Let’s talk about age gaps

A few years ago, during a chat with a single friend, I remember her telling me she was obsessed with asking other women how they met their husbands. As soon as she got an inkling they were married, she’d casually-not-so-casually drop the question into conversation, whether it was a new work colleague, the hairdresser, a random girl at the gym, whoever really. It was as if she felt like the answer to finding The One was out there, if only enough investigative work was done.

I get it, because in recent years, I’ve turned into an obsessive questioner myself. Except instead of asking people how they found love, the query I’ve put to every parent of more than two children is ‘How big is your age gap?’

I’m weirdly fascinated in how people space their kids because I’m a bit of an outlier in this respect. I recently attended a ‘second child workshop’ ten minutes from my home - purely to make maternity leave friends, I’m not too proud to admit - and during the introductions we were asked to say how big the age gap would be between our kids. Every single other couple in the room announced there would be two to two-and-a-half years between their first and second child. The median, apparently, is 24 to 29 months, which makes my whopping age gap of 47 months (just shy of four years) pretty unusual. 

Anecdotally, it seems smaller age gaps are becoming more the norm. Whereas lots of my millennial mates are three or four years apart from their siblings (as am I), nowadays my Instagram feed is flooded with #2under2, and in our area nearly all the kids my daughter’s age have a younger sibling who’s already walking. The fact people are starting their families later in life, particularly in London, must influence this – there’s less time left on the clock for lengthy gaps between offspring. Also, a lot of people have told me they simply want to ‘get it out of the way’ by having two close together – ‘it’ being the relentless baby and toddler years. I can understand why charging headfirst through the stage of no sleep, nappies and only being able to eat with one hand works best for some parents.

Personally, I was not even vaguely ready to consider a second child until, well, this year really. When my daughter was nine months old and one of my NCT friends told me she was already pregnant with her second, I nearly died of shock (sorry Chloe) – I felt like I was barely out of the newborn trenches, and definitely still in survival mode. For a long time, the idea of adding another dependent into the mix was simply unfathomable, and as more and more people announced their second pregnancies, this led to panic – what was wrong with me? How was everyone else so much more capable?

There is, of course, a privilege in choice. For many of my friends, it was not a case of when they would have a second child, but if, so fannying around worrying about whether they were ready was not an option. But I definitely felt a different kind of pressure, particularly as my daughter turned two, then three, and I remained resolutely not pregnant.

An important lesson to learn in life, however, is that doing something just because everyone else is doing it is a disastrous way to make major decisions. Yes, many other parents may have been unflappable in the face of two under two (although some of my most hardcore friends have labelled it ‘hell’) but I have enough self-awareness to acknowledge I simply would’ve gone bananas if I’d had a baby and a toddler at the same time. For me and my personal resilience levels, a four-year gap feels much more comprehensible, because at least my daughter is potty-trained, sleeping in a bed and can put her own knickers on, plus I can trust her not to eat gravel or fall backwards off a wall if I dare to look away for three seconds.

Now just need her to work on her tea-making and foot-massaging skills before this baby comes, and then we will be sorted.