Probably one of the greatest arguments against having more than one child is that it by doing so it becomes increasingly difficult for parents to lie–especially to the younger children. Try telling a five year old that you’re calling the North Pole to report his naughty behavior to Santa Claus while there is a twelve year old in the room who is not only rolling her eyes so hard she looks like a slot machine, and but also muttering under her breath, “Oh yeah? What’s the area code for the North Pole, anyway?” Or try keeping the tooth fairy myth alive when, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the older child insists on pointing out to the younger one how one of their friends with divorced parents got two visits from the tooth fairy: one at their mom’s house, and one at their dad’s.
And forget about maintaining the charade of “parental infallibility;” you know, the one that depends on that old chestnut “I can always tell when you’re lying?” There’s no way you’re going to maintain that fiction when the younger child sees the older one run circles around your detective abilities nightly.
However, having said all of this, I must add one caveat: that the increased difficulty in lying also provides one of the greatest arguments for having more than one child, because by doing so you’re also making it increasingly difficult for the children to lie, as well. This is called the “I Know What You Did Last Night” factor.
Children are the ultimate stoolies. They’ll tell on each other even when to do so implicates themselves (there is no 5th Amendment in childhood). Example:
“I saw Clyde sitting in his playfort eating a bag of marshmallows he stole from the kitchen.”
“How could you see that?”
“I was on the roof.”
Busted.
Or:
“Clementine lost her jacket again! I know, because I saw her going through the ‘lost and found’ pile at school.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Looking for my gloves.”
“Uh-huh.”
It’s true: a bitter sibling is a parent’s best hope for finding out what’s really going on in their household–I don’t know how parents of only children manage to find out anything.
Of course, eventually, even for parents with several children, this information stream comes to an end–eventually all children figure out that they each have so much dirt on the other ones that if anyone were ever to start spilling, the others could retaliate, and then the first could re-retaliate, over and over again, ad infinitum, until it ends up with all of them being grounded for so long that by the time they get out your 401k might actually be worth something again.
When governments reach this level we say that they have reached MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). When children reach it we just say that they are growing up. (Go figure.)
However, until that fateful day comes, it is in a parent’s best interest to try and milk their live-in narcs for all they’re worth.
Because, when all else fails, parents can always fall back on that other old chestnut: “You might as well tell me what happened–your sister already told me everything anyway.”