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Times

Why am I being judged for having a third child?

When I was eight months pregnant with my third child, my mother-in-law looked me up and down and said: 'I don't necessarily think more people not having children is a bad thing.' Her tone was clipped. The message was clear. I was being judged, condemned even, for what should have been a moment of joy. Why has my third child become a social stigma? Growing up in London, I was one of three siblings, and that felt entirely ordinary. The bigger families — four, five, even six kids — seemed exciting, not extravagant. But today, raising three children in a middle to upper-middle-class Cambridgeshire village, I'm an outlier. I've felt the quiet judgment: the assumptions that I must be unambitious, irresponsible or simply overwhelmed. I've