In 1936, the Gallup Poll started asking the question: What do you think is the ideal family size? The response was consistent: 2 children.

However, what people say they want and what they do today is quite different. As women stay in school longer and start their families later (14% of newborns are born to women aged 35 and older, says Pew Research Center), the single-child family is the fastest-growing family unit.

Rocked by the costs

Although infertility and secondary infertility problems are more common among “older women,” they can affect family size at any age. Those who want 2 or more children are also rocked into reality by the costs of raising children.

According to the latest available numbers from the Department of Agriculture, it costs roughly $286,050 to raise a middle class child from birth to age 18… and then parents (or loans) will add on the cost of college. Today most women need to work to help support their families; a second maternity leave or other constraints could put that job in jeopardy.

Ditch the guilt

Yet those who stop after one child hear unthinking comments such as “you are being selfish” or “your child needs a sibling.”

Any such comment invokes a sense of guilt or shame if you can’t have or don’t want more children.

You are within your rights to respond to friends, parents, relatives, even strangers with: “We are happy with our family the way it is.” Or, the conversation stopper: “I’m not discussing this subject now, or ever.”

We have reached a point in time where families are so diverse that parents can decide family size without badgering from those who cling to old notions of what makes a family, or to the only child stereotypes. The labels of selfish, bossy, lonely and spoiled assigned to only children back in the late 1990s have been dismissed by scads of research. What remains is antiquated thinking by those who believe they know what is right for you.

Look around. I am sure you can find children with siblings who are spoiled, bossy, lonely, etc. Parenting style, not the number of siblings a child has or doesn’t have, shapes his or her outcome.

As more and more men and women choose the one-child option, we are moving toward what will most likely be The New Traditional Family, whether by choice or circumstance.