Setting elements in a Column to opacity: 0 also has the effect of making there width and height; 0 so the space is then taken by the next item in the Column

This seems counterintuitive. I had a bunch of items in a column and wanted some of them to be opacity:0 for awhile. But I wanted the space they occupied to still stay there. However once opacity 0 the space is then taken up as if the element no longer has any size. To get round this I need to nest the elements inside another Item. This is extra QML to get what should be the default behavior?