One and Only

A journalist—and only child—investigates the choice to have just one kid
by Lauren Sandler

Taking Stock Fifty Years After Freidan's "Feminine Mystique"

Fifty years after the Feminine Mystique, women still shoulder the burden, and suffer for it. Read More

When Single Child Families Idealize What They Don't Have

How only children, and their parents, get hurt by idealizing larger families Read More

Our Low Birth Rate Is About Liberation

Our low birth rate is about liberation, not just economics. Read More

The New Vogue of Hating Motherhood

We're more confessional than ever about how hard motherhood can be. But all our bitching doesn't really change a thing. Read More

Is Cohabitation Bad for Our Families?

A new report says unmarried parents are a scourge upon children--but I'm not so sure. Read More

We begin to discuss another

"So now we have one. What would it mean to have another?" I ask one rainy afternoon, idly clicking away on my laptop from under our duvet as Justin, home early from an assignment, folds our daughter's laundry.

"If you wanted another, I'd want another." He shrugs and smiles, meeting my eyes as I dissolve into confused longing. Read More

Talking with Toni Falbo

No one has done more than Toni Falbo to disprove the idea that siblings are necessary for well-adjusted human development. An only child herself, and the mother of one, Falbo began investigating the realities of the only child experience in the 1970s, both here and in China. Read More

Another kid, minute-by-minute

Some of my friends with two kids talk about how wonderful it is that they take care of each other. That sounds great to me. But I wonder, do they trudge out for milk when there's only a splash left in each container? Do they discipline themselves when they have tantrums in the airport? Do they sleep train, remove stains, scrub sippy cups, vacuum, or nurse? Read More

I love you best of all

I started it the night Dahlia first slept in a bed. We retired her crib early, setting up a tiny toddler bed in her tiny room when she was a year and a half. She was giddy about her liberation from the oak spindle bars, and had spent the better part of the afternoon climbing in and out of her new bed, and putting her stuffed monkeys to sleep in it. Read More

Fertility Italian style

If it were easier to be a parent in this country, I might be far less ambivalent about having a second child. Read More

Will more kids make you happier?

There must be some balance between the inimitable joy our kids give us and the sacrifices we make to care for them. Read More

Alone in the backseat

In my parents' car, there was a plaid wool blanket, just big enough to cover me when I would stretch out across the backseat. Read More

What We Can, And Can't, Afford

Every couple of years, Mark Lino, a number-cruncher at the Department of Agriculture, adds up what it costs to raise a kid through high school. And every year those numbers increase. Read More

Should This Be the Last Generation?

The New York Times recently ran an essay called "Should This Be the Last Generation?" by Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton. Read More

While Dahlia Is Dancing

I keep harking back to a snapshot from an afternoon which encapsulates much of the giddiness and longing and ambivalence that for me permeates the "one and done" question. Read More

Lauren Sandler

Lauren Sandler is the author of a new book about the freedom of having an only child, and the fulfillment of being one.

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Books by Lauren Sandler

Image of Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement
Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement
Image of One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One
One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One