As you know, my hubby and I have an adorable, active Little Guy who will be three in July. He’s the best thing to have ever happened to us, and we love everything he has brought to our life. But, for a variety of reasons, we will not have any more children. And this is fine with us as we love our little family.
When I began writing INCONVENIENT, the topic of kids was just a happy conversation and part of our life plan. In the early drafts of INC (before it was even called INCONVENIENT), Alyssa had a brother. I had thought about giving her a sister because I have one, but then I thought people would compare the sister to my sister (or, rather, I was sure my sister would read page after page and exclaim, “I am so not like that!”–uh, yeah, my family is quite vocal–). As I was sketching the sister character out, I also noticed I kept stifling creative leads because I was trying too hard to make her different from my own sister and purely fictional. I scrapped the sister (prompting my sister to ask, “Why don’t your characters have siblings?”) and gave Alyssa a brother. Who I placed in college because I only wanted to deal with him on an as needed basis (as with real siblings, haha). And I wanted a physical place Alyssa could escape if the mother situation got too much. And someone to give her guidance re boys, parents, etc. In other words, someone to solve all of Alyssa’s problems for her. Which is fine in real life.
Growing up, my sister who is five years older was always my go-to when the ‘rents gave me a hard time or if I wanted to know more about the grown-up world of boys, dating, etc. In YA literature, however, I learned the MC has to solve her own problems. Alyssa needed to find her own means of escape–both physical and mental. She needed to figure out her own life w/out someone else giving her a playbook. So I chucked the brother and made Alyssa an only child.
Writing INC, there was no lesson I wanted to give on only children. However, when I was recently thinking about our decision to have only one child and fielding obnoxious questions (e.g. “What are you going to say when he asks you for a sibling?”), I thought about the role of siblings in books and also how only children are portrayed. The sibling relationship runs the gamut from the characters being best friends, to enemies, to pests, to dead. Each of these situations shapes the MCs in one way or the other. And, because in the real world, teens have varied relationships with their siblings, it’s good that there are so many portrayals. But I haven’t found that many books with only children MCs. I think there is definitely a creative reason for this–sibling relationships are interesting to explore and write about. Still, it would be nice to have more kidlit books with only children MCs where being an only child is a non-issue. Where she just is but no one cares that she is an only child (e.g. the character doesn’t spend the whole book longing for a sibling).
I was talking with a friend about this recently, and he brought up another interesting point. From a broader perspective, having siblings or only children or single parent families or happy two parents families or same sex families is just encompassing the different worlds of teens. All these portrayals are needed to show real world experiences more fully and something for me to keep in mind as I write. After all, there are so many different kinds of families and what better way to exercise one’s creativity than to imagine what lies within them.
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