Three plus one makes four, diddle diddle dee, and makes a family: When are we complete?
Essay by Elina Penner, a freelance writer, and head of the Berlin-based parenting platform “Hauptstadtmutti”
Your skin gets just a little bit thicker after giving birth to your second child. There’s a certain security in knowing that you managed it before. Lanolin, swaddling, and the tiger in the tree don’t sound completely Greek to you anymore and thanks to your parental non-stick coating many of the well-intentioned tips and sly comments you have to endure drip right off. In theory, at least.
In practice, my hardened and zen-like stance were recently challenged by one of these comments. A remark that was actually meant to be affirmative, approving, and positive. A few weeks after my second child was born, someone said to me that “anything less than two children isn’t a family”—it was meant to be congratulatory.
A remark like a rusty welcome sign to the world of the allegedly real families. Mother, father, child, one of each. Welcome to the bourgeois, hetero-normative dream! Did people think we were some kind of inferior family when we only had one child? I have a few tax bills, photo albums, and scars from treading on Lego bricks on my feet that tell a different story.
One is one and two is one plus one.
Of course, a family with one child is also family. People without children and without a marriage certificate can also be family. Same-sex relationships are families, too, as are people living in with guinea pig, or a dog, or a three-way relationship. Singles with a close group of friends are families, too.
If we would just stop defining what families are, maybe we could all just live our family relationships and be done with it. And what about these strange milestones? The only thing missing is the relay baton that I pass on to the next woman while throwing some extra hurdles into her path, saying: “It’s your turn now!” Yes, of course, a first child has to be followed by a second one. And once you’ve had the second, naturally, people start asking about the third. If every woman around me starts having children, I have to, too. And if everybody has two children, I can’t stay the mother of just one. And if both of my children have the same sex, I will have to try a third time.
Remarks like these can be hurtful, especially during that time when you have your first baby. When families struggle to come to terms with their new arrival. Have parents always been forced to answer these awkward questions and react to stupid comments? Is it the internet’s fault? Or are we just becoming too sensitive? If anything is to be blamed for irritable parents, it’s lack of sleep. Tired parents are prone to forget they have thick skin.
Certain subjects can add to that tiredness. Sometimes it can all make you very, very tired. Being a parent, in general. Babies, toddlers, appointments, applications, train delays, birthday presents, advent calendars, work, meetings, marriage. What do you call it? Oh, yes. Life. But there is also that thing called mental load. This eternal, never-ending need to think of everything. It can make you tired.
Seeing as we’re all so tired already, why don’t we stop making things worse with these irksome remarks? We could just let families be families, no matter what number of kids they have.
Elina Penner runs the Berlin-based parenting platform “Hauptstadtmutti”. Her debut novel “Nachtbeeren” is coming out in spring 2022. A freelance writer, she lives with her family in North Rhine-Westphalia.