Category: Family & Parenting

When I had my first baby, it went well, all things considered. I was induced at noon, gave birth 15 hours later in the wee hours of the morning, and my beautiful little boy went right on my chest, snuggling in and latching. I remember him just gazing up at me endlessly, taking in my face. Eventually we were moved to a private room, and I went to a breastfeeding lesson just down the hall, before the grandparents arrived to meet him. Through all the commotion, my blissed-out baby boy slept soundly, swaddled in the bassinet beside me, just like I’d imagined he would. 

That night, I sent my husband home, after watching him restlessly toss and turn on the recliner in our room. (He’s 6’4″.) “You go home, check on the house, get some rest, and come back in the morning,” I said. “I’ve got this!”

Cue the narrator: I did not, in fact, have this. 

My baby, like many, “woke up” on night two—he was alert, hungry and very pissed off about not being in his warm, snug womb. He cried incessantly unless I stood up and swayed him, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. (This “night two” phenomenon—when the baby becomes more alert, and the mom’s milk hasn’t come in yet—is so well known that it was actually written up in the booklet the hospital had given us after birth, but I had been too distracted to read it.) 

After an hour or two of the swaying, I decided I needed a break and walked out to the nursing station to hand off the baby. To my surprise, the nurse I found didn’t take him—instead, she gave me a warm blanket to swaddle him in, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “you’re doing all the right things.” 

So I returned to my room. It was now 30 hours and a labour away from the last time I’d really slept, I was bleeding profusely, and I was again swaying my little baby, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The shadow from the hall lights flickered on and off of his face, and he blinked up at me, silent, but very awake. 

A thought hit me: Was this what motherhood was going to be? Me, doing whatever this baby needed, no matter the mental-health costs to me? (Spoiler alert: Yes—for the next little while at least.)

When I told my own mom about all this, she was shocked at how different my experience was from how she was treated when she’d given birth to me, in the 1980s. Back then, she’d stayed in the hospital for five days, and every night the nurses whisked me away to the nursery so she could rest, bringing me back to breastfeed twice. When they got home, my parents gave me a bottle of formula every night, just in case my mom wasn’t making enough breast milk. 

This generational switch has happened in response to mounting evidence that supports what’s called “rooming in”—where mom and baby are kept in the same room—and promoting exclusive breastfeeding. That means more support and encouragement around breastfeeding, not having nurseries available to healthy infants, and a lot of grumpy babies on night two.

During COVID-19, it’s also gotten harder: most hospitals allow birthing people only one support person, and no visitors. That often means moms can’t have a doula, or your own mom, as well as a spouse. At times, COVID restrictions have also dictated that both mom and their partner are not allowed to even leave the hospital room—no going to grab food, no smoke breaks, no in and out privileges. The pandemic has also raised the bar for when a baby would be sent to the nursery or taken care of at a nurses’ station.

Postpartum people are also getting sent home from the hospital faster—the average stay has dropped by 30 per cent since the pandemic began. 

The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, which was started by the World Health Organization in 1992, has also helped push these changes forward, well before the coronavirus hit. Twenty-nine hospitals across Canada are certified as “baby friendly,” meaning they follow the 10 rules set out by the WHO, including training staff to help mothers breastfeed, ensuring moms are told the benefits of breastfeeding, rooming in, not giving pacifiers, encouraging feeding on demand, and doing skin-to-skin after birth. And hospitals with this designation have to refuse money from formula companies, refrain from advertising formula, and cannot offer it unless it’s medically necessary. 

This could be seen as shifting birth back to where it should be: not unnecessarily separating moms and babies, and supporting breastfeeding as the default way to feed a baby. Many moms love it, in fact. When I asked for thoughts on a few Facebook groups for parents, one mom replied, “You try and take my child out of my room after giving birth and I’ll wrestle you to the ground, grannie panties and all!”

Another said that after doing a lot of research while pregnant, she went to her doctor with a list of evidence-based requests, like doing skin-to-skin, and was reassured to hear that they were all standard at the hospital she was going to. 

But others, like me, have a more mixed experience. Alli Glydon, a mom from Calgary, is one. When she gave birth, she had a scheduled C-section because her baby was breech. She ended up having a reaction to the spinal block they gave her, and was violently ill for eight hours afterwards. 

Then, she had trouble breastfeeding, and the nurses encouraged her to wake up every couple of hours to hand-express a few drops of colostrum to give her baby. She would later find out that her baby had a tongue tie, small mouth and high palate, which was why nursing was so difficult. Additionally, Glydon had low supply and Reynaud’s syndrome, which can make nursing incredibly painful. 

“My daughter was obviously hungry—she was rooting and wouldn’t latch at all—and I couldn’t hand express anything beyond one to two drops of colostrum. The nurses were taken aback when I asked for formula, and it took a long time to come—like more than 30 minutes,” she says. “I felt like I had to beg for it.” 

Talia Bender, a mom in Vancouver, also had a negative experience. After a 25-hour labour, she was moved into a room with her baby. That night, when she was on her own (her husband was home with their older kids), she was exhausted and nursing the baby when they both fell asleep. “The nurse came in and yelled at me, saying, ‘This is so unsafe,’” she says. “And it’s like, I can hardly walk, I just pushed a watermelon out of my vagina, and we both fell asleep because I’m so exhausted. And you weren’t here!” 

Bender says she feels like leaving moms alone like this, postpartum, is abnormal. “When you think about birth in the past, you had midwives and your family and a support system; all the women would be there to hold the baby, and let the new mother recover,” she says. “Now we have hospital births and families live all over the place, and there’s so much pressure on the new mother, and so much disregard for the recovery process.” 

The question of whether the Baby-Friendly Initiative has gone too far has been making headlines lately thanks in part to a U.S. organization called Fed is Best. Founded in 2016, Fed is Best argues that hospitals are encouraging breastfeeding over health, and putting babies at risk of dehydration, jaundice, hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and hyponatremia (low sodium). 

“There are billions of infants who require formula at some point during their first year of life,” says Fed is Best co-founder and physician Christie del Castillo-Hegyi. “To hide that and give parents an illusion that exclusive breastfeeding is possible, natural, easy and ideal for all infants, without any evidence, and no parsing out or informed consent of the harms—it has created a public health catastrophe,” she says.

Through its website, Fed is Best collects and publicizes stories like that of Landon, a healthy baby who died at 19 days old of cardiac arrest from not eating enough. “If I had given him just one bottle, he would still be alive,” reads the heartbreaking headline on the story. 

In a 2016 JAMA Pediatrics publication, paediatrician Joel Bass also raised concerns about the unexpected consequences of rigidly enforced baby-friendly practices, including the focus on strict breastfeeding exclusivity. Bass says every hospital should have a nursery for healthy babies, so moms have the option to send their babies there to rest, and that offering a small amount of formula in the early days of life isn’t likely to impact breastfeeding success. 

He also points out that while many breastfeeding-friendly hospitals still discourage pacifier use, newer evidence shows that it doesn’t interfere with breastfeeding—and may even encourage it—and that putting babies to sleep with a pacifier can help prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). 

But others point out that the Baby-Friendly Initiative does allow for formula when medically necessary. “There are babies that need formula—there are medical reasons for supplementation—and it’s perfectly fine,” says Hiltrud Dawson, a nurse and lactation consultant who works for the Baby-Friendly Initiative of Ontario. “I believe that babies are given formula when needed.”

It’s also important to remember that when it comes to following up with babies who are losing weight after they leave the hospital, Canada has a much better safety net than the U.S. does, says Merilee Brockway, a registered nurse and lactation consultant who studies the effects of human milk on babies. That includes babies seeing their doctor or a public health nurse within a week after leaving the hospital—that’s when a newborn is weighed and professionals help parents make sure breastfeeding is on track. 

Because of the time crunch in getting mothers home, parents are also not always sent home with enough information, says Dawson. In response, her group helped create a card with information for new moms about how to make sure their baby is getting enough— including how many wet diapers they should look for, the change in baby’s poop, and that their babies should gain weight from day four onwards. They should also have a strong cry, be active, and wake easily.

If your baby is getting enough, there do seem to be benefits to not offering any formula at all, says Brockway—even if this isn’t exactly helpful information for new parents who are already stressed enough about exclusive breastfeeding (EBF). “We can see significant differences in the gut microbiome after even one formula supplementation,” she says. Researchers have indeed found a connection between the gut microbiome and issues like asthma and obesity—but there isn’t enough research yet to confirm exactly how that connection works, or how much formula-feeding would affect it.

Brockway adds that there is also lots of evidence about how mom’s mental health is important to raising a happy, healthy baby—and that if mom is really suffering under the strain of trying to breastfeed, that can be reason enough to supplement. And she says some health-care professionals can be a bit “fanatical” about encouraging moms to breastfeed. She would like to see the mantras of “breast is best” and “fed is best” replaced by a new one: “informed is best.”

“We have really high breastfeeding intention rates and breastfeeding initiation rates in Canada. Most moms want to breastfeed. But breastfeeding can be really hard, and if you have a difficult labour, or if mom’s sick, it gets to be really really difficult,” she says. “We need to be able to say, ‘Are we forcing mom to carry on this path?’ We need to respect maternal autonomy.”

Boys are brilliant. Girls read better. Only children are spoiled. Parents play an identifiable role in perpetuating stereotypes, be they about race, sibling status, or gender.

According to a study published in Science, “Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests.” The researchers found that girls as young as 6 associate a high level of intellectual ability, such as brilliance or genius, with men more than women. The study pointedly notes that the 6-year-old girls shied away from fields such as philosophy and physics, believing those areas are reserved for kids who are “really, really smart”—i.e., boys.

Parents’ gender stereotypes are important in perpetuating gender differences, since they may affect the development of children’s beliefs about their competence, what’s called intrinsic task value—the interest and enjoyment that students experience when they engage in a task—and achievement, Drs. Francesca Muntoni and Jan Retelsdorf report in the journal Learning and Instruction.

Similarly, only-child stereotypes stubbornly stuck around for decades, in part, because parents continued to accept them. Some 30 years ago, when I wrote my first book on the topic, Parenting an Only Child: The Joys and Challenges of Raising Your One and Only (updated in 2001), negative only-child myths were deeply engrained and persuasive, and they influenced family planning decisions. It’s been a long slog to change people’s thinking.

One-child stereotypes: The disappearing act

Since 1896, when psychologist G. Stanley Hall marked only children as selfish, spoiled, lonely, and bossy, unfounded and unflattering stereotypes have plagued only children and their parents. But today those stereotypes have largely disappeared.

The myths about only children have been relegated to near extinction—especially by only children and their parents. Rarely do you hear unsavory comments about only children now. If you do, they probably come from older generations—grandparents and great grandparents.

