I was an only child until I was 11 and I HATED it and still do. With such a small family (not meant to be offensive to moms with 1-2 kids, this is just what was true for ME) I felt like my parents were simultaneously way too focused in on me and everything I was doing all the time, yet at the same time they were not focused on the family, so it was a weird combination of them going off and having their own lives and spending very little time with me or helping me and taking me places a kid had no business being (like scary movies, restaurants where there was nothing for me to eat, really long hikes when I was really small and then everyone would get angry when I got tired and didn't want to walk any more, and cocktail parties where I was either the only kid or else expected to babysit all the little kids). Yet at the same time, they were breathing down my neck constantly about every little thing I did and said and expecting me to excel at everything to fulfill their every dream that they had regarding offspring (as in, my dad expected (expects) me to be an excellent athlete, straight A student, have a spectacular career, and be highly attractive to men; my mom expected me to be a cheerleader (like she was), straight A student, have a job while going to high school, be in the student government, and be very popular with my peer. All of this without any help or work on their part. And they never shut up about it. My dad STILL to this day laments the fact that I am not 6 feet tall - like I had any control over that one ;). That is a lot of pressure to put on one (or two) kids. I really, truly believe that a larger family is such a good thing because, if nothing else, it divides the parental attention and expectations from one/two kids to several and it limits the time a parent can spend worrying over the million quirks that every child has.
I have found that this has held true with my older boys as well. When I had just my two older boys, I never had to be "all in" as a mom...so I was often distracted from things that they really needed me to be doing (and you can see I still struggle with this by the number of posts I have on this website, haha) and our lives were NOT really set up to be child-centered, yet at the same time they were the center of my entire existence aND I felt like I had to be constantly correcting, monitoring, and basically criticizing everything they did and said "wrong" and this is also true for my husband, if not even more so. Since there were just the two of them, I was also extremely overprotective of them and shielded them from things that they would really have benefited from, esp. my oldest son, so they can't always handle stuff that they really should be able to handle and they don't handle things as well as they should - they tend to wait around and expect me to do things for them that they should be able do on their own easily. Plus my second son is kind of a hypochondriac and I know that's in part because I was always dwelling on his every sniffle :p.
Now with the two little boys, thankfully I've learned a lot from my mistakes with the first two, plus I just have less time to worry over stuff because they're closer in age (and my third son is a maniac and DEMANDS constant attention haha), so I feel like I'm doing a better job prioritizing what I need to be doing as a mom, and what I should leave alone. I feel like the best case scenario is when you're "all in" as a parent in terms of things like reading to them, loving them, providing their basic needs (as an only child, my parents didn't even have things like kid-friendly foods and I had hardly any clothes and toys, because their whole universe was structured around meeting THEIR desires as adults and I just had to fit into that) playing with them outside and taking them to the park (cheap fun) and supporting them when they really and truly need it, which you HAVE to be when you have several kids because otherwise they drive you nuts ;). But at the same time you're too busy to worry over things that you shouldn't be worrying over, like whether they're "weird" or if they're good at everything, and also you're more inclined to let them figure things out on their own whenever they can, so they have more freedom to be themselves and learn the skills to function as effective adults later on.
Trying to sum up what seems rather meandering...with a bigger family you have to arrange your lives to be kid-friendly and child-centered, yet at the same time you don't have the time/energy to worry over anything that doesn't require your attention so the kids don't have to live with unreasonable expectations, overprotection, and they learn to find their own way in the world. So to me it is the best of both worlds for a kid to grow up in.
Plus, now as an adult, I have no one to share memories with or to turn to in times of trouble. My siblings are just too young to even relate to. Also, to echo what Lillian said, the entire burden of parental care falls onto the shoulders of one or two kids and it SUCKS. My husband is one of a PP and his dad is terminally ill and his mom is going blind and can barely walk, and it is just so much work for one or two people to handle. His sister luckily lives next door to them, but DH has to do all their house repairs and the expectation is that one of my sons will move in with them at some point - and I don't WANT my son to have to give up his college years to take care of elderly relatives. But there is no one else. :(
Moving on to another topic, I have never loved the two-kid dynamic anyway, esp with two boys, because I think they get too focused in on each other and it leads to competition and ferocious sibling rivalry. My older sons did not get along well at all (hence their icons in my siggy) altho they are getting along better just lately now that they're grown up. This actually did not help my GD any the second time around, although DS 3 and 4 seem to get along a lot better, I think because they're closer in age. I wanted ANY combination other than two boys!!! o.O But I DO think that several of the same gender is actually very freeing for kids in a lot of ways. Rather than having to be "the boy" or "the girl" in the family, a kid can define themselves in terms of who they really want to be, so "the artist" or "the bookworm" or "the athlete" or "the nerd" and personally I think that is a lot more awesome than feeling like you have to aspire to be either "Pink Polly Princess" or "John Wayne Schwarzenegger" to fulfill some stereotypical gender role.
