The Only Child

I can’t think of a single classmate from elementary or high school who was an only child.  In college, someone from forestry camp was an only.  Not sure how that came up, but he insisted he was normal, well-adjusted, and definitely not spoiled.  He was great.  The guy got along with everybody.  In fact, he was the only student who volunteered to wake up half-an-hour before everyone else to heat the water for our showers.

It seems, now, there are tons of only children, right?  This is from the Wall Street Journal: “It’s hard to gauge how many only children there are because an only child can easily become an eldest child.  But by looking at 50-year-old women, who are presumably finished having children, 18.3% of them had a single child in 2006, up from 11.4% in 1990, according to numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.”  A couple reasons are contributing to the increase.  1) Women are having children later in life.  2) It’s expensive to have more than one child.

If I were an advocate for public schools and free education for my kids, I’d gladly have more than one kid.  But because I’m so damn Catholic and stuck on the idea of sending my kid to very expensive Catholic schools, then I can only have one.  I hope more people join the bandwagon because I’ll be in need of an only-child playgroup.