the 'second' solution

this post is about the eternal debate that married people have about the pros and cons of having (or not having) a second kid. which basically means that you are forewarned not to attempt reading this during meal-times and definitely not if you are a queasy types when it comes to descriptions of bodily excretions of children!

let me share my personal experience. i remember when we had prasann, we never had any idea about a second kid. for us having prasann was a great fulfilment in itself. and we were both, as most single kid parents of the 21st century are wont to, kept on our toes trying to be ideal parents to our only child.

this meant a lot visits to the paediatrician, discussing diets, planning quality inputs, worrying about social interaction, the best play schools, et al. apart from his regular paediatrician visits, we used to regularly call a very senior paediatrician, dr. madhuriben sheth, (who is also a very dear family friend).

in fact whenever prasann was under the weather or passed stools which were not of the regular color or consistency we would promptly call madhuriben and ask her for her advise. most of the time her advise would mean just relaxing and waiting until the suspected affliction passed. and without fail she would also tell us that the solution to all the problems was to have a second child.

in fact we had thought that when we had a kid we would have effectively got rid of friends/family/acquaintance/strangers enquiring when we were planning a 'family'! we found out that having a child did not stop people asking us if and when we were planning an addition to the family!

eventually, we did have our second child - sunanda. and we realised soon enough, how true and sage madhuriben's advise was. and when we looked around we saw the stark difference between single-kid parents and the others with more than one kid. here's my laundry-list of the differences i could see (i'm sure you would agree/disagree depending on which side of the fence you are on) :

1. parents of multiple-kids seem to be more 'cool' about their kids.

2. they seem to be far more accepting of their kids' achievements or lack of them.

3. they seem to be far less aggressive about their kids vis-a-vis other parents, teachers, grand-parents, etc.

4. they seem to be of the view that the kids would largely take care of themselves and do not need to be guided and managed all the time.

5. they manage their careers/ hobbies/ other activities with far less guilt about leaving their kids at day-care centres or creches.

6. and they finally realise that their love for the kids doesn't get divided by the number of kids they have; instead it multiplies adequately to ensure that each kid feels loved and secure.

i do realise that this does seem to be a very biased view presented here. but this is how i honestly feel and what i have actually experienced. (and we haven't called madhuriben for a very long time!)

but i would love to hear views from the 'other' side too!