How many children - part 2

I believe that if a woman is going to have one child then she should, if she can, have at least one more. Multiple children in a family liberate both the mother and the children themselves. Of course, there are many reasons a woman can't have more children and then that is that, and so is life.

If you have a child you know the pressure that comes with it; you feel that you are shaping a life and how the child turns out is completely up to you. It is a roller coaster ride of guilt and congratulations - a heavy burden to go through life with. It was not until I had a second child that I realized that how a child behaves depends so much on the innate nature of the child. There is this other child, living under the same circumstances and rules, and behaving differently. I wasn't messing up my first child, after all! That made me less of an egotist - how the child turns out, good or bad, wasn't entirely my doing. I am not that important! I realized it wasn't so much nature vs. nature but rather that I had to nurture the nature. And that liberated me, I could relax a little and not blame myself for everything.

Looking from the child's perspective, they do not have to bear the entire brunt of the parents' expectations if there are other siblings. And once the parents are old, they don't have to shoulder the entire responsibility either. When my dad had a heart attack, I knew that there were two other people in the world who felt exactly as I did at the moment, whom I could call in the middle of the night and talk to. And because one of my siblings lives much closer to my parents, I didn't have to drop everything and run half way across the world. I could relax in the thought that the needful will be done. This was again a liberating experience for me, as a child.

So there, that is my theory!