What the online gossips have to say

Taking a cue from the links listed in Virginia Heffernan's NYTimes magazine column on Sunday, I checked out UrbanBaby.com this morning. I'd read about it in the Sunday Business section (which I'm not opposed to scanning, along with the Sports section, if I can commandeer it from Chris) a few weeks back, when a major site redesign caused some consternation among users; however, I'd never visited, mainly because I live in the country and envisioned finding useless tirades about navigating the subway system rather than helpful pointers for how to keep my son from wandering into the rows of snap peas while I pick up our farm share every Monday.

I started my perusal of the site by searching for Laura Bennett, the Project Runway contestant and Manhattanite with six kids, who I commented on in a earlier post. I wanted to find out what other urban dwellers thought of her large kid count, knowing full well that the site was known for its snarky commentary and city slicker sensibilities. Her name returned 49 results from "talk" pages. The first, from early May, read "any thoughts on going from 4 to 5 dc in the city" -- in other words, any input on having five kids in NYC? One of the five replies read "Laura Bennett?" Another thread started with the post: "My little baby is growing up ... again ... this is why I keep getting pregnant ... I should just become a maternity ward nurse." The ensuing conversation included the same-toned: "Laura Bennett is that you?"

It appears from my brief search that Ms. Bennett has become the poster mom and catch phrase of the large urban family (no surprise), but what was remarkable to me was that the reactions to large families in high-rent urban environments appeared to be quite mixed (I now see more clearly what Heffernan was getting at in the closing paragraph on her column). Yes, there were the predictable "holy crap," "sweet Jesus lady," "come on" responses that I anticipated when I read that the aforementioned aspiring maternity ward nurse already had seven kids. But there was also the unexpected "good for you" that popped up in this, and comparable, threads many more times than I would have guessed. As one woman replied in the going-from-four-to-five kid post: "OMG, I am having a heart attack about going from 2 to 3, I can't even imagine more than that. That said, if you have the space and money then I guess it would be fine." Reluctant acquiescence, but acceptance nonetheless.

Shielded behind the guise of a screen name, many of these posters appear to share a sentiment similar to mine -- one that doesn't begin with the horrified "are you crazy?" when the question of high kid count arises, but rather asks how a parental unit might be able to accomplish having more than 2.1 children and also send them to private school and camp and on a vacation every summer and provide ballet and violin lessons and give them more space than a 5x5 corner of a bedroom to work on their word problems and text message with their bff. And, if all of the above can't happen, then be able to rationalize that what they are giving to their offspring in siblings compensates for what they could have given them monetarily speaking (or, more importantly, in time).

As I said, what really surprised me most about the reactions I found in my "Laura Bennett" search and in a later search for posts on "large families" was that the reactions weren't half as one-sided as I thought they would be. I'd guess the pro-large family folks fall into two categories: those who say "whatever works for you" as a general rule and those who have a high kid count themselves. Which, for the latter, begs an equally intriguing question: where do these parents of six find time to post to UrbanBaby.com?