For the past year, I asked close to a hundred only children of all ages (or their parents), “Did you feel stigmatized growing up?”

Laura,* 29, replied, “Never. My mom made it her job—she was determined—that I was not going to be that spoiled only child. People were and are surprised I am an only child. I had two jobs when I was a teenager. Even though my parents had the money, they made me work for what I wanted. I knew I could ask for something, but also knew I had to save for it. If I saved enough, they would give me the rest.”

Laura’s mother Robin, 65, grew up when the only-child myths were pervasive. But she didn’t buy them and wanted to make sure her child defied the stereotypes she had heard. “I never wanted her to be the kid everyone said gets everything. That was my main goal. We were strict with Laura and had a lot of rules.”

Only child Jessica, 59, took the “selfish stereotype” to task. “The only children I know or grew up with either want to give you everything they have or say, ‘Don’t touch my stuff.’ I was in the ‘don’t touch my stuff’ group, but my cousin, who is one of three, felt the same way.”

College student Carolyn, 18, said she knew only-child stereotypes existed, but said she didn’t fit any of them: “They had nothing to do with my upbringing. I’m not selfish; I learned how to share in preschool.”

“When I was younger, I was by myself if my parents were busy, and since they both have jobs, that happened a lot,” she says. “I got used to that over time and learned to be more independent.” Somewhere around first grade, she says she became comfortable doing her homework and playing by herself.

Henry, a 38-year-old only child, says he didn’t feel at all stigmatized or labeled growing up. “It never occurred to me there was anything wrong with not having a sibling or that it was weird,” he told me.

Shannon, also 38, was oblivious to any only-child stigma. Like others older and younger than her, she confirms, “I wasn’t aware of the only-child stigmas until I was well into my 20s… but even then I knew that the societal beliefs about only children were false.”

These comments from new generations of only children and parents with only children ranging in age from toddler to adult indicate that the negative stereotypes once pinned to only children have sputtered out. It’s been a hard road for many older generations, but the long-held judgment and deeply ingrained negativity surrounding only children have slipped away. Parents of only children and only children themselves have prevailed.

The birth rate has been steadily dropping, and only-child families are on the rise; having one child is the fastest growing family size. Today, men and women of childbearing age say that only-child stereotypes don’t factor into their decisions of how many children to have. So many other factors come into play: starting families older, infertility obstacles, insufficient or costly childcare, to name a few. When combined with women’s participation in the workforce and the high costs of raising children, the pandemic has also had a profound and likely lasting impact on childbearing.

In cities like Seattle, 47 percent of families have one child, and countries like Canada and England are already being called one-child nations. Clearly, the one-child family, while not right for everyone, is becoming increasingly common.

The antiquated myths have lost their power to label only children or persuade people to have more children—pointing to widespread acceptance and celebration of the one-child family.

*Names of study participants have been changed to protect identities.

Copyright @2021 by Susan Newman

Here’s how to handle cluster feeding, the incessant-nursing phase when breastfeeding a newborn.

So you have a newborn, and lately your evenings have been hijacked by non-stop nursing sessions. If this sounds familiar, you’re probably dealing with the common breastfeeding phenomenon known as cluster feeding.

What is cluster feeding?

Infants nurse frequently (at least eight to 12 times in a 24-hour period), but sometimes it’s even more often, and they may bunch up those feedings—especially in the evening. This is frustrating for both the parent who’s been home with the baby all day and the parent who may only get to see the baby after work.

But cluster feeding is perfectly normal, says Attie Sandink, a lactation consultant in Burlington, Ont. “Babies instinctively know how much milk they need. If they’re not getting enough, they just want to feed and feed,” she says. This doesn’t mean your milk supply is tanking or you need to supplement with formula. And letting newborns nurse as often as they like doesn’t mean you are spoiling them.

“I remember thinking, Is this how life is going to be?” recalls first-time mom Alison Pearce of Toronto. “It was like looking down a tunnel with no light at the end of it.” From two to eight weeks old, her daughter, Simone, spent most evenings nursing non-stop. But once Pearce and her family noticed the pattern, they came up with a plan. Each night, before the intensive breastfeeding session began, Pearce’s mom (who stayed with them for the first month) made an early dinner while Pearce took a bath. Then, armed with snacks, they all settled in with a movie while Simone nursed and dozed, and everyone took turns holding her.

Cathy Wegiel, a mom of four in Airdrie, Alta., knew to expect a cluster-feeding phase, because all of her babies had spent their evenings attached to her boobs. But her son, Parker, was particularly enthusiastic. For two months, he was latched from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. Wegiel suspects Parker—who had needed heart surgery at three weeks old—was trying to pack on the weight he’d lost before his operation. Parker’s need to feed became part of the family routine. “I always nursed in the armchair in the living room, and the other kids would snuggle with me and read stories,” Wegiel explains. “And if he was hungry during dinner, I nursed at the table and tried not to spill my food on him.”

Why is my baby breastfeeding all the time?

Babies cluster-feed for many reasons. One theory is that a mother’s prolactin levels drop toward the end of the day, which means her milk supply decreases and the flow is slower, so babies may nurse for a longer time to fill up, says Taya Griffin, a lactation consultant in Toronto. They could be frustrated by the slow flow and go on and off the breast more often. Mastering breast compressions—pressing down on your boob while the baby sucks—can help, because it expresses the milk faster and more efficiently. Babies can also cluster-feed at any time of day if they’re feeling out of sorts and need comfort, adds Sandink. Sometimes babies who seem ravenous are having a growth spurt (which lasts a few days).

To make cluster feeding more manageable, get things done earlier in the day and lean on your partner for meals. Wegiel would make dinner while her older kids were at school and then reheat it. Also be prepared to lower your household standards. “I really let things slide,” she says. “It was a disaster for quite a while.” Keep a basket of filling snacks (like energy bars or almonds) and a water bottle near where you nurse most often.

Feeling marooned on the couch? Wearing your baby in a sling or carrier so you can multi-task (or even nurse!) can save your sanity. Or forget about your to-do list and spend the time catching up on TV shows, scrolling through social media or reading a book with one hand. Cluster feeding is temporary—so settle in and make the most of it.

Should I be worried my baby isn’t getting enough to eat? 

When a baby is eating all the time, almost every mom wonders, Do I have a milk-supply issue? Just remember that this pattern is normal for a newborn. You should only worry if your baby is not gaining weight well (something your doctor or midwife will keep track of) or is not producing enough wet diapers (typically six per day for newborns six days old and up). If you are in pain while breastfeeding, reach out to a lactation consultant for help.

This article was originally published online in February 2016.

In 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz disappeared while walking to his school bus stop in lower Manhattan. And then, in 1981 with the disappearance of Adam Walsh, the nation froze. Missing children’s photos appeared on milk cartons for kids to look at while they ate bowls of breakfast cereal. Restrictions around what children could and could not do changed.

Even before those unnerving and highly publicized events, I wrote a short booklet, “Ice Cream Isn’t Always Good,” based on a local news report of a strange man in a blue car near my stepchildren’s elementary school. The booklet was distributed nationally by police and schools, and to parents. It subsequently became the book Never Say Yes to a Stranger: What Your Child Must Know to Stay Safe and has been in print in different formats for decades. The stories and messages helped parents and educators teach young children the difference between strangers who are good and would be helpful and those who might harm them. It was designed to provide the tools young kids need to stay safe when they were on their own, unsupervised.

The media messages surrounding missing children, at times misleading for failing to differentiate between children who had run away and those who were taken, panicked parents who then extensively curtailed children’s freedoms. Parents started hovering and have remained in an overly protective, vigilant stance.

Being Overly Cautious Makes Us Miss Out on Relationships

In her book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims discusses how a movement spun out of control and how micromanaging our children has affected young adults today and “led them to be cautious and as a result [they] are missing out how to form relationships that are key to our individual happiness.”

Her chapter, “Start Talking to Strangers,” opens with the quote, “Don’t talk to strangers,” which is attrbuted to “Everyone.” That was such a mistake, she writes:

“Accordingly, most Millennial and Gen Z children were raised with the mantra ‘Don’t talk to strangers.’ This meant have no verbal interaction with strangers and of course don’t go off with them anywhere, either. But it morphed into making no eye contact with strangers, and having no little chitchats with strangers on sidewalks or in stores. Then it became ignoring strangers entirely. A lot of kids grew up not just afraid of the very idea of strangers, but literally not knowing how to interact with them. As a result, kids didn’t learn to navigate the social cues given off by someone they didn’t already know. And then they graduated from high school and went out into the world, where their life was full of . . . strangers.

“Here comes what may be the most obvious point I’ll make in this book: we’re all strangers to each other at first. Then, somehow, we become acquaintances with some of those (former) strangers, and some of those acquaintances turn into neighbors, friends, colleagues, mentors, lovers, partners, and fam. Research from the fields of evolutionary biology, anthropology, and social psychology shows that we are a highly social species who must interact cooperatively and kindly with one another not just to get stuff done but to be emotionally well. Research even shows that interactions with people who will forever remain strangers to us (i.e., the person on the street who passes by) also have positive mental health effects on us.”

Talk to a Stranger

On a bus ride in New York City several years ago I overheard two ladies discussing a restaurant I was interested in knowing about. So rather than eavesdrop, I asked them to tell me about it. We began chatting. Coincidentally, one of the women lives near me and has become a close friend. Pre-pandemic we did many things together in the city and have become emotional support for each other. As soon as the CDC declares it safe to resume contact with those outside our pods, I am sure we will resume our face-to-face friendship—one born completely out of talking to a stranger.

The pandemic has underscored that whatever our age, we need face-to-face connection—not pages of social media “friends,” but people we can look in the eye, and, soon, hug again. If you were raised under the mantra of “Don’t talk to strangers,” forming those relationships may be uncomfortable at first, but as Lythcott-Haims reminds readers, “not only is it okay to talk to strangers, you want to. You gotta. Let’s go.”

As I was being wheeled into the labor and delivery unit to give birth to our son, it was already frighteningly obvious that pretty much nothing was going to go as I’d hoped.

Because there I suddenly was, only 36 weeks pregnant, about to be induced after my water broke at the end of a trick-or-treating marathon on Halloween. So much for my calm, all-natural birth plan.

I wasn’t in labour but, one way or another, I was going to deliver our second child that very day. I looked away as the nurse ran the steroid drip into my vein, to stimulate contractions, and strapped monitors on my lower and upper belly, left arm, and finger tip, while monstrous fears of the NICU swam in my mind. I had suffered two miscarriages before this pregnancy and nothing scared me more than the thought of our infant being born with medical complications. To me the NICU was like a haunted house I couldn’t bear to enter. What shadowy situations would we encounter?

