Frankly, I don’t have much choice. I adopted my son as a single parent, after trying to get pregnant for years. It will be years before I finish paying back his adoption, and haven’t the budget to do it again, nor the time or energy for a second child. No chance of getting pregnant at 46 if it didn’t happen at 30 or 38, no partner to help out. So my son will be a single child unless I get together with someone who is already also a parent.
As for the “they’ll be friendsâ€, “they won’t have the burden of aging parents aloneâ€, etc… one never knows. I was close to my brother two years younger than myself until there was my youngest brother. Then I was the elder girl, expected to help mom, and the boys were … the boys. Always together while I was the girl. My brother who was closest to me died age 24, and yes, I still miss him, 20 years later. He has NOT been here to be an uncle to my child, to share life with, or to help with my aging parents. I never had a sister, and though I wanted one, the lack of a sister isn’t this gaping hole of sadness of my brother having died.
My other brother and I have almost nothing in common. He was into team sports and groups of friends as kids, became a conservative Christian after years of trouble with the law. I hated team sports, loved quiet reading and drawing and one on one, always lawabiding and an agnostic. My mother has signed me to be her will executor and sign her living will, as she doesn’t trust my brother who will want to keep her alive by any means, and is very bad with money. So I foresee battles with him, both emotional and financial when my mother is unwell or dying. We have never been close, played together as kids (though I did babysit him when I was 12-15, and was thrown out of cinemas etc as I couldn’t force him to behave), shared viewpoints or sense of humour, or attitudes about the world or the family.
So, yes, it might be great for a child to have a sibling, and if I could afford it, with time and money and help, I probably would have another child or two, but one cannot count on them sharing things in life, nor both still being alive later in life to help with aging parents or give comfort or for their children to be cousins (my son has no cousins).