There are plenty of reasons to have kids, in fact there is plenty of reasons to have even just one kid. But when it comes to having kids there are some very solid reasons that you should consider before expanding your family. If any of these reasons are what you are using to have another child, you may just be setting yourself up for some sort of regret or some sort of disappointment, maybe even a little bit of resentment too. Deciding to have more children should be taken seriously and with as much thought as the first one too. Truth be told it is very easy to avoid pregnancy. Whether you abstain or use contraceptives like birth control or condoms, avoiding unwanted pregnancy is fairly simple to do. And on top of it, trying to get pregnant for any of these reasons will more than likely set yourself up for some sort of failure. I know harsh, but true.

One of the main reasons why you hear people wanting to have another kid is to give their first one a sibling. Whether they have a small age gap or a far apart one. Having another kid to give the other a sibling is setting yourself up for some preconceived notion and expectations that doesn’t always work out the way we may want it to. Say you have two kids close in age, maybe they aren’t nearly remotely as close as you would like them to be. Or maybe far apart they still aren’t close. Having a kid to give the other a sibling while seeming like a good idea, and comes normally out of a place of love, normally comes with an idea of how it will play out. Which in all honesty, there is no way of knowing how the two will ever interact because every child is so uniquely themselves. There is literally no way to ever predict that. Whether they are the same gender, opposite genders, or they like the same things and don’t like the same things, trying to have another child just to give your first one a sibling is normally a recipe for some heartache that many are not equipped to deal with.

Deciding to have a child to repair a relationship has to be one of the dumbest ideas of wanting to bring any kid into a relationship let alone a second one. Children are not a way to repair a relationship. In fact I even wrote a whole blog about how children change a relationship here. If you have one child and you have a rocky relationship, changing your dynamic and hoping it gets better with a 2nd child is going to bring disaster nearly every single time. This falls along the lines of instead of bringing more kids in the broken home, maybe seeking therapy or working on the relationship to better communicate and build a better loving home for the first child before a second one is the solution here. The fact is having a second child may be “easier” in many ways, but it also brings a whole new set of stressors that could very well push a broken relationship way over the edge and past the point of repair. It also should go without saying, that it is completely irresponsible and also a lot of pressure to put on anyone let alone a child that they be the saving grace in a broken home. That is such an unrealistic expectation to put on a child that it totally is unfair to them that they are brought into this world for the simple fact that you think, maybe, just by chance, that they will be the reason why you are some how going to magically repair your relationship with your spouse.

And finally. But certainly not least. Do NOT have another kid to hope for the opposite or a specific gender. There is literally only one way to guarantee a gender. That is through IVF. Because they physically can see the fertilized eggs and how they are fertilized also. If you are trying to have another baby because you want the opposite gender you are nearly guaranteed to have gender disappointment. I talk more about the ins and outs of that in this blog post here. I think that is partially why when we found out our 3rd child was a boy I never really felt that. Because our whole idea was we wanted 3 kids. We never really thought about genders. We never had expectations. We just pictured 3 kids. For some reason I always seen us with 3 boys but if it were a girl we would have been totally okay with that also! The other question you have to ask, if this isn’t the gender you hoped for, will you keep trying until you get the one you want? Will there be regret or resentment because you never had your “dream” family? All very real questions people who keep having kids chasing a specific gender will have to ask themselves. And I know what you’re thinking, “How can a parent resent or regret their own child”? It is a very real thing, remember a lot more often watching TV shows where the parent would be treating the girls in particular like they were son’s, because the father never had a son of their own and they wanted one? Right. Same thing here.

At the end of the day, using a human life that you will be attached to for the rest of your life whether you want to be in the future or not is not the proper route that you should ever take lightly. Deciding to have another child is such a big responsibility that it should be taken as such, whether it is the first time or the eighth time too. And if you have any type of expectations as the reason why you are having this child than you should probably pause and examine exactly what it is you are lacking or what you need to make this serious decision to repair anything.