasnt eating, sleeping, or being bounced on a yoga ball. After that I didn’t think I could go through the infant stage again and stay sane. Luckily, they both look like my wife and are decent looking kids, I wouldn’t want the next one coming out looking like me (a troll)!

When my second son started easing up on the crying, I scheduled my vasectomy. There shouldn’t be any surprises down the line.
 
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Falcs

Banned
I currently have a 9 month old son. First child.
I love him more than anything, but man, having a baby in your life is hard as shit!
I can't wait until he's older.
I'm unsure where I sit on having another.
My wife wants him to have a sibling, and I think I'd like that for him too.
But I also don't want to go through another baby stage again. When my son was a few weeks old I was already looking up vasectomy clinics near me thinking "I'm never doing this shit again".
 
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Kreen101

Member
Once you decided to have more than one, what was your determining factor in deciding when to stop having kids? Was it pre-planned or did you just arbitrarily decide to stop? Or how many were you fucked, your girl got pregnant, and just kinda decided to keep it and that was that?

My sister had her first child not too long ago and talking to her recently she said she wants to have another. Labor was really hard on her. Like really hard. It caused some medical issues and some psychological shit she had to deal with. I asked her why and she just kinda responded with "I just want to have another one." It made me wonder if couples just love the feeling of seeing how cute a newborn baby is and out of nostalgia and some innate human thing that helps us parent, they crave that experience over again and want that feeling of raising a baby more than the actual child itself. Labor is so fucking intensive and I'm always curious what makes couples, especially the woman want to go through all that again.

I don't have any kids, but if I ever do, I can't see myself ever desiring more than one. But maybe that will change if/when I experience becoming a father. Some of my woman friends who are mothers only have one child and say they are perfectly fine with one child and just don't want to go through pregnancy again, so I'm always curious to what drives couples to keep pumping out kids.

I have four kids, all boys. I've always considered that having a small number of kids, like one or two, and then going "that's it!" is a self-centered decision. We are rich (I mean us Westerners), we live in peaceful countries, we have technology to make life easy, and we choose to have only one kid, when our ancestors used to have 10 in the most difficult circumstances?

Also our collective self-centeredness when it comes to having only a couple of children is the reason we are being collectively replaced by immigration. It's basically national suicide through our own selfishness and desire to have an easy life of consumerism over child-rearing.
 

G-Bus

Banned
Have a daughter, 1.5 years. We both want two kids and are going for it. I have brought up the possibility of more because we both really like this. Watching a kid grow up and damn amazing.
 

DogofWar

Member
I have a 4 year old girl and a 1.5 year old boy. We wanted another one and did not want the sibling to be too far apart.
We are relatively young and still studying so we are satisfied for now, but might get more kids in the future. We said "between 3 and 5" when we first met. I love my kids and could not imagine life without them - even with the hardships and sacrificing of my hobby time it means.
 

VAL0R

Banned
Being a dad brings me so much joy. As faithful Catholics, my wife and I don't use artificial forms of birth control. I'm so glad we don't because each of our eight fill our hearts and lives with love. I'm sure they will be great friends for life.

My youngest runs past mommy to her big brother to console her when she gets a boo-boo, lol. He's such a good example for the others. We are raising them to love God above all else and to live good, honest lives of faith and virtue.


nXy8BLj.jpg
 

lock2k

Banned
Yeah my wife is good friends with a Korean girl and her dad desperately wanted a boy after her older sister was born: the result was also twin girls.

My wife is a triplet. Her mom had a daughter, wanted to have a second child and had three. So she got pregnant twice and has 4 kids (and it was the natural way).

So I'm planning to have another but I am afraid of something like this happening, I won't lie.

Being a dad brings me so much joy. As faithful Catholics, my wife and I don't use artificial forms of birth control. I'm so glad we don't because each of our eight fill our hearts and lives with love. I'm sure they will be great friends for life.

My youngest runs past mommy to her big brother to console her when she gets a boo-boo, lol. He's such a good example for the others. We are raising them to love God above all else and to live good, honest lives of faith and virtue.


nXy8BLj.jpg

Beautiful family you got there, congrats.
 

Krappadizzle

Gold Member
We just had our first kid 3 months ago and my wife and I are thinking about a second. We want a second before it get's too late. We've been married for 11 years and just had our first child. We waited until we were financially and emotionally ready as possible. It's been great honestly.
 
Being a dad brings me so much joy. As faithful Catholics, my wife and I don't use artificial forms of birth control. I'm so glad we don't because each of our eight fill our hearts and lives with love. I'm sure they will be great friends for life.