Also, I knew very little about premature babies. How tiny would he be? Could he even breathe? Would his heart be strong enough for him to survive outside the womb? The nurse jabbed a painful shot into my thigh, another steroid to help the baby’s lungs function better since he was premature, and told us to try to rest until contractions began. (Yeah, right.)

The induction medicine kicked in slowly at first, then, as the doctor kept upping my dose, the contractions became extremely strong and close together. Less than an hour later, our baby boy was born, crying a healthy cry, and placed on my chest. He scored high on his Apgar tests, and immediately started to nurse. My husband and I cried with relief.

But not two hours passed before the on-call pediatrician informed us that our son was not all well. His blood sugar level, already below normal range at birth, had plummeted to almost nothing in the short time since he had been born, and he was diagnosed as severely hypoglycemic—at risk for seizures and brain injury—requiring immediate medical intervention. He was whisked away to the NICU.

Leaving the delivery room with empty arms was gut-wrenching, after everything we had been through. And once we were finally able to visit him, the sight of our minuscule newborn hooked up to IVs and covered in monitor wires first nauseated me with fear.

But as my husband and I sat there through that long, painful first postpartum night, taking turns holding our son under our hospital gowns to feel his skin against ours and help stabilize his blood sugar level, my perspective blurred, then shifted. With each hour that ticked slowly by, the beeping machines, flashing numbers, and squiggles on the screen above his incubator began to look far less frightening, and instead brought reassurance that everything was okay—and that more than anything the NICU was not a haunted place but the only place our son should have been.

In the NICU, the beeping never stops, but I actually found comfort in all those loud monitors. As I sat hunched with my son in my arms, struggling to nurse, worrying about his health and future, a quick glance at the monitor showed me what was going on inside of him so at least those things were quantifiable: his steady heart rate, blood oxygen level, and body temperature calmed me.

Another comfort of the NICU I quickly came to deeply appreciate was that any concerns or questions we had—and we had so many, as worried parents of a preemie—the NICU staff addressed thoroughly, expertly, and immediately. His stay in the NICU, I soon discovered, was not just about caring for him. It was about helping us, his parents, as well, through those uncertain first days and nights, as we learned to care for our tiny new addition properly.

For instance, because our preemie could not suck as effectively as a full-term baby, getting adequate nutrition was a major concern, and a real challenge for me trying to breastfeed. But the NICU nurses, doctors, and lactation consultant helped ensure that our baby was eating properly, and showed us simple ways to tell if his food intake was adequate each day, in order for him to grow and be healthy.

When the baby spit up, the NICU nurses cleaned him. When he felt cold, they dressed him and brought warm blankets. They changed his diapers, something that was hard for me to do from a wheelchair, hooked up to an IV. They monitored his vital signs meticulously and adjusted the temperature, medications, and fluid dosages as needed, so that I found myself worrying less and less, and flooded instead with gratitude, and a real sense of security as the days went by.

And, when I needed time to deal with my own needs—and my family’s—I didn’t have to worry about our newborn. It wasn’t easy to leave him there, but at home I was able to take a shower, eat a hot meal, look after my older daughter when she spiked a sudden high fever, and even clock some quality sleep, while the NICU staff looked after our son—no need to hire, train, or schedule outside help—which was an enormous help during a really stressful time.

When our baby was finally ready to leave, the NICU staff gave us all the tips and tools we needed to help him thrive outside the hospital. Instead of feeling overwhelmed and anxious about taking our early-bird baby home, we felt ready to care for him on our own. The nurses even made themselves available to us for the rest of that day and night via phone, so that we could call with any questions or concerns until we visited his new pediatrician the following morning.

I know very well how lucky we were. There are babies born much more prematurely with more severe health problems, and the NICU may very well be hell on earth for those parents. But for me, the NICU wasn’t the scary place with dark portents I had feared. Without the excellent care he received there, our son might not be with us today. And I wouldn’t know the emotional healing power of this extraordinary place.

This article was originally published online in April 2018.

The pandemic has changed how many think about family size, and those wanting children—be it a first or second or third—face a newly complicated landscape.

The unpredictable nature of COVID-19 and its economic fallout have been added to the equation, but one outcome seems certain: “We have no precedent to estimate changes in birthrates from these disruptions, but they will undoubtedly also contribute to a large reduction in overall births,” two economics professors from the University of Maryland and Wellesley College wrote in The New York Times.

If you have one child and were planning for more, it could be you are waiting for the pandemic to settle. Different sources predict different timelines as virus variants emerge. In other words, the goalpost for life as we knew it keeps moving.

9 Questions to Ask Yourself

Here are considerations—some related to the pandemic, some not—that you will want to evaluate before deciding if no children or “just one” or more children could be just right for you.

Is now the time to start or add to my family?

In an article for The Atlantic, Joe Pinsker predicted the pandemic trajectory, “Life this spring will not be substantially different from the past year; summer could, miraculously, be close to normal; and next fall and winter could bring either continued improvement or a moderate backslide, followed by a near-certain return to something like pre-pandemic life.”

Others are more cautious in their assessment. Because the path of the virus keeps shifting and with it changed regulations and restrictions, you may find yourself asking: Will waiting another year or two make a difference?

Is my job secure?

The pandemic has created a shaky economy and job uncertainty, especially for mothers. In the U.S., women “comprised 47 percent of the workforce prior to COVID-19, yet they sustained 55 percent of the job losses due to COVID-19.”

That translates to roughly four times more women than men, one of the primary reasons being the added workload for mothers during the pandemic. The National Law Center reports that those who stayed in the workforce worried about how their added caregiving responsibilities, such as homeschooling support, would be perceived at work and if using any time-off benefits an employer provided might cost them their job.

Will a baby slow my career?

In these uncertain times, you will also want to examine your employer’s parental leave policy and think about how much time you want to be home after your child is born. If you are anxious about job security and advancement, it may be wise to wait.

Think, too, about your career objectives, your employer’s attitudes about working parents, especially mothers, and decide how a pregnancy and family leave will affect the job goals you have for yourself.

How many children can I afford?

You can’t put a price tag on children, but the reality is children are expensive. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average cost to raise one to age 18 (college not included) was estimated to be $233,610 for middle-income families. That number fluctuates higher or lower depending on where you live and your income.

Close to one-third of the total cost goes toward housing. A child or more children may mean you need a larger house or apartment. If you work outside your home, be sure to factor in childcare. Its cost can determine whether or not you leave or remain in the workforce. Harsh as this sounds, and you may not agree, but having babies is an economic decision.

Your decision may simply come down to how many children you can afford and whether or not the additional expenses would change your lifestyle significantly. Kenneth,* the father of an only child who is an only child himself and a subject in my recent study of only children, says, “a second child would shuffle our dynamic. Beyond having to move to a larger house, it would mean that one of us would have to give up our career—most likely my wife. Childcare is prohibitive where we live.”

Do I fear missing out?

Kids absorb discretionary income, and that may alter your lifestyle. If you worry about the parties, the after-hours cocktails with colleagues, maybe even trips you planned that you might not be able to afford, better to put a baby on hold. Or, perhaps, consider having just one child. With one, you will have greater mobility, more time, and energy for the things you want to do.

How long can I wait to have a baby?

Without question, women, in general, are waiting longer to start families or add to them. Dr. Joanne Stone, director of Maternal Fetal Medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, told the CBS Sunday Morning show, “Forty is the new 30… Everybody’s older. If you have somebody that’s 28, it’s like a teen pregnancy.”

Judith* makes no apologies for not having more children after giving birth to her daughter. She explains, “We started late; I was 40. I didn’t understand about eggs and fertility, and I wanted a career, but I wasn’t giving up on a baby. We had our daughter $180,000 later when I was 45. She will have to get a scholarship for college. We spent that money trying to have her.”

The options and advances within the fertility industry are enormous; however, the cost can be prohibitive, as it turned out to be in Judith’s case. If you are older and hesitant to become pregnant now, you may want to look into freezing your eggs or embryos for a future date. Fertility treatments can be emotionally difficult and stressful. It is one of the reasons why women with one child often abandon the idea of giving their child a sibling.

Is your partner on board with what you want?

Avoid the mistake of believing a baby will resolve issues in your relationship. Parenthood tends to acerbate any problems, and you both need to be in agreement. Babies rarely, if ever, improve or cement a marriage or partnership for the long term.

And, if you both agree, discuss each partner’s responsibilities or how you see your future lives with more children or a child.

Are only children happy?

If you’re leaning toward “just one,” know that the nasty labels and stigmas that once surrounded only children have disappeared—in part due to huge numbers of parents deciding one child is just right for them and to parents of one being savvy and wise about how they raise their child.

The views baked into our culture that only children are lonely, selfish, bossy—the stereotypes—simply don’t hold up any longer. As I end a research project that investigated, in large part, attitudes about only children and their parents, I can say with a high degree of certainty that only children, especially most of those under the age of 50, don’t and didn’t feel they were ever targeted or labeled because they had no sibling.

Only child Genevieve, 45, says, “Sure, I was bullied in school, but it wasn’t about being an only child. It was those things kids are mean about… my squeaky voice, my hair, or my size. That sort of thing.”

Richard, 39, who grew up in the 80s and 90s when families were getting smaller and having one child was more common, reflected: “I always knew the myths about only children were out there, but I never thought they applied to me. If I had heard anything like that, I would have brushed it off as being silly.” Looking back, he adds, “Being an only child makes it easier to grow up without having a sibling you are forced to play with or be nice to.”

The mother of an 8-year-old singleton, Meg, 43, agrees. “I grew up with three sisters, and I can tell you that my daughter is much happier, more confident, and sociable than I used to be. I can still remember many moments that I felt lonely and misunderstood.”

Still not sure what to do?

Long before the pandemic, The New York Times asked almost 2,000 men and women why they were having fewer children than their ideal; their top reasons were akin to what women are saying in other countries: 64 percent said childcare was too expensive; 54 percent wanted more time with the children they had; 49 percent were worried about the economy.

More recently, The Brookings Institute and similar reports have predicted fewer babies as a result of the pandemic. They base their finding on the large number of women saying “that they plan to postpone giving birth or have fewer children.” And that is never an easy choice.

Ashleigh Wallace openly discusses her struggles, revealing painful feelings about herself and her needs as she wrestled with the question: Is one child enough for me?

Given all there is to weigh, could “just one” be just right for you?

*Names of study participants have been changed to protect identities.

Related Posts:

“COVID-19 Puts Babies on Hold”
“6 Well-Kept Secrets that Affect Family Size”

Copyright @2021 by Susan Newman.

