In my experience having room in the house, not having to cook dinner, not having to go grocery shopping, never have to clean the house, travel comfortably and have a full time nanny, makes a lot of a difference. You save a lot of time that you can then invest in yourself, your partner and your kids.
Not to discount that it’s great when you play with your kids, but it’s different when your kids play together, and in particular when you can’t play that they have someone to interact with.
Yeah, the group dynamics of, say, a family with two children:
1. Kid A plays with Kid B
2. Kid A plays alone and Kid B plays alone
As compared to a three-child household:
1. Kids A, B and C play together
2. Kid A plays with Kid B, Kid C plays alone
3. Kid A plays with Kid C, Kid B plays alone
4. Kid B plays with Kid C, Kid A plays alone
5. Kid A, Kid B and Kid C all play alone
So, in a bigger family, many more communication patterns between children can arise, which, among other things, might develop the child's empathy etc.
Adding mom and dad as "players" would give us many more possible scenarios here (Kid A playing with mom, Kid B alone or with dad, etc).
I'm a father of two with a low income, and I would like to have a third child for precisely the above described reason. As a sociologist in my country put it -- somewhat harsh words maybe, but probably largely true: a single child might get spoiled, two children may start competing too heavily, but three children and above is company.
I disagree, when looking at 3-kids setup out there in the world. Ie my wife comes from such, she is the oldest and all 3 follow the typical 3 kids pattern - oldest was pushed into most responsibility to the point of trauma, middle one feels unappreciated and has inferiority complex as middle ones often do, and youngest is by huge margin the most spoiled one. This is the default for 3 kids that many parents end up with, unless fighting hard against this natural direction.
And yes a lot of interaction, but it doesn't guarantee anything further down the line - when long time adults youngest is still spoiled and selfish and not really a pleasant person to be around with for anybody, including siblings and their own mom. Middle one is scared to have kids, a decision that she may end up regretting later easily. And my wife is also carrying her part of the burden, won't bother you with details.
The grass is always greener behind the fence and all that.
There are so many stereotypes involved in this that it may be hard to believe but at least I know I have caught myself repeating the stereotype almost to a T (especially with regard to the oldest being worked so hard or, as I would put it, constantly on the hardest jobs).
That said it does help that it’s a stereotype/generalization/trope that I’m aware of because I get to take that as part of my feedback loop to make the attempt to iterate around the negative aspects you’ve pointed out.
I think I’m doing better - I’ll know if my kids still talk to me after they move out.
Insightful comment, got me thinking, thanks for sharing. I suppose, in the end, there isn't all that much logic in human relations, or there are always far too many "unknown unknowns".
There's very few humans that have enough time, energy, skills, wherewithal, and money to devote to 3+ kids to make these sorts of positive "three's company" interactions happen in the modern world. I am not saying that it's impossible, just that it's difficult and doesn't happen naturally like you're implying.
On a personal note, I never had much positive interactions with either of my siblings, certainly not as children as not now that we're in our 40s either. Lots of fighting, absolutely zero closeness or positive feelings.
I think you have a really different experience from me. In my experience it doesn’t cost any time, effort or money to make those interactions happen. You can just stick three kids in the same room for about 10 minutes and it will.
Not only do they play but they also learn to care for each other. Parental effort doesn't increase uniformly with each child – if you're lucky and have done a good job parenting them, children create a society and help with raising each other.
This is the take I pursue in my home, everyone is doing a see one, do one, teach one. There are still struggles around it but consistency makes the conversations shorter and more effective.
I’ll say there’s benefits to having a single child, but not nearly as many as there are to have multiple.