Despite the challenges of parenting, every day I feel like we’ve hit the kid-jackpot. Our kiddos are goldmines of giggles and treasures of enthusiasm and delight. I couldn’t imagine a better way to invest my energy, and they take every bit. The dividends of smooches and stories are worth it all, and it’s hard to imagine life without a family.
Yet, lately the idea of staying a family of four has permeated my conscious. After having Girly we were both on the fence about whether to have a third child, and Hubby was even tilted toward three. Knowing how nice it has been to have a three year space between kids, I wasn’t ready to be swayed until there was the prospect having a break in washing cloth diapers!
It’s not my personal energy that limits me from wanting another child, it’s the energy required from the planet.
I know it’s a personal decision, and I certainly don’t judge families with three or more. Many who opt to have a single child for environmental reasons. One of favorite activists Bill McKibben, wrote the case in Maybe One. Personally, I yearned for a second child, and it would have been too great a sacrifice. Yet, at this point I feel that having a third child would be a bit greedy. Two is my happy medium.
While finances don’t dictate our choice, there are financial considerations to your family size. Costs begin in utero, through birth, paternity leave, and won’t lighten up for about two decades. That’s before college. Grandparents out there will remind me that the expense never really goes away, it just changes.
How do your family finances and sustainable values impact your family size?
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Sustainable Family Finances
The story of a family creating an abundant and sustainable life.
Sadly, it is finances that keep me from having a third child, and a marriage that can barely function as it is.
I’ve worked out the variations and it is just too expensive to have a third child, the money just wouldn’t be there unless I sold the house and used the equity to supplement.
I’m not so concerned about the impact to the earth if I had another child. I believe it is how you live your life that is important, and that no matter how crowded the earth is getting, you can have a positive influence. I also think a little larger family allows for wonderful and varied close lifetime relationships that are different than just friends. I’d think about adopting, but I don’t think I have the time and energy required by an adopted child that would make a third.
I appreciate your forthright comment, I know another acquaintance who mentioned that she would like another child, but her husband owns a small business and she wants to be a stay-at-home mom, so another child isn’t in the budget.
One factor for us is that even if we had chosen to have a third, we really couldn’t have managed it until at least our oldest is in first grade and out of full-time child care.
Sorry for my delayed response!