One of the most common questions a pregnant woman gets asked : `` Is this your first ? `` —suggesting there were more or will be more . But how many children you choose to have has a fundamental influence on your capacity to juggle the 21st century work-life balance . More kids simply demand more resources : energy , money and time . This is an aspect of family life that does n't get discussed much . If our increasingly wired lives leave us starved for time and more scattered in our attention , having an only child can be a path to freedom . According to the National Center for Health Statistics , single-child families have almost doubled in number since the 1960s . And yet , our public conversation has n't caught up to this increasingly common reality . Those who choose to have one child are often confronted with not so subtle snooping on the part of neighbors and friends . Infertility problems ? Marriage on the rocks ? Too career focused ? We simply assume people are having multiple children unless we learn otherwise . In some ways , multiple children are the `` American dream '' story of the work/family debate . Just as the Horatio Alger tale urges us that no matter where we come from , we can work our way up the ladder one rung at a time ( ignoring systemic and structural factors ) , the superwoman tale pretends that there are no limits to a mother 's resources ( ignoring , well , the realities of the space-time continuum . ) There 's always more room in the womb and more time in the day ; as long as she 's got a smartphone and a big heart . But in a new book , `` One and Only : Why Having an Only Child , and Being One , is Better Than You Think , '' journalist Lauren Sandler is n't buying it . She writes , `` One of the central myths of America is that we can engineer a life without tradeoffs . '' She counters all the stereotypes of only children—selfish , lonely , maladjusted—with a range of convincing research , explores the environmental arguments for keeping families small , and also looks at the evidence that children from one-child families tend to achieve more and , as a result , can contribute more to society . Just a few examples : Condi Rice , Alicia Keys and Chelsea Clinton are all only children . The important questions center around our assumptions about family , what makes us happy , fulfilled and loved . In other words , how do we recognize our full range of choices as parents ? `` Is happiness the result of finding purpose and meaning ? Is it the absence of depression ? '' Sandler contends that `` it has a lot to do with having the freedom to live the life you want to live , whether that means five kids , or one , or none at all . '' It is what we know in our heart of hearts , even when we 're fully ensconced in the myth—sucking down a smoothie while driving our kid to school , rescheduling a doctor 's appointment , and trying to read the notes for the morning 's meeting all at the same miserable moment . It is related to the work-life balance issues that Anne-Marie Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg touched on . We are human , and as such , we have limits . Whether you scale back your job , scale back your social time , scale back your self-care , scale back your child care assistance , or scale back your family size—something 's got ta give . Admitting that is n't just a smart strategy for a saner life . It cuts at the core of one of modern women 's most stubborn , self-defeating beliefs -- that unless we are everything to all people , we are nothing , that our worth is tied up in our limitless capacity ( at least when it comes to caring for others ) , that we do n't actually deserve to live a selective life and take or leave a number of energy-sucking pursuits . It 's not that we have to choose to parent just one child if we want to be sane in contemporary society , but that we owe it to ourselves , our partners and even our potential progeny , to consider other possibilities . Women , in particular , need to slough off socialized norms and think in a fresh , free , way about the kind of life that will really make our families -- and ourselves -- healthy and fulfilled .
Courtney Martin : Women often get asked if they have multiple children or plan to do so . Martin : How many children you choose to have has a huge impact on your work - life balance . She says a new book by Courtney Martin has good reasons for having just one child . Martin : Living a happy life is about the freedom to choose if you want to have children or not .