It’s an age-old dilemma: If you have another kid, your entire life (and, not to mention, your wallet) changes forever, but if you stick with just one, your kid has no siblings to bond with. Never mind that for many of us, our siblings are among our least favorite people on the planet. Every kid needs a brother or sister, right? Plus… aren’t only children kind of… well, weird?

These are the (very outdated) dilemmas one young dad is facing now that he and his wife have finally gotten their parental sea legs. It sparked a conversation about why parents feel so much pressure to have more than one child, and whether those feelings are based on any fact.

The dad feels guilty for only wanting one child because everything is ‘perfect’ with just one.

The dad’s dilemma will likely feel relatable to a lot of parents. He shared that he and his wife have always planned on having two kids, but now that their first has passed the year mark, everything is starting to fall into place in a way that feels so idyllic, it seems silly to mess with it.

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But it goes deeper than that: He also worries that he couldn’t possibly be able to show the same devotion to another baby. “I may not have enough love in my heart to spread it out with another kid to where they both get an appropriate amount of love and attention,” he wrote in his Reddit post. The fact that they likely couldn’t afford their comfortable life anymore if they had a second child adds to the misgivings. But so do some other factors.

: 10 Telltale Signs Someone Grew Up As An Only Child

He also wants his son to have sibling bonds — and his wife says ‘something’s off’ with only children.

“My concern is, I don’t want to deprive my child of potentially having a close bond with their sibling and growing up with someone that will always have their back,” the dad went on to say. He worries that when he and his wife die, his son will be left with nobody but a few cousins.

To him, this feels like a selfish decision, that he’s depriving his son of a sibling simply because he doesn’t want to be bothered. “I have met siblings that are very close,” he wrote. “It makes me feel bad, not giving that to him if I can.”

His wife, on the other hand, has a different worry. “She would be fine with (only having one), but her concern was that most only children she knows of have something off with them,” he wrote. “Even if they are social, there’s just something off.”

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Loneliness and poor social skills are common only child stereotypes, but research says they’re false.

We’ve all heard these stereotypes time and again, and maybe even experienced there being a bit of truth to them. I have a niece who’s an only child, and she’s definitely shyer and more reserved than her cousins, and usually ends up retreating from the group for some alone time. But so do I, and I have three siblings!

More importantly, science says that these stereotypes are just that: Stereotypes. Psychologists say these long-held beliefs that only children struggle with everything from loneliness to selfishness do not hold up in the research, and that only children don’t tend to have significantly different life outcomes than their sibling-having counterparts.

Psychologist Dr. Susan Newman says that these notions linger simply because they are “cultural thinking that’s buried so deep, it can be very hard to change it.” The same is true, psychologists say, of parents’ feeling that they have a moral obligation to have more than one child.

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These ideas go all the way back to the earliest days of psychology, first appearing in research in 1896. But that doesn’t make them true, and psychologists say the research no longer backs them up. In fact, only children have been found to even have certain advantages, like a much greater ease with dealing with adults, which is, of course, how they’ll spend most of their lives. And A LOT of us with siblings don’t even get along with them anyway!

“One thing about parenting is that you’re going to feel guilt no matter what you choose,” another parent on Reddit chimed in. “Instead of being pushed around by guilt and fear, think about what you want.” That’s definitely the best foot forward, not just for the parents, but for their son as well.

: Young Dad Gets Emotional While Asking For Advice On The Transition From Having One Kid To Having Two

John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.