People shouldn't have to defend their decision to have only one child as no one knows what it took to bring that child into the world.

It comes after former editor of Glamour magazine in the UK Jo Elvin criticised having to defend her decision to have one child.

"'Why do you only have one child?' — as though my daughter's existence is not valid until we have another human in the house? The audacity," she wrote in the Daily Mail.

Writer and PR consultant Barbara Neeson told Newstalk Breakfast people can be very quick to judge.

"I find that so many of these comments are underpinned by the assumption that motherhood is somehow easy," she said.

"People will say, when you've just had your baby, 'When are you having another one?'

"You could be there trying to work out breastfeeding, trying to remember what sleep is, your two eyes could be looking two different directions and people don't see that.

"Your journey to motherhood can be very complicated and... no one knows what it took to bring your child into the world".

'Pregnancy didn't agree with me'

Ms Neeson said she believes she may not have 'came through' another pregnancy,

"I, like Jo, had a serious miscarriage before having my son like so many women," she said.

"There's other women that like me that pregnancy didn't agree with.

"I took it very hard, I was very ill, it had a detrimental impact on my mental health for quite some time after.

"So for me to go ahead and think I'm going to have another child, I wasn't sure I would have came through that."

Barbara Neeson. Image: Instagram/iambarbara

Ms Neeson said she knows what it's like to be an only child.

"I'm an only child myself so it was fairly straight forward for me to make that decision," she said.

"I knew that my son Flynn would be absolutely fine without having another sibling in the house.

"I was fine, I had a great experience, I learned a lot about myself and I think it stood to who I am today".

Ms Neeson said she thinks it comes down to a societal problem.

"It's a gap in our social knowledge because in Ireland we're traditionally large families," he said.

"So having one child is very unusual and it's not something that everybody understands and has direct experience of.

"But I think the other side of that coin is we don't give women enough space to talk about the difficulties around pregnancy and maternity".

'The actual truth'

Ms Neeson said pregnancy usually hidden beneath a 'fuzzy bubble'.

"People love to hear about it in glowing, euphoric terms where everything's wonderful," she said.

"You see all the ads on TV, all the promotion around pregnancy is wrapped in that fuzzy bubble.

"But the actual truth is much more brutal".

She suggested pregnancy is not taken seriously "because women make everything look easy".

Main image: A sleeping baby. Image: Sally Anscombe / Stockimo / Alamy