The pandemic has changed how many think about family size, and those wanting children—be it a first or second or third—face a newly complicated landscape.

The unpredictable nature of COVID-19 and its economic fallout have been added to the equation, but one outcome seems certain: “We have no precedent to estimate changes in birthrates from these disruptions, but they will undoubtedly also contribute to a large reduction in overall births,” two economics professors from the University of Maryland and Wellesley College wrote in The New York Times.

If you have one child and were planning for more, it could be you are waiting for the pandemic to settle. Different sources predict different timelines as virus variants emerge. In other words, the goalpost for life as we knew it keeps moving.

9 Questions to Ask Yourself

Here are considerations—some related to the pandemic, some not—that you will want to evaluate before deciding if no children or “just one” or more children could be just right for you.

Is now the time to start or add to my family?

In an article for The Atlantic, Joe Pinsker predicted the pandemic trajectory, “Life this spring will not be substantially different from the past year; summer could, miraculously, be close to normal; and next fall and winter could bring either continued improvement or a moderate backslide, followed by a near-certain return to something like pre-pandemic life.”

Others are more cautious in their assessment. Because the path of the virus keeps shifting and with it changed regulations and restrictions, you may find yourself asking: Will waiting another year or two make a difference?

Is my job secure?

The pandemic has created a shaky economy and job uncertainty, especially for mothers. In the U.S., women “comprised 47 percent of the workforce prior to COVID-19, yet they sustained 55 percent of the job losses due to COVID-19.”

That translates to roughly four times more women than men, one of the primary reasons being the added workload for mothers during the pandemic. The National Law Center reports that those who stayed in the workforce worried about how their added caregiving responsibilities, such as homeschooling support, would be perceived at work and if using any time-off benefits an employer provided might cost them their job.

Will a baby slow my career?

In these uncertain times, you will also want to examine your employer’s parental leave policy and think about how much time you want to be home after your child is born. If you are anxious about job security and advancement, it may be wise to wait.

Think, too, about your career objectives, your employer’s attitudes about working parents, especially mothers, and decide how a pregnancy and family leave will affect the job goals you have for yourself.

How many children can I afford?

You can’t put a price tag on children, but the reality is children are expensive. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average cost to raise one to age 18 (college not included) was estimated to be $233,610 for middle-income families. That number fluctuates higher or lower depending on where you live and your income.

Close to one-third of the total cost goes toward housing. A child or more children may mean you need a larger house or apartment. If you work outside your home, be sure to factor in childcare. Its cost can determine whether or not you leave or remain in the workforce. Harsh as this sounds, and you may not agree, but having babies is an economic decision.

Your decision may simply come down to how many children you can afford and whether or not the additional expenses would change your lifestyle significantly. Kenneth,* the father of an only child who is an only child himself and a subject in my recent study of only children, says, “a second child would shuffle our dynamic. Beyond having to move to a larger house, it would mean that one of us would have to give up our career—most likely my wife. Childcare is prohibitive where we live.”

Do I fear missing out?

Kids absorb discretionary income, and that may alter your lifestyle. If you worry about the parties, the after-hours cocktails with colleagues, maybe even trips you planned that you might not be able to afford, better to put a baby on hold. Or, perhaps, consider having just one child. With one, you will have greater mobility, more time, and energy for the things you want to do.

How long can I wait to have a baby?

Without question, women, in general, are waiting longer to start families or add to them. Dr. Joanne Stone, director of Maternal Fetal Medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, told the CBS Sunday Morning show, “Forty is the new 30… Everybody’s older. If you have somebody that’s 28, it’s like a teen pregnancy.”

Judith* makes no apologies for not having more children after giving birth to her daughter. She explains, “We started late; I was 40. I didn’t understand about eggs and fertility, and I wanted a career, but I wasn’t giving up on a baby. We had our daughter $180,000 later when I was 45. She will have to get a scholarship for college. We spent that money trying to have her.”

The options and advances within the fertility industry are enormous; however, the cost can be prohibitive, as it turned out to be in Judith’s case. If you are older and hesitant to become pregnant now, you may want to look into freezing your eggs or embryos for a future date. Fertility treatments can be emotionally difficult and stressful. It is one of the reasons why women with one child often abandon the idea of giving their child a sibling.

Is your partner on board with what you want?

Avoid the mistake of believing a baby will resolve issues in your relationship. Parenthood tends to acerbate any problems, and you both need to be in agreement. Babies rarely, if ever, improve or cement a marriage or partnership for the long term.

And, if you both agree, discuss each partner’s responsibilities or how you see your future lives with more children or a child.

Are only children happy?

If you’re leaning toward “just one,” know that the nasty labels and stigmas that once surrounded only children have disappeared—in part due to huge numbers of parents deciding one child is just right for them and to parents of one being savvy and wise about how they raise their child.

The views baked into our culture that only children are lonely, selfish, bossy—the stereotypes—simply don’t hold up any longer. As I end a research project that investigated, in large part, attitudes about only children and their parents, I can say with a high degree of certainty that only children, especially most of those under the age of 50, don’t and didn’t feel they were ever targeted or labeled because they had no sibling.

Only child Genevieve, 45, says, “Sure, I was bullied in school, but it wasn’t about being an only child. It was those things kids are mean about… my squeaky voice, my hair, or my size. That sort of thing.”

Richard, 39, who grew up in the 80s and 90s when families were getting smaller and having one child was more common, reflected: “I always knew the myths about only children were out there, but I never thought they applied to me. If I had heard anything like that, I would have brushed it off as being silly.” Looking back, he adds, “Being an only child makes it easier to grow up without having a sibling you are forced to play with or be nice to.”

The mother of an 8-year-old singleton, Meg, 43, agrees. “I grew up with three sisters, and I can tell you that my daughter is much happier, more confident, and sociable than I used to be. I can still remember many moments that I felt lonely and misunderstood.”

Still not sure what to do?

Long before the pandemic, The New York Times asked almost 2,000 men and women why they were having fewer children than their ideal; their top reasons were akin to what women are saying in other countries: 64 percent said childcare was too expensive; 54 percent wanted more time with the children they had; 49 percent were worried about the economy.

More recently, The Brookings Institute and similar reports have predicted fewer babies as a result of the pandemic. They base their finding on the large number of women saying “that they plan to postpone giving birth or have fewer children.” And that is never an easy choice.

Ashleigh Wallace openly discusses her struggles, revealing painful feelings about herself and her needs as she wrestled with the question: Is one child enough for me?

Given all there is to weigh, could “just one” be just right for you?

*Names of study participants have been changed to protect identities.

Related Posts:

“COVID-19 Puts Babies on Hold”
“6 Well-Kept Secrets that Affect Family Size”

Copyright @2021 by Susan Newman.

Parents are rightfully concerned about the amount of time children have spent alone during the pandemic, isolated from their friends and away from their busy schedules.

There is, however, a significant and lasting upside to time spent alone that parents, no matter how many children they have, will want to understand and encourage once in-class school and after-school activities resume at full tilt.

For parents with one child, in particular, alarm bells went off unnecessarily as lockdowns dragged on. They felt as if they needed to be their younger only child’s playmate or to make sure their older only child was occupied. Turns out, most only children were at an advantage and did just fine during the pandemic; one reason being they were used to having alone time and were able to fill it on their own.

“I have nothing to do”

Is there a parent who hasn’t heard a child of theirs say, “I have nothing to do” or “I’m bored?” Parents, me included, tend to rush in or feel they should find something for their child to do.

Contrary to what you may think, boredom—that space to allow your mind to wander—is more than desirable. In her book, Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self, Manoush Zomorodi, creator of the WNYC’s Podcast “Note to Self,” drives home the point that “boredom is actually a crucial tool for making our lives happier, more productive, and more creative.”

Zomorodi spoke with Dr. Jonathan Smallwood, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of York in England, who told her, “In a very deep way, there’s a close link between originality and creativity and the spontaneous thoughts we generate when our minds are idle when we are not interacting with others or immersed in a goal-specific chore or project.”

Michele Borba, EdD, underscores the advantages of not having children constantly busy in her book, Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine. She adds sanity to what is parenting today and the stress we put our children under with expectations too high and competitiveness too great…with schedules so tight, children eat meals in the back seat of the car as parents rush them to the next game or lesson.

Before the pandemic, most children had little downtime. Dr. Borba asks parents to make room in their children’s day to be idle, to do nothing, possibly be bored and establishes the link between boredom, free time, and creativity. According to Dr. Borba, creativity, and its close cousin curiosity, is one of the seven strengths a child needs to thrive. Without meaning to, by overscheduling and micromanaging their children’s lives, parents leave little, if any, time for that creativity to flourish.

“Parents can make a big difference on their children’s character and future success if they help them develop mindsets that are open to curiosity and the capacity to imagine, create, and invent ideas,” she says. In other words, she explains, “when left on their own to explore and fill their time, they develop curiosity, creative problem solving, and divergent thinking that will help them thrive. Children need some solitude and the time to daydream, play and imagine.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the enormously successful “Hamilton” and other extraordinary stage and film projects, attributes much of his success to having hours alone as a child. During an interview with GQ journalist Michael Hainey, he said, “Time alone is the gift of self-entertainment—and that is the font of creativity. Because there is nothing better to spur creativity than a blank page or an empty bedroom.” Lin-Manuel’s key to parenting is, “a little less parenting.”

“Periods of solitude and the time to play encourage children’s creativity and curiosity,” Dr. Borba underscores. For younger children who may need a parent to get them started, she recommends different types of boxes filled with items you think might capture your child’s attention, such as a Meryl Streep box filled with hats, scarves, old towels for capes; a Frank Lloyd Wright box with hammers nails, wood, and sandpaper; or a Leonardo da Vinci box with empty paper towel rolls, sticks, paper clips. If your child doesn’t seem interested, make up a different box. Open-ended toys or supplies such as building blocks, paints, colored pencils and paper, balls of yarn, for example, don’t require a “right way” or “right answers” and allow imaginations to take hold.

Although older children may seem tethered to technology, they need time away from their devices. Even the late Steve Jobs who co-founded Apple supported this once saying, “I’m a big believer in boredom. … All the [technology] stuff is wonderful, but having nothing to do can be wonderful, too.” Jobs told writer Steven Levy at Wired magazine that he was nostalgic for the long, boring summers of his youth, which fueled his curiosity, because “out of curiosity comes everything.”

Creativity is so important in our fast-paced and, as we know from the pandemic, unpredictable world. As we slowly head back to some semblance of normal, consider avoiding the fast-moving train that so many children rode prior to the pandemic. Children can’t be fully curious and creative if they are being shuttled nonstop from one activity to another.

