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Comment by sarnu | Hacker News Reader

The dynamic totally changes with three kids. I have three kids, and when one of them is not at home (doesn't matter which one) the atmosphere changes completely, hard to describe how. What I want to say: Having three is different from having two, but not necessarily harder. They have more things to handle between themselves. I could not bear to raise a single child. That must be really hard.

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Yeah, this rings true from experiencing two kids at my home and visiting single children and multi-children families as a kid.

The single children where very demanding on their parents. The only source of attention and entertainment is the parents, so this makes sense.

Two children entertain themselves a bit more, but like in duopolic situations you have the most extreme competition. This leads to a lot of fights over shared resources.

With 3+ children fights over resources between 2 children don't lead to zero sum gains, so that the competition actually becomes less. Cooperation becomes more important. And the kids almost always entertain themselves.

I'd definitely say the 3+ children parents were usually the least stressed, but maybe that was just my impression. The older siblings at some point functioned as quasi parents to the younger siblings.

Single child here, I didn't feel as demanding; however I certainly had a friendship-style relationship with my parents that all my other friends (none of them single children) didn't have with their parents.

In my experience, usually one child of a set seems to always be a lot more demanding than others.

Me and my wife decided for a second child (he's 2 months old now). I'm curious what you feel is hard about raising a single child? before deciding for the second, we were close to staying with one. If anything we feared it'd be hard for our first son growing all alone. Is that what you meant? hard for the kid not for the parents?

Both for the kid and for the parents. For example, with single childs, you have to arrange play dates. If you have more than one, chances are, they play together. Another thing: with a single child, this one child has to fulfill all of the expectations of the parents. So it is quite a burden for the child. And another thing is, with more than one child you see that your education has a limited effect on the character of a child. Assuming that you treat your kids in a similar way, you can notice a big variety in character between them.

I come from a family of 4 children, but there was a single child nonetheless because we're 3 boys close to each other in age, then a large gap, then a girl. My parents say that in the case of my sister some things were a lot harder because she'd be a lot more prone to being bored and needing entertainment or to being driven over to one of her friends' place. Whereas in the case of us boys all they'd have to do is set us loose in the backyard with a ball(or teach us a boardgame, etc...) and enjoy their peace and quiet until the next meal time.

I'm now experiencing this with my own children to some extent. We have 2 kids so far, a 4 year old boy and a 1 year(and a couple months) old girl. They both wake up around 6:30 in the morning. And whereas before that meant that I'd never get to sleep in past that time, now our son just gathers a bunch of toys, climbs into his sister's crib, and they play until like 8am before they finally get bored and start calling for us. So at least as far as mornings go, 2 kids has proven easier than 1(after that initial 6 months from hell period where you don't get any sleep at all that is)

> I could not bear to raise a single child. That must be really hard.

Can you go into this a bit more? I have a single child, and just thinking of trying to raise another one makes me feel like my lungs are deflating.

(If this isn't a good venue for this conversation, you can email me - my email is in my profile.)

I was as scared to have/not-mess-up my second child as I was with my first.

By the time our third came, I shrugged it off as "well I've already got two... what's a third?"

If I found out we were having a forth, I'd probably feel the same.

I have 11 kids.

The first is the worst, because now your life is restricted by a child. The second has a small impact, because now it takes two parents to chase the kids. The third has a small impact, because now they can run in 3 different directions.

After that though, it is no big deal. The only thing you notice is when you have to upgrade to a larger vehicle. For me this is now a van with 5 rows of seats.

Everything gets more efficient as the family gets larger. If your vehicle choice drops from 30 MPG to 15 MPG as you go from 4 to 10 people, the per-person numbers have gone from 120 to 150. It's like that for lots of things: cost of a house, time spent shopping, etc. You get a bulk discount. Things purchased for the first kid can be used for the next. The tax situation improves too. With enough kids, you probably won't have to pay any income tax.

With just one, you have already lost your ability to wander freely and be left in peace. You mostly can't lose that more. At this point, you might as well enjoy the benefits of having a huge family.

This is entirely true, also have three kids; 1 yr, 3yr and 6yr. When the little one is away, the older two are way more rambunctious and rough with each other (even fighting). When the middle is away, there's no more boy and so things tend to calm down a bit; the older does her own thing, or lets her youngest sister do anything and doesn't make a peep. When the oldest is away, the two younger ones will have similar effects on each other like having the middle away.

It's really weird.

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