Having just one child is called child abuse

After we have our first kid, my husband plans on getting the snip, making our first kid also our last.

What's so wrong with that? Plenty, apparently.

"Having just one child is child abuse!" "You're both being selfish!" "The kid won't know how to share!" "You're dooming your baby to a lifetime of loneliness!" "Think of what you're missing out on!"  

And, finally, the verdict given in a tone of resignation, "Well, at least a vasectomy can be reversed 

I knew once we made the decision to jump onboard the baby train we'd be riding into a place loaded with judgment and scorn. We were prepared to have our views, and my body, poked and prodded, by people with best intentions, and those who professed to.

But we weren't ready for how people would handle our response to the query about whether we wanted a boy or a girl. "Well, we're only planning on one, so it doesn't matter – so long as it's healthy!"

Cue shock. Awe. Disbelief. Disdain. From perfect strangers, from acquaintances, and from people who know us very well. Some offered their support, but reserved their right to approve or disapprove. Some were mute and baffled. Only a very, very few people endorsed our decision, or said they were of the same mind, or spoke from their own experience.

We had thought people would respect that the choice was ours to make. But for the majority, this was not the case. In this age of political correctness, it seems the one subject still subject to discrimination is that of the Only Child.

Blindsided by the negativity, we started to question our planned path. Perhaps we weren't making the right choice for the right reasons after all? Maybe we should heed the tut-tuts of those people who said, "Oh, just you wait, you'll change your mind". Would we come to regret a decision made about parenthood before we were parents ourselves? Were there many good reasons our decision was such a bad one?

"No. There aren't," said one friend. "Kids aren't reasonable decisions. They aren't rational choices, not in contemporary, comfortable Australia anyway. If they were, no one would have them, because, frankly, they don't make economic sense."

"It's true in my case," he continued. "I knew that having a third child didn't 'add up', but we went ahead and had one anyway. It was about satisfying our desire, not about making sense."

This goes some way to explaining the emotional tone of some people's reaction. For them, not having more children was akin to not loving children. A fault that, in the eyes of many, colours me a deeper shade of bad than my husband, for the glowing mantle of goodly motherhood still hangs heavy around the waists of Australian women. Rejecting it, even for very good reasons, is still a rockier road to walk than that traditional trip through the fertile fields of beautiful, bountiful, breeding.

Many studies disprove many of the myths associated with only children. Dr Toni Falbo​, of the University of Texas at Austin, trawled through a century's worth of scholarship to reveal, in a book called The Single-child Family, that single children are not disadvantaged. She followed that up with studies of her own on the so-called "little emperors" of China's one-child policy, finding that the spoiled brat stereotype was false.

"It's important to note that, overall, the differences between only children and other children were very slight," Falbo says in. "Factors like education level of the parents, the financial state of the family, emotional health and values of the parents, individual parenting styles and the genetic predisposition of the child have far, far more to do with how a child turns out than birth order and family size."

One child for us is a considered choice, one made for many reasons. We know we can love one child deeply, we can provide for one child very well. We are lucky to live in a city filled with family and friends. The child will not be isolated. The child will not be alone. The child will have a happy home. Our child is due in January, and, baby, the kid's gonna be okay.