When we eventually “re-enter” from our pre-COVID-19 isolation, think about what activities and commitments can be pared back so your children have some of the solitude and free time they need. Who knows what your child will discover on her own and all the fun she will have. Or, as Dr. Borba told me, “If you want to raise creative, curious kids, leave them alone.” Yes, let them be bored.

Related: Only Children are Doing Better Than You Think

Copyright @2021 by Susan Newman

After your sibling, friend, work colleague, parent or child slighted you or caused you pain, should you forgive without receiving an apology?

Susan Shapiro, a New School writing professor, is the author of The Forgiveness Tour: How to Find the Perfect Apology. In her new book — 10 years in the making — she talked to therapists, religious leaders, and people who had experienced terrible wrongs never righted. In this guest post, she takes us into her anger and dismay at the person she trusted most who offered no explanation for his actions, and no regret. Along her journey for answers, she shares surprising pieces of the forgiveness puzzle that can lead to peace and reconciliation.

Guest Post by Susan Shapiro:

After the contentious election and ongoing pandemic, half the country is trying to figure out whether it could forgive the other half. I always prided myself on being a forgiving person who never held grudges. But that all changed the night I caught her leaving his brownstone.

“I can’t believe you lied to me!” I told him, feeling betrayed.

“I wasn’t lying,” he replied, shutting the door so nobody would hear.

No, my husband wasn’t cheating on me with another woman. It was my long-time therapist I felt betrayed by. He’d sworn he wouldn’t treat my favorite student. Their deception unnerved me.

“I’m getting an All About Eve aura from her,” I’d warned him six months earlier. “She’s already working with two editors I recommended. She wanted numbers for my literary agent and Jungian astrologer. Now she asked to see you too. We’re getting over-connected.”

“She sounds crazy,” he commented.

“Don’t be flippant. She’s important to me. What if she contacts you?” I asked. He’d been my mentor for the last 15 years. A brilliant substance abuse specialist, he’d helped me quit smoking, drinking, and drugs, marry, get out of debt and launch a new career.

“I’ll refer her to someone else,” he assured me.

Sharing a shrink wasn’t like having the same dentist, I’d explained to her. Dr. W. had guided me through substance withdrawal and recovery in my forties, creating the kind of intense dependency you’d have with an A.A. sponsor. Though he was only eight years older than me, I viewed him as a father figure. While I freely referred professional contacts to my colleagues and classes, this was more personal. I didn’t want to bump into her in his waiting room, my sacred space. I suggested she try one of the other 20,000 head doctors in the city.

“I will,” she said. “Sorry if I overstepped.”

End of story. Or so I thought, until six months later when I was shocked to see her coming out of his office. I learned he’d been treating her for six months, behind my back. He’d even scheduled her appointment right before mine and ran late, as if he’d wanted me to find out.

Their double deception unnerved me. Wasn’t being trustworthy his job? When I pressed him to explain why he’d deceived me, apologize and fix it, he said, “I hope you’ll forgive the imaginary crime you think I’m committing.”

My crisis management strategy became my crisis.

Twisting turbulently until dawn, I had nightmares where my father ran away with the red-headed daughter I didn’t have. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or focus on work. After incendiary emails from Dr. W. implying I was irrational to be upset, I even chanted a secret Yiddish curse to exact revenge. (“The Goodman women were always witches,” my mother said of her side of the family.) When he emailed that he’d been bedridden, in pain from kidney stones, I was petrified my spell might kill him. Sleep-deprived, my sanity was slipping. I was afraid I’d relapse — or worse.

Worried, my husband insisted I cut them both off. For six months, I refused to speak to Dr. W. or answer his emails or messages. But that didn’t end my distress.

I remained mind-boggled that someone who’d been so empathetic could suddenly be hurtful. I kept trying to figure out why he’d changed. Was he sick of my boring problems? Maybe he needed the money?

I hated being so angry, wishing I could understand and move on. If he’d just explained what happened and apologized for lying, I’d forgive him anything. But I couldn’t pardon someone who didn’t even think they’d done anything wrong.

Researching the billion-dollar “forgiveness industry” that promoted forgiving everyone everything, seemed fake. But without my long-time guru to guide me, I was desperate for direction. I read hardcovers about forgiving from all angles. I interviewed religious leaders from different denominations, asking their theory about forgiving someone who wouldn’t say “I’m sorry.”

Although Jesus famously said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” a reverend explained that an unrepented sinner wouldn’t actually be unforgiven. A Muslim chaplain clarified that in Islam, forgiveness also followed repentance. A Chasidic colleague said “Jewish law requires a person to ask forgiveness three times. If the injured party won’t forgive, the sinner is forgiven and the non-believer has to seek forgiveness for not forgiving.” Yet the request had to be inspired by sincere regret, lacking in my mentor.

I felt vindicated when my lawyer cousin Danny reminded me that admitting guilt and expressing remorse reduced the sentences in many criminal court cases. I underlined book chapters delineating the elements of a full apology: 1) Acknowledge and take responsibility for your mistake. 2) Explain why it happened. 3) Show it won’t happen again. 4) Offer reparations for healing.

Now, this philosophy I could wrap my heated head around. But I still couldn’t get over that he had no remorse.

After I told friends and colleagues what happened, they revealed dramatic stories of wrongs they’d experienced that were never righted. When I asked how they coped, they shared their wisdom. Some managed to pardon offenders based on a person’s overall kindness from the past while others held grudges and figured out ways to thrive on spite.

Telling my story to a doctor who was raised in a Hindu family, he too found it mysterious that a professional who’d been kind for 15 years would suddenly turn on me. “There’s a piece missing to your puzzle that you can’t yet see,” he opined, offering a metaphor: “A commuter was enraged when a woman in an SUV stopped abruptly to get something in the backseat, almost causing an accident. He didn’t know the driver’s infant was choking. Similarly, there is something you don’t know about your mentor’s life that will shed light on why he hurt you.”

He was right. Six months later, Dr. W. emailed that he was sorry and asked if he could apologize in person. There he explained that his wife and daughter had ongoing medical crises that had screwed up his head – and his life.

“Why didn’t you just tell me they were sick?” I asked.

“Hard to talk about. My wife is private. I was in denial, thinking I’d compartmentalize and still do my job well. It feels like I lost a whole year.”

“I’m so sorry. I had no idea,” I heard myself telling him, thinking that if my spouse was seriously ill, I’d probably lose it too. After his full-fledged mea culpa, he found ways to make amends. We wound up co-authoring an addiction book together to help others conquer substance dependency and it even became a bestseller (for two weeks), proving how fruitful forgiveness could be. It felt so liberating, I went on a forgiveness binge myself, apologizing to everyone I’d unwittingly hurt.

Copyright @2021 by Susan Shapiro

Related: When Are Difficult Sibling Relationships Worth the Struggle?

The perfect time to have a baby doesn’t exist in the real world and the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t made it any easier to time pregnancy. Deciding if or when to have a child, getting pregnant, and becoming a parent is complicated—and far more so if you are single.

In the 1960s and earlier decades before the feminist movement made strong inroads, women went to college to find a husband. If you weren’t married by age 25, you might be considered a spinster, an old maid. Few women were thinking of careers—of becoming dentists, scientists, or CEOs—and being able to support themselves and children financially. Culturally, even fewer still accepted the idea of a family with two dads, two moms or single parents.

That’s changed. Dramatically. Nearly one-quarter of kids in the U.S. live with a single parent—the highest rate in the world—according to data from the Pew Research Center. Single parents who have never been married roughly equal the proportion who were previously married. And, the U.S. Census reports that most children in one-parent households are being raised by single moms—one in five single parents are fathers—some because of divorce or the death of a spouse and others who choose to be single parents.

Many Start Families Later

Straight or gay, men and women don’t necessarily hold out for Mr. or Mrs. Right. But single people, like their married counterparts, do frequently wait to start families. The median age among solo parents is 38, compared with 34 for cohabitating parents who aren’t married, according to Pew.

Because many women are waiting longer to start their families, a huge and growing industry has developed that is no longer under the radar or a hush-hush topic. In vitro fertilization (IVF) has grown swiftly and the advances have been enormous and especially beneficial to single women who want to be mothers.

Freezing eggs for use at a convenient time is no longer unusual, either. Within my immediate sphere, I know three young women in their late 30s and early 40s who have frozen their eggs. They want to keep their options open. It may be they want to consider possible sperm donors, be more settled in their jobs, or move ahead when they feel they are able to support a child on their own—or hope to find a partner, but want to be sure they preserve their eggs.

Fertility doctors have been successfully freezing sperm since the mid-20th century, with the first human pregnancy achieved with frozen spermatozoa in 1953. While single fathers are greatly outnumbered by single mothers, their ranks are growing as well. Like their female counterparts, single men often wait until they’re older to become dads.

CNN host Anderson Cooper became a single dad at 52 via a surrogate. Whatever your views on surrogacy or freezing eggs and embryos, these medical interventions are here to stay, though they remain prohibitively expensive for many.

“One Good Egg” Is All You Need

For would-be single mothers, if you have one good egg, you’re good to go, as Suzy Becker, a humorist and “older” gay woman, reveals in her book, One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir. “For the first twenty-three years of my life, I was sure I’d have babies, at least two,” she writes. “Then it took me fifteen years to decide to go ahead and have just one.”

Becker details the many roadblocks she faced and sorts out the fertility jargon, from IUI to IVF, all the while informing the reader with delightful illustrations that are heartwarming and amusing. With a good friend as donor, her tale unknots the knotty hurdles of becoming a mother “later,” which she did at age 42.

Nancy, a woman I interviewed as part of a research study, was divorced without children. Her advancing age was only one factor that led her to become a single parent. “I started my journey at age 41. I had been on my own for several years and dating wasn’t working out. I decided that I had a lifetime to find a partner, but the window was closing to become a mother,” she said. “I remember reading an article about parenting being the greatest education. It wasn’t that I was dying for a baby, but I didn’t want to miss out on the experience of parenting.”

Nancy considered adoption but was, after a long, stressful, and complicated time, successful with infertility treatment. Many single women choose to adopt for medical or financial reasons, and, like Nancy, don’t wait to find a partner to do so.

The Pluses of Single Parenthood

As a single person, whether you choose a sperm donor from among your friends or from a sperm bank, carry your baby to term, engage a surrogate, or adopt, the rewards are plentiful and enduring. You make the important decisions about your child’s development and education, about where you live and what and to whom you expose your child.

Nancy, whose child is now 8 years old, underscores that point. “I have complete control of decisions. There are fewer moving parts, making it easier for me to be all in with no distractions,” she says. “All in all, it’s fantastic: We have adventures; there’s spontaneity when it’s just the two of you.”

