The last of a three-part series on why families should not have more than one child.

And the most important reason not to have more than one child: Raising a child is hard—and it gets harder as the kid gets older.

My dad wrote a book about raising kids, called A Child to Change Your Life. In the introduction, he wrote, "It is terribly easy to create and to love a little child. But it is a terribly difficult and consuming job to mold one into a good human being. I think those of us who have been through the whole experience owe it to those who haven't to tell them what it's really like. And maybe to acknowledge that both the people who decide they can do it and those who decide they can't make equal contributions to the world of happy, helpful human beings."

The degree of difficulty and complication in raising a child increases as the kid gets older. You begin to see the size of the challenge when you ask  her, picking her up at pre-school, "How was your day?" She says, "Good." And when you try to get more than that, she looks at you like a soldier who's been asked, "How was the war?" It was fucking complicated, Dad.

Infinitely so.

So you ask a few questions—what was the best thing that happened? what was the worst?—and then you talk about what's for dinner and what time Mom's coming home and how many days until Santa comes. And then, three hours later while the two of you are molding meatballs, your kid says, "J.R. has a crush on me and I have a crush on him and Amelia told everybody."

Or he says, "Uncle Larry paid me five bucks to rub his feet."

Or she says, "You know what, Dad? I don't like dreams. Because they're bad if they're scary, and if they're good, you're mad when you wake up."

That happens every single day. And after awhile, you get to know your kid—or at least begin to, if you concentrate and listen and question and keep yourself from stifling the kid's candor, which you will often want to do.

Now how are you going to make yourself available like that if you have two or three kids? The squeaky wheel gets the grease. But every wheel needs the grease.

Look, in the end, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have more than one kid. I have seen many happy and healthy families with multiple kids. "I'm happy with my three boys, actually," says Chicago speechwriter Dan Conley. "I was born for this role." I never argue with a happy man, I told him.

And meanwhile, my three-part family ain't no picture of perfection. Ask Scout in 10 years; I'm sure she'll give you chapter and verse.

I'm just saying that, to my great surprise, I increasingly find myself wondering, not whether Cristie and I have made a mistake with our personal one-child policy, but whether conventional wisdom has driven other parents to overcrowd my dad's optimistic "world of happy, helpful human beings."

Part two in a three-part series on why families should not have more than one child.

And here's the second reason I'm glad I had an only child: I want her to know the real me.

I've often quoted my late pal Ed Reardon—father of four—who told me there is no such thing as parenting. Your kids just watch you for 18 years, he said. If you're good, that's good. If you're bad, that's bad.

Well if that's true, and I believe it is, then I want the person my kids to see to be me, and not a logistics-obsessed, vacation-sacrificing, money-panicked, bank-robbing, overwhelmed, friendless, humorless, exhausted Parent Person.

Because we have been so selfish as to have only Scout, she sees us at play. I often take her golfing with me and while I putt, she collects acorns and chases catch dragon flies. That works with one kid, not with two—as does an afternoon of kicking around town with Mom. Because we have been so selfish, she sees me write, watches us read. She sees us sleep and work out and cook big meals and drink beer on the porch with neighbors and visitors from out of town. She watches me ride off on adventures on my motorcycle and she watches her mother utterly relax with her family in Des Moines. Because I have been so selfish, she has been to many places that we could not have afforded to take two or more kids, and she'll see many more—and she'll see us enjoying those places and living life in much the same way as we lived it before she came along, and will live it when she is out of the house.

Obviously, I'm drawing a caracture of parents of two kids, but the caricature is based on an observation that, if you have two kids you might as well have five. And if you have more than two kids, as a friend put it, "Now you're playing zone."

And I'm also I'm glorifying the wonders of these wonderful lives Cristie and I lead. Hemingway and Gelhorn we're not. But Cristie and Dave, we still definitely are.

Meet me back here tomorrow, when I argue that, in families of multiple kids, the squeaky wheel gets the grease—but every wheel needs the grease!

Part one in a three-part series on why families should not have more than one child.

Cristie and I decided to have a child because we were bored with each other, and ourselves. Mid-thirties, me writing, she teaching, both of us wondering, is this all there is? Not, probably, a good reason to have a child. But then, why else do people have kids?

And then there was a time, when Scout was two or three, when Cristie and I considered having another.

We had to consider it, because everyone we knew, it seemed, was demanding that we consider it. People who wouldn't dare to advise you on what mechanic to hire, which kind of margarine to use or whether that shirt makes you look fat, will leap to tell you: You have to have another kid.

However Tenenbaumian their own royal families, their certainty is Biblical and their concern is sincere.

And so you can't help but consider their point of view.

And we did. And did. And did.

And then Scout turned about five. And people stopped telling us to have another kid. Maybe some of them whispered to each other what a shame it was that we'd had only one. But they stopped saying it out loud.

And when strangers on playgrounds and soccer fields asked us that loaded-for-bear question, "Is Scout your only one?" I began to reply with a quip.

"Yeah," I say. "Every family seems to have one good kid and one bad kid. We had the good one. We figured, 'Why have the bad one?'"

Which, because they usually have one bad one, usually shuts them up.

Perhaps it's a process of self-justification. Certainly that's part of it. But as Scout gets older, I find more and more reasons why people should absolutely not have more than one kid.

So far, I have found three. I'll share them this week, in ascending order of importance. Though they may be seized upon by the parents of multiple children as just the kind of unwelcome advice they once gave us, I offer it as comfort to parents of only children who are being told that two kids was one of the Ten Commandments.

First: The arguments for having more than one kid are melodramatic or old-fashioned or both.

The only child will be self-centered. Yes, that would be true if we didn't live in a world of daycare in which two-year-olds are now more thoroughly socialized than the 30-year-olds of yesteryear.

The only child will remember her childhood as one long rainy day spent watching drops of water streak down the window pane. Despite the best efforts of my little sister Piper, I remember being bored much more often than I've ever seen Scout bored. Even on the rainiest of rainy days: Children's TV is profoundly better and constantly available, there's the Internet … and there's Mom and Dad, who when all else fails, do feel compelled to get out the fucking Candyland. I also believe that only children develop more elaborate fantasy worlds than kids in crowded famlies, but since I can't prove that, I'll leave it alone.

Someday, the only child will be all alone at her parents' deathbed. I really do hope that by the time she enters adult orphanhood, Scout has found a cousin or a buddy or a lover with whom she can fully share life's most profound moments. Yes, I am glad I had my sisters when my parents died. But creating a human life to keep my child company at a future funeral—this seems overprotective.

Tomorrow, I'll give reason the second reason for having an only child: I want her to know the real me.