The questions began before we even left the hospital. “So, when are you going to have another one?” “You’ll want to give this one a brother or sister to play with.” “I give you two years before you’re back having the next.”

But I knew, even as I lay in a hospital bed not having slept for 48 hours, smiling wearily and clutching my newborn child to my chest, that the answer to the question, “When are you having another baby?” was, “I’m not.”

By the time my daughter was 18 months old, pretty much everyone we knew who’d had children at the same time as us had a second baby on the way. When people asked us when we were going to have another, we would tell them honestly that we didn’t want another child, that we were happy with one. And I would see it in their eyes: the flash of disbelief, the flicker of sympathy, the certainty no one would actively choose to have only one child. The assumption that there must be fertility issues at play.

Part of me wanted to answer that silent flicker, to pre-empt the unspoken question and impress on people that we weren’t struggling to conceive, we were simply choosing not to. Another part of me knew it wasn’t any of their business, that I shouldn’t care about other people’s assumptions.

But it bothered me that the negative stereotypes surrounding only children are so potent no one could imagine we’d be cruel enough to inflict them willingly on our own daughter.

The instinct that I might want only one child began during pregnancy. I had longed to be a mother and was thrilled when, a year into our marriage, I conceived. At that point, my husband and I blithely assumed we would have two children: it seemed to be the done thing.

And yet, by the time I was halfway through my pregnancy, my husband and I began to think we might not want to do it again. It was a difficult pregnancy, beset by medical issues, some of which impacted on day-to-day life, most of which served merely to exacerbate the worries of an already anxious mother-to-be.

But that wasn’t the only reason for the gradual shift towards a belief that one child would be enough. During the course of the pregnancy, we began to imagine what life would be like when our daughter arrived. But when we imagined it, the scenarios only ever involved the three of us: my husband, myself and our as-yet unborn child. When we pictured life as a family – going to the park, going on holiday, even imagining our daughter as a six-, eight-, 10-year-old – it was only ever the three of us. The idea of a second child began to feel like an invasion on the trio that was already beginning to feel like a fully formed unit.

By the time I held my daughter in my arms and cradled her to my chest as she took her first hungry gulps at my breast, I had a profound certainty I wanted her to be my only one. Over the coming months, we felt complete as a family.

And yet the questions from other people continued. Once the initial fug of parenthood had passed, it began to dawn on me just how invasive they were.

The stock question: “Are you trying for another?” is so much more than an innocuous inquiry. There is the assumption everybody wants more than one child, and conjecture about the state of a couple’s fertility: an ignorance of the fact that maybe they have been “trying” for months but have not wanted to broadcast their failure publicly. There is presumption about financial affairs and career decisions, a belief that all couples can reasonably afford another child, and feel secure enough professionally to take a second stint of maternity leave. There is denial about the possibility of postnatal depression that makes some women anxious about giving birth for a second time.

Hannah Beckerman: ‘One mum told me my daughter wouldn’t fit in at school.’ Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Guardian

Society has long viewed only children as self-centred and self-absorbed. In the 19th century, one psychologist described being a lone child as “a disease in itself”. The only child is commonly assumed to be lonely, spoiled and incapable of forming healthy relationships. Parents are deemed selfish, failing to provide their child with a daily playmate, denying them the sibling bond, and leaving them alone with their grief once both parents have passed away.

And yet recent research paints a different picture. An American study concluded that lone children demonstrated no obvious differences from first-born children in families with siblings. One Chinese study of college-aged students found only children to be more creative and flexible in their thinking.

And yet the stereotypes persist. One school mum, in the first week of reception, told me my daughter would probably find it hard to fit in because she had no siblings. (She fitted in just fine.) Another told me I didn’t really understand what it was like being a working mother since I had only one child, in comparison to her three. A third complained my daughter had an academic advantage because I had only one child’s homework to supervise.

Whatever is behind the stereotype, only children are demographically on the rise. According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2017 more than half of families had one dependent child, the highest level for more than 80 years. In my daughter’s class, a quarter of the children have no siblings. She is not the odd one out.

My daughter is now six and the thought of there being a second child in the house is inconceivable. The three of us fit neatly together. Our daughter is as happy spending time with grownups as she is on play dates. I don’t doubt that there is no such thing as the perfect-sized family: no one-size-fits-all. The only perfect family is the one that loves its children – however many there are – deeply, affectionately and unconditionally. It just so happens that being a trio is the right size for us.

• Hannah Beckerman’s novel If Only I Could Tell You, is published by Orion.

My life as an ‘only’: by Alexandra Jones



Alexandra Jones: ‘There are some excellent perks to being an only.’ Photograph: Thomas Duffield/The Guardian

“Why only one?” people would ask my mother, and she’d laugh and say, “Well, when she was little, Alex always hated the idea of a sibling. ‘You’ll love them more than me!’ she’d say, getting worked up. So I stuck with this one.” This is all true – I was a tyrant who wanted to soak up every last drop of mother’s love. But it’s not the real reason. Circumstance just didn’t allow: my father left us. Then my mother remarried but couldn’t afford more children. And so it’s just me.

There are, of course, some excellent perks to being an only. I have always felt supported and encouraged. My parents weren’t fatigued by others’ successes and were delighted by every good grade and certificate (“100% attendance! God, you’ve done so well!” as if it weren’t them waking me up for school every morning).

But I’d never willingly have an only child, myself. At 30, I often enviously press my nose to the glass of others’ sibling relationships. I have formed deep, sister-like friendships with girls throughout my life – but they’d move away, or we’d grow apart. As a child, life is punctuated by the waxing and waning of friendships, and where someone with siblings has a hope of keeping this in perspective, an only feels each one keenly, as if they’ve lost something that they may never find again. What must it be like to inhabit that safe space – to be so irrefutably, cannot-divorce-you, cannot-leave-you, cannot-block-you-on-WhatsApp connected to someone?

I have a friend who’s one of five siblings. Five! Looks-wise, they’re different iterations of the same face. I love to be around them, and listen to their breathless, directionless stories, where one sibling feints right and the other left, and then a third inevitably says, “No, you’re both wrong” and, “What actually happened was this… ”

There is only one version of my family story: mine. And it’s all right. It’s one of quiet Christmases, supine on the sofa. And quiet Sundays doing homework in front of the fire. And falling asleep in the garden on midsummer evenings. I remember haunting our three-bedroom semi as a child – my parents both worked, and I’d let myself in after school – turning a television on so that I could hear another voice. “Alone” and “lonely’ aren’t the same thing, and it’s not like I felt lonely, exactly. But I definitely felt my aloneness.

• If you would like a comment on this piece to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).