Unless you have an incredible support system, you can’t “pass off” your child to have a few hours to yourself. At times there are monumental challenges and the burden is all yours. Nonetheless, when you talk to single women who chose to be mothers, what is patently clear is their desire, determination, and grit, no matter how daunting the obstacles and disappointments along the way. They have the child or children they desperately wanted.

In the end, one single mother told me, reflecting the feelings of so many others, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Related:

6 Benefits for Children of Older Mothers

On Not Waiting for Mr. Right

Why More People Don’t Adopt

Copyright @2021 by Susan Newman

Many parents and paediatricians swear by it, yet some maternity-ward nurses tell new moms and dads that it’s too dangerous to try at home. What gives?

When Melissa Romain had her first baby at a Toronto hospital in 2016, the nurses demonstrated how to swaddle him and encouraged her to continue doing it at home. But by the time she had her second baby four years later, things had changed. The nurses swaddled her baby the whole time they were on the maternity ward; then, as she was being discharged, they told her she shouldn’t swaddle at home because it was too dangerous. They said this was because the baby was under closer supervision in the hospital, but Romain says there was plenty of time that she and her baby were alone together in her room. “I was confused and a little frustrated,” says Romain. “Nobody explained why swaddling is no longer a best practice. They just said that this is how it is now.”

According to Wendy Hall, a sleep specialist and professor emerita at UBC’s School of Nursing, most hospitals now advise parents not to swaddle. They’re likely following the guidelines of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario and Perinatal Services BC, who both recommend against it.

“We suggest families use sleep sacks instead, because babies move, the blankets [you use to swaddle] can come undone, and if that gets in their face, there is a risk for sure,” says Cynthia Joly, a nurse educator at CHEO in Ottawa. “Unless you’re able to really watch the baby, like during a nap in your arms, we don’t advise that parents swaddle.”

The other concerns are that swaddling might lead to overheating; chest infections (because an overly tight swaddle can restrict breathing); and hip dysplasia, a condition in which a baby’s hip joints are loose or partially or fully dislocated. Swaddling also may be linked to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which is not necessarily when a baby rolls over and suffocates, but an unexplained death of a baby under one year old.

But this messaging can be confusing for parents who have researched swaddling on their own. Paediatrician Harvey Karp, author of the best-selling Happiest Baby on the Block books, includes swaddling as one of his five key ways to soothe a newborn. (He also markets his own line of swaddles to use.) And other trusted sources, like The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Paediatric Society, both say swaddling is low risk if practised correctly.

“The Canadian Paediatric Society certainly is not against swaddling as long as it’s done properly,” says Janice Heard, a community paediatrician in Calgary and member of the Canadian Paediatric Society’s public education and advisory committee.

Swaddling does seem to help newborns sleep longer stretches at night. That’s because it helps calm the Moro reflex, which makes the baby’s arms spring out. “Many babies like that cuddled-up feeling. It’s like being in the womb,” explains Heard.

Toronto paediatrician Dina Kulik says to avoid swaddling if you can, but that it’s much better than some other sleep “crutches” parents reach for, like holding a baby all night, using a swing or sleeping with them on the couch. “If they can go down without it, don’t do a swaddle,” she says. “But if the alternative is holding them all night, swaddling is certainly safer than that.”

Make sure the swaddle is worn low—around their shoulders, not bunched up at their neck—and fits snugly, because there is a risk that the swaddle will become loose and the fabric could cover the baby’s face and suffocate them. Babies should be dressed lightly underneath a thin swaddle to avoid overheating. If you’re using a Velcro or zip-up swaddle, make sure it’s the right size so your baby’s head doesn’t scooch down into the swaddle as they sleep. And the baby’s hip area should be left loose so there is room for them to bend up and kick out their legs, which helps prevent hip dysplasia.

Then, there’s positioning: Always put a swaddled baby to sleep on their back, never on their side or their front, which greatly increase the risk of SIDS. When babies show signs of learning how to roll over, it’s time to ditch the swaddle.

Babies who bed-share with a parent should also never be swaddled. “Swaddling and co-sleeping is really not a very good combination,” says Hall. “If a baby is swaddled and ends up face down, they are completely defenceless.”

Kulik adds that there are some infants who shouldn’t be swaddled under any circumstances, such as babies who are very jaundiced or underweight. If you’re unsure, ask your healthcare provider for personalized, up-to-date advice, she says. “Always talk to your doctor. Every kid is different.”

Dry winter months call for a bathtime routine that takes extra special care to protect your newborn’s skin barrier.

Your baby’s oh-so-fresh skin is actually super delicate—it’s up to 30 percent thinner than an adult’s skin and it loses moisture quickly. This is especially true in the dry winter months when the humidity level drops and skin loses moisture more rapidly in general. The skin is also a barrier between your baby and the outside world and a weakened skin barrier can lead to dryness in babies. The good news is, parents can play a role in keeping their baby’s skin soft and healthy with these bathtime tips.

Delay the first bath 

It used to be common for babies to get a bath shortly after birth, but this is no longer considered best practice, says Dr. Jennifer Leavitt, who works at St. Paul’s Maternity Clinic in Vancouver. “Babies are born with a protective, sticky white coating on their skin called the vernix. It’s both hydrating for newborn skin and provides some antibacterial properties as well.” After 24 hours you can bathe your baby, but you shouldn’t submerge them in water until their umbilical cord has fallen off. Until then, a sponge bath will do. Be sure to only uncover the part of your baby that you’re washing at that moment, to keep them comfortable and warm. 

Don’t bathe too often

Less is more when it comes to bathing your newborn, says Dr. Jennifer Leavitt, who works at St. Paul’s Maternity Clinic in Vancouver. “Frequent bathing of a baby can lead to a weakened skin barrier and increased dryness,” says Leavitt. Short baths, under 10 minutes long, two to three times a week is sufficient. Of course, if your baby is visibly dirty with spit up or has had a poop explosion, you’re going to wash that off, but you don’t necessarily need a full bath to do so—just gently wash the soiled area with a washcloth.

Keep your baby comfortable

The bath water should be lukewarm—Leavitt suggests touching it to the inside of your wrist to ensure it is not too hot or too cold. Cold water is just unpleasant, and babies get cold faster than bigger people do. Hot water could burn them and too warm water can also break down the skin barrier. You can bathe your baby in a specially-designed infant tub, or an insert that goes into your bath—whatever works best for you and your set-up at home.

Use a gentle cleanser

“Babies absorb things really easily into their skin,” says Leavitt. That’s why she recommends to parents in her practice to choose a cleanser that’s been specifically formulated for babies, with a neutral PH level, and one that is free from fragrance, dyes and phthalates. These ingredients could irritate your baby’s skin, and could even potentially lead to skin reactions later in life. Use only a small, dime-sized amount of cleanser on your baby, and be sure to rinse it all away.

Pat and moisturize

When you take your baby out of the bath, gently pat them down with a towel, rather than vigorously rubbing them dry. Then, apply a moisturizer all over the body to replenish and protect the skin barrier. “It should be applied in a thin layer to try and avoid build-up of the moisturizer in between skin folds,” says Leavitt. She recommends looking for an emollient type of moisturizer, which creates a thin barrier on the skin to lock in moisture. Again, avoid ingredients like fragrance, dyes and phthalates. Frequent moisturizing, not just after a bath, is important for all babies, and especially important where there is a history of eczema in the family, or when your baby has dry skin. 

Guest post by Michael Schroeder

Working professionals in the U.S. who are starting or growing families face a unique challenge. Unlike their counterparts in every other industrialized nation, Americans have no federally guaranteed paid time off to be with their newborn children.

Employees may be able to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year and still have a job to come back to under the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA. But not all workers qualify for this, and many who do simply aren’t in a financial position to take that time off. (FMLA allows states to provide more coverage than the federal law does, and a handful of states have their own provisions; but only California, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island offer paid family and medical leave.)

As a result, parents rely heavily on paid parental leave policies from employers that provide it. But the vast majority of employers don’t offer paid parental leave; and those that do provide far less compensated leave for fathers than mothers. This, experts point out, creates added hardship for working dads and moms.

“I think these policies imply that mothers are and should be primarily responsible for childcare and for raising kids,” says Richard Petts, Ph.D., a sociology professor at Ball State University who has closely studied parental leave policies. He adds that the imbalance makes it even harder for fathers to take leave, as they may face stigma, as well as the career penalties mothers encounter. Others say such an imbalance in policies providing time off for parents leaves working mothers unsupported and sends the message that fathers are unnecessary.

That’s because a traditional male-centered employer model treats men not as working parents but employees without family obligations. Women who take time off may also miss raises, advancement opportunities, or for those who take extended leave, struggle to successfully reenter the workforce or find themselves underemployed when they do. In parental leave policies, women are commonly viewed by default as primary caregivers. And experts say these company policies, in offering less parental leave for men, assume their partners—commonly working mothers—will handle the lion’s share of child care responsibilities.

Survey data finds, accordingly, that new fathers tend to only take about one week off after the birth of a child, while women take less than three months. Neither is working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic a solution for dads or moms, given the hands-on care (read: undistracted parenting) newborns need.

One recent study that provides a snapshot of the gender disparities in parental leave looked at the exemplars in industry: Fortune 500 companies. These U.S. firms with the highest revenues set the bar for all others to follow. As such, Petts and David College sociology professor Gayle Kaufman, Ph.D., thought it worth evaluating what precedent these top companies set with their parental leave policies, and specifically with regard to gender differences in these policies.

“The good news is that a majority of Fortune 500 companies do offer some form of paid parental leave,” notes Kaufman, who led the study published online in Community, Work & Family in August. Kaufman, who has also done extensive research on parental leave policies, and Petts, who co-authored the research, found 72% of companies they were able to obtain detailed information on had parental leave policies. But only 17% of all Fortune 500 companies captured in their research provide the same amount of paid parental leave to fathers and mothers.

Of the companies that offer paid parental leave, half offer at least twice as much leave to mothers as to fathers. That equates, on average, to about 10 weeks of leave for moms and five weeks for dads, Petts says.

Understanding the Importance of Dads

All of this is based on a Mad Men-era idea that women can take time off after the birth of a child because they have a husband who’s the breadwinner, says John Badalament, director of programs for The Fatherhood Project at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. It ignores the modern reality of women in the workforce and the science that supports the powerful impact of involved dads.

“The hard research is that dads in the early years make a huge difference,” Badalament emphasizes. “The quality of their relationship and the time they spend with their infant … it makes a huge impact on the child’s development (and) on their marriages.” There’s still a gap in understanding how important fathers are, he says.

