A teenager gave me some parenting advice that left me speechless

‘You have to have at least one more’.

I’m used to strangers giving my toddler attention, but I was stunned when a woman at a bus stop decided that somehow my adorable, beautiful daughter Melody wasn’t enough.

And, on finding out she was an only child, gave me that unwanted instruction. 

Frankly, I was taken aback. I hadn’t expected a brief, and until then entirely pleasant, interaction at the bus stop to sour, so quickly. 

But things went from bad to worse when that stranger’s teenage granddaughter then chimed in.

‘Otherwise this one will grow up spoiled and horrible.’

Two women of different generations with the same very outdated opinion – and so insistent in their ignorance that they accost a perfect stranger in public without any idea of what I’m going through. 

I was too shocked to say anything back in the moment. Normally I have a response prepared for the question, but I didn’t know what to say to a stranger that insisted I simply ‘must’.

And I’m not the only one who’s had to deal with these kinds of confrontations.

Some of my friends and family members, who have finally become parents after years of IVF and heartbreak, are asked within weeks of birth when they’re having another – as if it’s as easy as that. 

The first time I was asked, I was on the postnatal ward and the question came from another brand-new mum – Melody wasn’t even 24 hours old. 

Since becoming a mum, I’ve seen a lot of posts in parenting Facebook groups asking for reassurance and validation on what is the ‘best’ number of children to have. 

I firmly believe that what works for one family is entirely unique to them and seeking advice on this subject is therefore largely pointless – so being given ‘advice’ you didn’t ask for is spectacularly not OK, especially if it calls into question the character of my existing child.

My husband, Bradley, and I are both the second child, with an older sister apiece. Both his parents are the eldest of two. 

I have always felt extremely maternal and was certain I wanted as many children as was financially and biologically possible. My husband was more restrained – unsurprisingly, he felt two was the magic number.

I’m not sure why I always wanted so many children, but I suspect it had something to do with a prejudice I also had in those days that only children were, indeed, spoilt and difficult.

We met in the middle at three, and started trying for baby number one shortly after I turned 30. We discovered I was pregnant three weeks before our wedding, and we were beyond thrilled.

I enjoyed a healthy, fit pregnancy with lots of swimming, walking and I was glowing. 

However, my pregnancy ended with an inaccurate growth scan, a rushed but unsuccessful induction, and (as it turned out) a completely unnecessary C-section. I’d been desperate to breastfeed, but my milk was delayed because of the drugs and I’d given birth to the world’s hungriest baby.

What followed was unimaginable. Postnatal depression hit me like a tonne of bricks. I had breastfeeding aversion, which I’d never even heard of.

I couldn’t feed. I couldn’t bond. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t stop crying. I begged my husband to say it was OK that I’d changed my mind – I didn’t want any more kids, ever, assuming I’d even survive having this one.

I could see he was disappointed but he reassured me, she was enough, and I was enough. We didn’t need to go through anything I didn’t feel right about, and he never pressured me to change my mind – not then, and still not now. 

With treatment, time and some much-needed sleep, I recovered. But I still mourn the effortless mother with a brood in a seven-seater car I always thought I’d be. I find motherhood beautiful, joyful and so enjoyable – but much more difficult than I ever imagined.

I did not transition effortlessly. I still haven’t.

Our daughter Melody is pure joy – well-behaved, polite, healthy and so much fun. For that reason, neither of us currently yearn for another, because we feel complete.

For me though, there is still a fear that another pregnancy will result in another fourth trimester much like the one before, when I sat staring out of our top floor flat window and praying for death.

I’m not ready to face that possibility yet, and Melody was only recently two. As the cost-of-living crisis continues to worsen, I am meeting more and more families who are only having one child, whether they intended that or not – and they are happy. They are content.

And their single children are delightful – certainly not ‘horrible’.

So much research has been done to disprove the inaccurate stereotype of the spoiled only child; one that can’t share and can’t see the world past their own nose – it’s cruel and false.

Imagine explaining all that to a stranger and her granddaughter at a bus stop who I didn’t know from Adam.

People who I meet in public often ask me immediately after saying hello to my daughter and I if I’d ‘have any more.’ I’m always confused as to why they assume straight away that she was a single child – I could’ve had three more kids at home, playing with another caregiver.

I also take issue with the way that daft question is phrased – since falling pregnant with Melody in November 2021, we’ve seen a devastating number of our friends try and fail to conceive, spend thousands of pounds on unsuccessful fertility treatments and suffer shattering miscarriages.

My mother went through menopause lightning-fast at 41. I am 33. I’m well aware that the fertile window is finite. I don’t know if I’ll have any more, largely because it’s not up to me.

It’s insensitive to tell a stranger that their only miracle child will be spoiled and horrible. But what really struck me was the outdated view expressed by a young person, as well as an older one.

It’s one thing to hear it from a person of a generation where five or more siblings were the norm, but to know it perpetuates in what I keep hearing is that such a liberal and open generation of younger people was truly shocking.

‘You’ve got to’, the granddaughter on that fateful day had said to me.

Assuming the planets align in such a way, having multiple children is still a person’s (or a couple’s) individual choice. I am not saying no to more children, and my husband is not booking a vasectomy in our immediate future.

But that is not a conversation I feel I need to have with strangers at a bus stop, and I can only imagine how much worse it must be when one has suffered the losses like we’ve seen elsewhere.

Melody is plenty enough to coo at – how about telling us how lucky we are to have her, instead of instantly parking her to one side to tell me she isn’t enough?

She is plenty enough, as are we all.

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