None, one or more

Whether the question is about children or cars, it’s best left to the people who are going to have them or not.

WHEN I meet friends or relatives, they usually ask about the cars that I have test-driven recently. When the banter veers away from cars, it invariably turns to work and family.

For those who are married, questions about how many kids you have, how old they are, what school they attend, and so forth can be expected.

This thread is fine until people start dishing out unsolicited advice. To singles, these folks (usually well-meaning relatives) not only remind you about your age and accuse you of being too picky, some even go as far as to try and set you up with the son of a friend of a friend.

To those who are married without children, they start reminding you of your biological age and extol the joy of having children. My husband and I took four years to decide whether we wanted to have kids, so we experienced our fair share of cajoling. But no amount of pressure was going to make us have a child unless we wanted to.

If you think that all these incessant probing will cease when you start a family, think again.

When you have one child, people start asking you whether No. 2 is on the way. I used to assume that someone with three or more off spring will be spared, but apparently not. I have a friend who’s a mother of four and she is still a target.

Having a child is much harder than having a doughnut, and a brood is a lot bigger than a box of doughnuts.

A few months ago, voluntary welfare organisation I Love Children, which advocates early parenthood among couples, launched a campaign to raise awareness on fertility issues. Attention-seeking advertisements featuring tongue-in-cheek cartoon sperm and eggs along with slogans providing information on fertility were put up at MRT stations.

I totally agree with the Association of Women for Action and Research, who expressed: “Some people want to have children, some do not, some only want them later in life – all choices are equally valid, so we disagree with the basic premise of I Love Children, which according to its website ‘believes… that all married couples should take the bold plunge into parenthood’.”

To have or not to have – this is a question best answered by the wife and hubby who’ll be responsible for creating and nurturing the child. And even then, the final outcome lies with the higher powers that be. Not with anxious family members, nosy relatives, concerned friends, organisations with good intentions, or the State.

Lynn, mother of one, feels that every couple’s decision to stop at one, two, three or more, or have none at all, should be respected.