Commonly gender unequal paid parental leave policies put parents at odds. “Companies that offer lesser policies for dads are doing themselves a great disservice—along with adding fuel to the fires of gender inequity—by pitting moms and dads against each other, instead of looking at the research about workplace retention,” Badalament says.

He adds it’s been shown employers that are family-friendly and offer equitable paternal leave policies and take leadership in encouraging employees to use those policies have increased employee retention and satisfaction rates, not to mention being viewed as more socially responsible. But fathers in the workforce often have a far more strained experience when it comes to their perceptions—and often the reality—of what employers expect of them. Experts say that flies in the face of a work-home life balance and is out of step that can be with the parent fathers want and need to be.

For her book, Fixing Parental Leave: The Six Month Solution, Kaufman talked with some fathers about obstacles to taking parental leave. (Per the book’s title, she ultimately suggests a leave policy that allows all working parents to take six months off to spend with a new child.)

One father, Gabriel, who worked part-time at a movie theater while going to school, detailed having a sick baby and dealing with an impatient boss. His boss pressured him to return to work even while his son was still in the hospital. “With part-time work you don’t get any benefits, you don’t have paternity leave at all,” he told Kaufman. “I was obviously really emotionally unavailable for work in every sense.” He worried about losing his job for taking time off to be with his newborn son.

Even when men have paid parental leave, they often feel pressure not to take it.

Finn, a physician, opted to take two weeks off, and wanted to work part-time for several additional weeks to spend more time with his child. As Kaufman detailed in her book, Finn said it did not go well with his supervisor and friend who pushed him to return, even continually contacting him while he was on leave about coming back. “I felt pressured to come to work,” he told Kaufman.

Ultimately, what’s needed, many experts say, is not only a change in parental leave policies. Rather, a culture shift is required where working fathers and working mothers are treated as such—not pigeonholed in one capacity or another, but supported in all they do.

Copyright @2020 by Michael Schroeder

Michael Schroeder is a freelance writer, former health editor at U.S. News & World Report, and father of four in Westfield, Indiana. He has always taken the full paternity leave his employers offered, while still wrestling with how to best balance home and work obligations. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Judith Grisel, Ph.D., an addiction expert, recounts her first taste of alcohol—drinking wine at the age of 13—in a way that could describe any teenager’s experience.

“I felt as Eve should have after tasting the apple. Or as a bird hatched in a cage would feel upon being unexpectedly set free,” Dr. Grisel vividly recalls in her book Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction. “The drug provided physical relief and spiritual antidote for the persistent restlessness I’d been unable to identify or share… alcohol provided powerful subconscious recognition of my desperate strivings for self-acceptance and existential purpose and my inability to negotiate a complex world of relationships, fears, and hopes.”

Drinking or using other drugs can provide “an easy way through the difficulty of growing up” and precipitate a descent into drug abuse, says Dr. Grisel, a neuroscientist in recovery for over 30 years and a psychology professor at Bucknell University.

After her introduction to alcohol, Grisel spent 10 years as a daily user and later a college dropout on a harrowing journey that took her to seedy motels and exchanges with questionable people in the quest for drugs of all varieties and at any cost. But why do some young people end up on this dangerous path?

And is there a role for parents to play in prevention?

Teen substance use today

Some research suggests that expanded legalization of pot in many states across the country has been associated with a higher rate of marijuana use among adolescents under 18 (for whom it’s still not legal) in those states. That’s one more reason for parents to be prevention-minded.

What’s more, while teens’ use of most drugs has decreased during the pandemic, adolescent alcohol and cannabis use has increased, according to research in the Journal of Adolescent Health, first published online in July. That included a rise in solitary use of these substances, which researchers found was related to increased COVID-19 fears and symptoms of depression.

Many other factors may impact when and how frequently teens turn to drugs or alcohol.

As Grisel notes in her book, genetics may certainly play a role in determining who’s more susceptible to addiction. The more DNA a person shares with an addict, the higher one’s risk for addiction. Even children of addicts adopted immediately after birth continue to have an elevated risk for addiction.

But what happens at home also has an impact on the likelihood that adolescents will develop substance use problems. That’s not only true when parents are addicted to illicit drugs, like cocaine, but it may occur when caretakers are permissive in drinking with adolescent children as well.

Results from the study evaluating substance use during the pandemic “suggest a surprisingly large number of adolescents were using substances with parents during the COVID-19 crisis.” The upshot is that when teens partake with parents, lower rates of heavy drinking, cannabis, and vaping are reported. However, the study authors point out that while kids tend to drink in moderation around parents, past research finds they’re more likely to engage in high-risk drinking when they’re consuming alcohol outside of the home.

We know that young brains are developing and, therefore, more susceptible to drugs. But what teens and their parents may not appreciate is that those same impulsive decisions can impact neurological development. Drug use can change the very structure of the brain permanently.

These brain structure changes can lead to cognitive and behavioral deficits. For example, a sibling-comparison study of 1,192 adolescents from 596 families found using cannabis more frequently and starting to use earlier was linked to poorer cognitive performance, specifically in regard to tests of verbal memory. More study is needed to confirm the findings, which contrast with previous twin studies. But the authors of the research, published in the journal Addiction in September, report that even moderate marijuana use (roughly twice weekly, on average) may have an adverse impact.

Research finds changes in the brain from early drug exposure also increase drug-taking or drug-seeking behavior, Grisel points out in Never Enough.

There are many environmental influences that could push teenagers who tend to be risk-takers into drug use. Such factors include everything from economic status and education to physical or sexual abuse.

Certainly, family stability plays a major role. Upheaval at home or family stress can raise the risk that a teen will become addicted to drugs. As with some other environmental factors, it can be difficult to define or quantify what constitutes problematic family stress, as Grisel notes. COVID-19 has added to almost everyone’s stress and threatened stability for many.

Nonetheless, even in stable times, there’s no way to avoid conflict entirely; it’s important to strive for peace at home. That includes addressing problems with drug or alcohol addiction that parents themselves may face.

For parents who find that their children are using drugs, there are no easy answers. But a good place to start is seeking professional help. And whether preventing problem drug use or breaking free from addiction, healthy relationships are a critical component. Grisel emphasizes the need for such “honest connections.”

For Grisel, it was her father reconnecting with her after having refused to speak with her—or even acknowledge he had a daughter—at the height of her addiction that made a world of difference in her recovery. “Though there were several turning points in my trajectory, it seems profoundly significant that the material change began… when my father inexplicably changed course and took me out for my 23rd birthday.” His willingness to be seen with her and treat her with kindness, Grisel recalls, “split open my defensive shell of rationalizations and justifications. It broke open the lonely heart that neither of us knew I still had.”

By contrast, Grisel and other addiction experts emphasize, when people feel isolated or alienated as so many teens are during the pandemic, they’re much more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol and have a harder time breaking free from addiction. While we’re still learning about all the factors that make addiction so intractable, Grisel says we have enough data to understand that our brains are shaped by more than individual biology. “And of all these influences, perhaps the most immediate and impactful, and therefore potentially helpful for realizing change, are our connections with each other,” she says.

For parents searching for answers, making your relationship with your teen a priority—difficult as it may be to connect sometimes—is a powerful place to start.

Copyright @2020 by Susan Newman

When the pandemic caused widespread lockdowns in March of 2020, I raised the question, More Babies or More Divorces After COVID-19? I compared the possibilities to other disasters such as hurricanes and the 9/11 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City… and speculated.

A year later, the pandemic continues to create personal and economic upheaval. Signs point to fewer babies in the coming years, continuing a trend that gained noticeable momentum during the Great Recession in 2008. According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the birth rate dropped dramatically and has remained low.

A recent survey from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research and policy organization, found that “about a third of women in the United States ages 18 to 49 were planning to postpone pregnancy or forgo adding a child to their family because of the pandemic.”

Uptick in Requests for Birth Control

I spoke with Dr. Julie Graves, a family medicine and public health doctor and the Associate Director of Clinical Services for Nurx. Nurx is a telehealth company launched in 2016 that provides women’s reproductive health care, prescribed online and delivered to their home. Since the pandemic started, the company has seen a 50 percent increase in birth control requests and a 40 percent uptick in requests for the morning after pill. In the case of the latter, women told Dr. Graves that “they just wanted to keep protection on hand in case they needed it.”

Early on in the pandemic “barriers to getting contraception were stunning,” she told me. “As the pandemic unfolded, access to your own physician was problematic, going to the pharmacy and waiting in line was troubling if you could get a prescription from your doctor. Many physicians were called on to handle COVID-19 cases and unavailable for their regular patients.” With cases surging in different parts of the country, it’s difficult to know how or if women will face barriers in getting contraception to prevent a pregnancy they don’t want right now.

Baby-Making Decisions in a Shaky Economy

The trajectory of this virus remains unknown, but its economic devastation is affecting how people think about family size. They worry about starting or expanding their family for financial reasons.

In July, a U.S. Census Bureau survey reported that 50 percent of adults have experienced their own or someone in their household’s loss of income because of the pandemic. The numbers are almost identical for men and women. Because children are expensive, job loss or income reduction will likely influence baby-making decisions negatively. In our COVID world, those with one child wonder, Is Being an Only Child a Problem?

For now, the economy likely supersedes thoughts of having a first, second child or more children. “The tenuous economy is one of the many tragedies of this pandemic,” notes Dr. Graves. But if you look back, she adds, “Women have been worried about when to have their babies for decades. We have asked women who want to be successful in the work world to hold off starting families.”

Apple and Facebook, for example, offered egg freezing as a perk. Was it a perk or something else? For women as they get older, waiting to have children as many do can affect their chances of becoming pregnant with or without fertility assistance. Nonetheless, the pandemic has caused some women to put their IVF treatments on hold.

With an effective, tested vaccine still a hope and COVID-19 continuing to spiral in many states, giving birth in some areas is challenging. Although hospitals had and have concern about being supportive, partners can be kept out of the labor and delivery room. “Early on people were afraid. Sadly, our culture is not conducive to families on so many levels, and the pandemic has laid bare and intensified many of the issues,” explains Dr. Graves.

Because labor and delivery regulations can change according to COVID-19’s prevalence at the time and definitive studies on the risks to mother and baby during the epidemic are not yet available, couples are being appropriately cautious about becoming pregnant. Writing in The Atlantic magazine, journalist Joe Pinsker put it this way, “…in times of heightened uncertainty, people are less likely to bring children into the world. And the future is doubly uncertain right now: Potential parents are likely worried both about their (and their children’s) future health, and their future finances.”

COVID-19 has added another layer of complexity to an already difficult and life-altering question: How many children to have. Is the social, emotional, or financial fallout from the pandemic affecting your family planning decisions?

