Two is not enough:

...There is more to the two-child ideal than just concern for the planet, it seems...

...I don't know any couples who practice family planning as a civic duty, but I know plenty who feel morally superior to those who appear not to plan at all...

...It is not just that balancing work and motherhood requires discipline (a quality almost totally lacking in my life before), but that in becoming a parent, one enters another realm of existence...

...The first time I was mildly surprised: who was this person to tell me not to have any more children...

...When I mention this fact, my inquisitors calm down a bit, but not entirely...

...I actually wrote and published more in the year after she was born than in any year previous...

...To grow up in a large, noisy, happy family is marvelous enough but to be an adult in one is beyond all telling...

...Which one hasn't spent sleepless nights with a crying child who refuses to be comforted...

...And as for me, I want to keep on growing...

...Not only does this change our perspective on what is important and what is not, it also teaches us the beginnings of compassion...

...What parent doesn't...

...To have only one sibling seems too poor a legacy to leave either of our present children...

...It is not just wonderful moments that make up parenthood, however...

...Nowadays, a woman expecting her third child is asked, often by relative strangers, whether it was an accident and how she "feels" about it...

...When my son was born, I was surprised to discover how much of my love for him was purely physical...

...Enlightened couples planning the size of their families should consider, then, not how many children they can afford, but how much they can afford to do without if they want children at all...

...My time is no longer my own, and I cannot make plans and be reasonably certain of carrying them out...

...When all seven of us gather at my parents' house, the atmosphere is electric with shared memories and old stories, with the knowledge of a common thread that binds us together no matter how far across the world we roam, with a love so deep it needs no words...

...As the days went on, however, and I kept on hearing the same phrase, I began to wonder what would happen if we did indeed increase the population further...

...I wouldn't presume to judge what else is involved, but in a consumer-oriented society, it's not hard to guess...

...But it is motherhood the days in and out of it which has really transformed me...

...Much of the power of the experience comes from this: the slogging through, the keeping at it...

...Living with children so intimately turns life upside down...

...All over the country, billboards are plastered with messages like "Small Family, Happy Family," "Boy or Girl, Stop at Two," and "Produce More Resources, Instead of Children...

...Before I had any children, I used to say I wanted seven (just like my parents had...

...However, since I intend to continue traveling on jet planes and consuming far too much paper (to say nothing of a Christmas tree every year), those two additional children will probably be adopted...

...I was twenty-five when Anand arrived, and drifting...

...Just being pregnant and giving birth were such magical, earth-shattering events I can hardly believe they are in fact ordinary and common, the stuff of everyday life...

...My children please me...

...Suddenly, I was on call twenty-four hours a day, plunged without preparation into all the tiny details of caring for a child...

...I am slower to judge now, likelier to realize that there is more to a situation than meets the eye...

...To see life from a child's perspective does more than just provide excuses for negative actions, however...

...Given my style of mothering (I may have been ignorant, but I was highly opinionated), there was no escape, either...

...Both times, I entered another dimension of time and space and learned the meaning of single-mindedness...

...And I like the person I have become since becoming a mother...

...The popular belief that overpopulation is the cause of poverty has been so decisively proven wrong that it is almost boring to go on discussing it, but somehow the notion persists...

...I had been in and out of college several times and involved with the peace movement (including three months in jail) to varying degrees since I was eighteen...

...This may be due to the egotistical nature of parenthood the belief that they are a reflection of me but whatever the cause, it has become a habit in my dealings with other people as well...

...Both times, I discovered new limits to endurance and power, and both times my relationship with my husband deepened and changed...

...Having grown up in a large family myself, I suppose two just seems too miserly...

...I like the carefree feeling that generally prevails in a house full of children...

...Admitting defeat, perhaps, but this change in attitude fostered a new flexibility: I suddenly found myself quite capable of working in short bursts five minutes snatched here and there would eventually produce an article or a book review...

...If I feel like fingerpainting or making sand castles or stopping on the way home from the market to toss pebbles in a puddle, who's to say no...

...My jobs had been part-time and unskilled, and my writing was sporadic at best...

...It is automatic in me to give them the benefit of the doubt, to try to puzzle out their motives, to assume that they have their reasons...

...I, too, would charge into life each morning, eager to start the fun all over again...

...JO McGOWAN is a free-lance writer now living in India...

...Up until the time that my first child was born, I had done almost nothing of a sustained nature...

...Which one hasn't agonized over a child's shortcomings, or tortured herself with nightmares of kidnapping and sudden death...

