Size doesn't matter after all!!

So this morning when I checked my inbox I found a very thought provoking e-mail from my friend JacksMom. She is talking about the quote I have had listed on the side of my blog:

" When you have only one child you're really just playing house"

- A Grandma at Curly's Banarina School

Here is what JacksMom had to say:

"I have read this quote on your blog several times and each time i read it i tend to get heated up and my blood boils.
This grandma at banarina school.....make sure you tell her that i have ONE child and i work very hard to make sure im raising him proper, hopefully he will grow up and know how to love someone, show them respect, be kind and caring.
I have a "Family"..it might just be the 3 of us but i do not consider this to be a game or something that i take lightly....."PLAYING HOUSE"...
You dont have to have a BIG family in order to be taken seriously.
I love my son to death and i will push you down if need to...but honestly, just because some one has one child doesnt mean that she doesnt work just as hard as the person with 2,3 or 4.

So tell Grammy, back in her day, im sure she didnt work and had the luxury of staying home and playing house to be a little bit more careful how she phrases things...

thats all...thanks for listening."

So Wow. I didn't see this one coming, but I should have. I see now that while that quote is amusing to me, a mother of four who is deep in the trenches (and having previously been a mother of one), I also see that it is disrespectful to those with "only one child". I am sorry. I would never mean to insult anyone, and certainly not another mother. I don't for a minute believe that the size of your family should at all be related to whether or not you're taken seriously as a mother, and I apologize to the masses if I perpetuated that myth. I also remember when I had "just one" and sometimes I think that was harder than 2, 3 and 4!

Something that I have spoken about before on this blog is how rude I consider people who make comments about the size of my BIG family, and it's no different for those who choose to have small families. It's nobody's business!! Every family makes their decisions about children for different reasons, and I totally respect that. I also know that their are Moms of "just one" who didn't actually make that "decision" - they yearn with their whole being for another child, but for whatever reason, they aren't able to have one.

As parents, we need to band together, respect one another and support each other. There is no way I could get through a single day, literally, if I didn't have so many other great Moms to help me out. So, I have removed the offensive comment from my blog. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

To JacksMom: your kid is Awesome! Your family is great! I think you are a wonderful Mom, and I am so glad that we get to share our very different and very similar experiences together!