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Copyright @2020, @2021 by Susan Newman

Facebook image: FrameStockFootages/Shutterstock

I was surprised when I read a parenting researcher’s email introduction with a link to an article she wrote about understanding children’s meltdowns and reactions to different situations. Amy Webb, Ph.D. opened her email with questions…and answered them:

“Do you remember a time when your child reacted to a situation in a completely surprising way? Perhaps a little scrape on the knee resulted in a half-hour meltdown? You may have asked yourself: why did she react so dramatically?

“I clearly remember one of these situations. It was one of the first times I took my oldest son to a park as a toddler. He was still toddling around trying not to trip on his own feet. I thought he’d be hesitant to interact with new kids, especially since he was an only child at the time.”

She pointedly implied that only children are shy. Certainly not all or most of them and definitely not her toddler. Her comment also suggests that children need siblings to interact and be comfortable with their peers—something science refutes.

I’ve interviewed hundreds of only children and their parents and reviewed many studies that explore the stereotypes about only children. If anything, many only children are outgoing and eager to engage with other children whether or not they know them, while others can be shy and hesitant to interact with new people. The researcher acknowledged this fact by explaining her son’s playground interactions:

“He went up to every child on the playground and tried to engage with them, even with his limited vocabulary. I was flabbergasted! This is so not like how I would react.”

Her insinuation that kids need siblings to learn to socialize with other children is old-school. Her son’s temperament was already at work as a toddler. He has a brother now, but he likely would have developed keen social skills on his own, as his young playground behavior flagged.

Webb’s article focuses on children’s unique temperaments and points out that “It is important to remember that the child temperament types described in these theories (e.g., “difficult,” “easy,” “slow to warm up”) are not meant to be labels in which children can be pigeonholed for life. They are simply categories that help describe different combinations of characteristics or behavior patterns. Although there seems to be some genetic basis for temperament, this does not mean a child is destined to be one way or another. Many other factors come into play.”

I agree: Every child is exposed to an endless array of experiences that will shape his temperament and how he functions in the world. Having or lacking a sibling is just one piece of the thousands of pieces that contribute to and shape a child’s development.

Amy Webb’s work is spot-on and her information at The Thoughtful Parent solidly based in research and extremely helpful to parents. Could be that in her email this self-described introvert was projecting how she would react in a similar situation? Or perhaps she slipped into now-ancient mythology—read: stereotype—that only children are shy, even lonely, and need siblings to sharpen their skills so they can play well with others.

How easy it is for anyone to fall into stereotypical thinking and attitudes, even topnotch professionals who are trained to be cautious with comments and innuendos that stigmatize. Hearing the only child myths repeatedly as we have for more than 100 years simply reinforces them.

In an op-ed for The New York Times titled, “Your Brain Lies to You,” Sam Wang, a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University, and Sandra Aamodt, a neuroscientist and co-author with Wang of Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College, note, “if their message [in this case, only child stereotypes] is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked.”

Copyright @2020 by Susan Newman

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Why Stereotypes Stick

6 Well-Kept Secrets That Affect Family Size

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if social distancing were a thing of the past? If we could hug our friends, see our relatives and have dinner with them or allow our children all the play dates they request? No one wants life before the pandemic to resume more than children whose worlds have shrunk dramatically. Their understanding of why, however, is vague and abstract.

It has been difficult enough for adults to wrap their heads around the coronavirus and its implications. Imagine being a young child. You may be tired of the questions: Why do we have to wash our hands so much? When can I play with my friends? Why can’t I see Grandma and Grandpa?

As a public service, Drs. Lauren Block, a primary care physician and medical educator, and Adam Block, a public health economist, created Kelly Stays Home: The Science of Coronavirus to fill a void in children’s understanding of COVID-19. It is an informative and helpful complimentary book to teach young children the principles of transmission, social distancing, and herd immunity. Two versions just released, one for children ages 7 to 11 and one for younger children, skillfully and sensitively answer questions that are difficult for most of us to respond to accurately. In pictures and plain language, the doctors have succeeded in describing why our everyday lives changed so quickly.

The Blocks, parents of three young children, asked friends what their children wanted to know, and Lauren Block included what her young patients were asking her to determine what to highlight in the book. They say, “There’s a lot of anxiety for adults, but for children, it’s about curiosity. We translate that curiosity into scientific fact and action that kids can readily understand.”

“Understanding is a big factor in securing adherence from children for all the changed things like the importance of thorough hand washing, staying away from their friends or missing a birthday party that we are asking them to do,” Adam Block points out.

The Science of COVID-19

The science behind the coronavirus is probably murky in your children’s minds as it may be in yours. What happens when you hug? Why can’t I go to my friend’s house yet? What happens if dad or mom gets sick? Science has answers.

“Young children don’t respond to numbers,” the Blocks say, “but you want to be able to answer their questions.”

What is a virus? The Blocks explain in the book, “A virus is a tiny germ. It’s so small that if you piled the virus on top of each other it would take about a thousand to be the same thickness of a piece of paper or a hair. It has little spikes on the outside that work like glue and stick to everything like Velcro.” Did you know that? I didn’t.

How does the virus spread if everyone is staying at home? Answered. Am I going to get the virus? Answered. What happens if I do? Answered. The explanation of herd immunity is one of the most crucial knowledge elements covered. As this page illustration indicates, the number of people (shown in red) who are contagious or at risk for getting the virus drops once most people are vaccinated. As much as Joey, Kelly’s younger brother in the story says, “I don’t like shots,” the doctors’ summary helps prepare children for accepting vaccination once we have one.

Kelly Stays Home makes pandemic facts and rules less onerous for children by detailing why we are doing what we are to stay healthy. It tells kids how they can help themselves and higher risk family and community members. In short, this free, charming book (and it is, despite its subject matter) gives parents the tools and information to answer their children’s questions as they arise. Once read, it’s highly likely that your children will have or ask fewer questions. Take a look.

And now that the vaccine is here, the doctors have written Kelly Gets a Vaccine: How We Beat Coronavirus” to help parents discuss how vaccines work, what to expect, and how vaccination helps us move beyond the pandemic. Ages 5 & up. Free download here.

Copyright @2020 by Susan Newman

The assumption seems to be that an only child and his parents are having a tougher time being quarantined for long stretches than children with siblings. The reality is Covid-19 created a new family landscape for all families. The challenges are not the same, but they are there.

Because of consensus thinking, parents of one can feel guilty and think their child would be more content if there were a sibling in the house. Maybe yes, maybe no.

If you are the parent of an only child, be delighted that you are not settling disputes, soothing escalating tensions or monitoring pleas for individual and undivided parental attention. When children are bored, parents will be called on no matter how many children to play games and fill in the gaps. I hear complaints from children with and without siblings: Their peers can’t visit, school is closed, no extracurricular activities. They tell me that they have nothing to do.

Only children have spent more time alone and many are be quite good at using the additional time social distancing has generated. Sibling status has little to do with a child’s ability to entertain herself. With or without siblings, one child may need you to orchestrate his time; another could be independent, able to amuse himself and be perfectly content left to his own devices.

Filling the Gaps

Parents of only children often feel they need to be the ones to fill their child’s time to avoid their child feeling lonely or bored. Left to their own devices and without constant parental input, only children become good at utilizing the extra time they have. When you worry that your child may be bored or lonely without a sibling to act as playmate, consider the significant and useful upside of alone time.

It fosters creativity, and most importantly, encourages a child’s independence and ability to entertain him or herself—both helpful as a child gets older. In her book, Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self, Manuoush Zomorodi, explains that “Boredom leads to its close cousin, mind-wandering…Letting one’s mind wander is the key to creativity and productivity.”

Connect, Connect, Connect

Be permissive about online connections. If your only child complains, acknowledge his boredom, be empathic so he knows you hear him, keeping in mind that the Internet is a boon for most children and particularly helpful for only children while social isolation remains in effect. Parents who have scheduled limits for reaching out online to friends will want to allow increased online time as a means to stay connected to their peers.

A study of young children and their online screen time, led by Douglas Downey, professor of sociology at The Ohio State University, reports little or no effect on children’s social skills. The researchers studied more than 30,000 kindergarten through 5th graders using teacher and parent evaluations and found, “In virtually every comparison we made, either social skills stayed the same or actually went up modestly.”

There are endless interactive choices and your child probably knows them. For example, there’s Game Pigeon—an iPad or iPhone app with 20 different multiplayer games from checkers and chess to basketball, darts and miniature golf.

Children and teens who text do what they always do—connect online and through different apps and on their phones. If you have ever watched children on their cellphones when they are together sitting side-by-side in the same room, you have probably noticed that they don’t interact other than tapping out texts. All that connecting fills time, maintains peer friendships and helps to keep your child busy and not focused on coronavirus fears and worries that are inescapable on the news.

Loosen Your Watchful Eye

In one sense, the only child is accustomed to having attention focused on him and that factor alone may make it easier to live in protracted close proximity 24/7. However, if your only child didn’t like being the center of attention before social distancing, she will probably like it less now.

Many parents of only children admit to doing too much of what an only child could and should be doing. Social distancing is an opportunity to pull back and to give your only child more responsibility. Put an older only in charge of the laundry or making dinner a certain number of days of the week or vacuuming. You’ll be surprised at how quickly a child—even one who complains—begins to feel good about contributing to the family. Pitching in serves a reminder that your child is part of a family and does not need to be the center of attention at all times.

Widen Your Only Child’s World

Unless you have an infant or toddler, your child will remember sheltering-in-place. Encourage empathy and tighten connections to family and close friends. Make a practice of video chats or FaceTime calls with your child’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. This helps to remind the only child of her wider support network and can bring her closer to family members beyond you.

Volunteer in ways that involve your child. Shop for elderly neighbors and have your child come with you when you leave the groceries at their doors. Talk about where donations are needed and donate if you can. Ask your only to call her grandparents or someone in the family who may be struggling to see how they are doing every few days. Come up with caring gestures that will remain in place long after the pandemic.

Build on Your Close Bond

Studies dating back to 1978 and more recent ones indicate that only children tend to be closer to their parents than children with siblings. Take advantage of social distancing to build on that bond: Add to your child’s memory bank by starting a new tradition around something your family has not done before—learn to play chess, bridge, backgammon or another game neither parent nor child has ever played. Try baking different kinds of bread or start a new type of exercise program you can all do.

Because of the parent-only child tight bond, many only children are alert to and sensitive to their parents’ feelings and attitudes. Lacking siblings to divert or diffuse parental worries, be mindful of keeping your stress and anxiety in check to avoid your only child absorbing it and carrying burdens that are not commiserate with her age.

Copyright @2020 by Susan Newman

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