...But it is the intensity of the experience that I find so unnerving and grand...

...I like children, especially my own...

...When I do these things, in fact, someone is sure to comment on what a good mother I am...

...The question is not how many children a family produces but how much of the pie it consumes...

...Just now, motherhood is very fertile soil...

...Of course, I don't respond every time...

...It was always said in a flat, declarative tone which grew to sound more and more like a warning...

...Newborn babies poop more often and more alarmingly than one would believe possible, and we continue to adore them...

...For my part, I am willing to continue life without a car, a telephone, running hot water, central heat, a television, stereo system, and a microwave oven, but I would like two more children...

...I know my children so well I can anticipate their reactions...

...People like me, who speak of the joy s of parenthood, are not using empty words...

...Having done all these things, and admitting myself to be a most imperfect mother, I still want to have more children...

...Three children may be tolerated (everyone is entitled to one mistake) but beyond that the waters get murky...

...Motherhood, because it is so common, is not generally accorded a place in the pantheon of disciplines but, while granting the small-ness of its sphere, I believe the wisdom and understanding it can impart are as deep and as true as that acquired through philosophy, religion, or science...

...They are, for me, treasured memories, almost sacramental in their significance...

...Parents of infants are probably the most realistic and practical members of the race (and parents of infants who live in India, where both Pampers and washing machines are unheard of, head the list...

...With whom but our children are we allowed to express our physical selves so freely...

...I went from a totally unstructured life to one hedged on all sides by the demands of another person...

...India has not yet reached China's level of enforcement, but it seems ready to move in that direction...

...Having a baby was a shock...

...After my first, I scaled it down to five, and now that I have two, I find I'm willing to settle for four, but even this modest number evokes outrage and amazement...

...Even one generation back, a woman could get pregnant every two or three years and excite no particular interest...

...Sudden bursts of creativity or enlightenment or discovery are not sudden at all but the result of long, hard work...

...Even married couples cannot be openly affectionate without making others uncomfortable...

...In America, the pressures are more subtle...

...Gradually I calmed down a bit, but even now, six years later, being a mother is still my primary focus...

...I am less selfish now they have insisted on it...

...Is there a parent who has never regretted losing his temper and striking his child, or wished desperately that her children had never been born...

...It's O.K...

...Somehow I had expected the maternal experience to be on a higher, spiritual plane but there I was gliding his hand across my cheek, nuzzling under his chin, and caressing his bottom whenever I got the chance...

...I can sense the fears that lie beneath their antisocial behavior and, because I believe so deeply in their basic goodness, I can find a reason for almost any terrible thing that they do...

...To have been at something so demanding, in so concentrated a fashion for six years is a source of amazement to me...

...My favorite memories of his infancy are all physical: the weight of his head on my shoulder as he finally gave in to sleep, the feel of his hand on my breast as he nursed, the look of his glistening, perfect body as I massaged him with baby oil...

...What is the problem with having a large family...

...If I had the energy to respond each time my children made some new discovery about the world (the properties of water, the way a tree's branches bend, the feel of earth letting go as one climbs a sand dune, the fact of day in India and night in America) I would probably be as delirious with excitement as they are...

...We learn to see through their eyes...

...For a writer, to understand such a universal human experience seems critical, if not essential...

...erhood is very fertile soil...

...But we can grab our children, twirl them around the room, kiss them, tickle them silly, hold them on our laps and caress and cuddle them to our (and their) hearts' content...

...It is the best way to reexperience the world, to appreciate its mysteries, and to wonder at its possibilities...

...The usual argument is, of course, the ecological one, but as that question is invariably raised by people whose politically correct two children are already consuming far more than their share of the world's resources, I find it difficult to accept the logic...

...But being a parent means having permission to indulge oneself...

...Masters of any discipline writing or prayer or scientific research attest to the fact that diligence is of prime importance...

...Romanticism and sentimentality seem pretty foolish when one confronts the day's pile of dirty diapers...

...Being a grown-up seems to mean deliberately turning off that sense of wonder so as to get on with the business of life...

...Having but two children (or better yet, one) is seen as a patriotic duty, the only responsible choice...

...This drove me crazy with my first child (I was ferocious about the sanctity of his nap time), but after Cathleen was born, I found I was quite relaxed about my lack of control...

...I want my children to have some of what I have...

...Two is not enough...

...I know all the bad parts, too...

...My children have made me a better person...

...When our second baby was born, the congratulation we heard most often was, "Now your family is complete...

...I had to do everything myself...