My youngest runs past mommy to her big brother to console her when she gets a boo-boo, lol. He's such a good example for the others. We are raising them to love God above all else and to live good, honest lives of faith and virtue.


nXy8BLj.jpg
Which one is you?
 

WoJ

Member
My wife and I have 1 child. We will not be having more. There are a number of reasons why and I'll try to sum them up as concisely as possible.

1) Her and I weren't meant to be parents - I don't mean this to be negative, but we both are not natural parents and have struggled through parenthood in ways where we have some regrets about what we gave up to have a child and believe we should not have another

2) Age. Our daughter was born when we were 33 and 34 respectively. We are now in our late 30's and this is really the first time since our daughter was born either of us would seriously have considered having kid 2. We don't want to be raising kids into our late 50's.

3) We both have career goals we still want to obtain and having a child makes doing so much harder. My wife is in grad school right now and I am currently staying in my job to help support us from an income standpoint because if I were to change jobs onto the career path I want to pursue I would have to take a massive paycut and with a child we can't afford it. With two kids it would make it tough even with my wife finishing school

4) We are selfish. I don't mean this negatively. But her and I both miss our pre-child life and have gotten through the tough phases of having a young child. We pretty much can enjoy the things we were able to enjoy pre-child and once our daughter reaches the point where she can get up on the morning on her own without a parent I believe we will be in that sweet spot of having a young child who is super fun to be around, but also having flexibility with our personal lives

5) We don't want to go back to the early days of parenting. My daughter cried for 3 months straight at night and it was miserable. Each night was a terror. My wife had to get medicated to cope.

6) As I said my wife had to get medicated - in part because how difficult my daughter was as an infant, and in part because she simply had post-partum. Her post-partum was quite bad. No reason to rock the boat on that and try to have another child in case she were to have another bout with it.

7) Kids are expensive. We spend over 12k a year on daycare alone. And daycare where we live is cheaper than many other places. That's just daycare.

We love our daughter as she is and feel like our family is complete. Everyone is wired differently when it comes to parenthood. She adds so much to our life and has become a wonderful complement to what we have, but we don't feel there is any desire to add more children. For us, 1 was enough.
 

Dr.Guru of Peru

played the long game
Being a dad brings me so much joy. As faithful Catholics, my wife and I don't use artificial forms of birth control. I'm so glad we don't because each of our eight fill our hearts and lives with love. I'm sure they will be great friends for life.

My youngest runs past mommy to her big brother to console her when she gets a boo-boo, lol. He's such a good example for the others. We are raising them to love God above all else and to live good, honest lives of faith and virtue.
Dude, don't post pictures of your kids on NeoGAF. Whats wrong with you?
 

Elcid

Banned
Being a dad brings me so much joy. As faithful Catholics, my wife and I don't use artificial forms of birth control. I'm so glad we don't because each of our eight fill our hearts and lives with love. I'm sure they will be great friends for life.

My youngest runs past mommy to her big brother to console her when she gets a boo-boo, lol. He's such a good example for the others. We are raising them to love God above all else and to live good, honest lives of faith and virtue.
^ This guy is obviously too nice of a person to be here. Not like the rest of us scum bags.
I have 3 kids, I plan to have a 4th eventually. If I had endless money I'd have as many as my wife could bear. I love my children more than anything in the world and would gladly keep popping them out. I come from a family of four, and my mom is from a family of four, and my dad is from a family of four. Four is just a solid number in my opinion and it's manageable financially, rough, but manageable. My pullout game is on point though so all three we've had were planned. Also my wife and I are pro-life so if we ever did have an accident we'd have to roll with out.
 

poodaddy

Member
I've got one daughter. Wanted to have more, but the wife didn't, and it takes two to tango. Have since gotten a vasectomy, so the baby making hat has been hung for good.
 

Elcid

Banned
I've got one daughter. Wanted to have more, but the wife didn't, and it takes two to tango. Have since gotten a vasectomy, so the baby making hat has been hung for good.
Real talk. What happens when you nut. Is it like clear? Cause if I can't paint the love of my life white like a geisha, I don't want to live.
 
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lock2k

Banned
^ This guy is obviously too nice of a person to be here. Not like the rest of us scum bags.
I have 3 kids, I plan to have a 4th eventually. If I had endless money I'd have as many as my wife could bear. I love my children more than anything in the world and would gladly keep popping them out. I come from a family of four, and my mom is from a family of four, and my dad is from a family of four. Four is just a solid number in my opinion and it's manageable financially, rough, but manageable. My pullout game is on point though so all three we've had were planned. Also my wife and I are pro-life so if we ever did have an accident we'd have to roll with out.
I'm surprised you don't have more with all the sex you have :messenger_beaming:
 
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