I’ll bet you think I’m going to say that there are an optimal number of children? You might even think I’m going to weigh in and join the debate over how parenting “really begins” when you’ve had two, three, or more children? Maybe you think I’m going to say that one way is right, better, or ideal, while everything else “doesn’t count?” Nope. In fact, I’d like to add a little more inclusive opinion to the conversation…
I think that being a parent is being a parent, regardless of how many children you may have. But, I do think that every parent’s experience is different. It is different having one child, or two, or twins or triplets. The experience is also different depending on the ages of your children, how they are spaced in terms of age, whether or not you are a single parent, older parent, etc. We seem to want to normalize a specific ideal of parenthood, instead of just accepting all the variations of the parenting experiences as “normal.”
I do think it is different being a single mom of three, than if I was the single mom of one or the partnered mom of six. It’s not better or worse than someone else’s parenting experience, but my parenting situation is unique to me and my life. The thing about being the parent of several kids is that we have been the parent of one, and two, etc. so we think we have something to compare things to (and, in a way, we do) but we only have our own experiences to compare to our own experiences. I think that kids turn out differently because they are different, unique, individual people from birth and each family situation is unique—regardless of how many children you have.
In my own experience, the huge difference is between whether you have children and are a parent—regardless of whether they arrived by birth or adoption—not how many children whom you are a parent for.