Kid Counting

Back to Counting?

2010-10-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

It's been months. Let me correct myself. It's been more than a year since I last posted here. And not, actually, because I've been too busy. Yes, yes, of course I'm doing a lot. We're all doing a lot. I have two kids and a husband, I work, I cook, I plan for vacations we'll go on in five years, I sleep, I socialize, I spend way too much time on the Internet.

There are plenty of moments when I've wanted to write in the last year, not necessarily on this blog, but in general: for myself, for my kids, for other unidentified human people. And, in reality, I've done more writing during that time than I did during the two years when I only had one kid. So, were I keeping an organized chart -- more kids versus no more kids -- that would mean one check in the column for more.

More kids equals more writing? I didn't see that one coming (and sort of doubt my productiveness would accelerate with more progeny). However, if that chart was really tacked on the side of my refrigerator, the no more kids column would have a lot more checks.

And that, you see, is why I haven't been blogging much.

If I saw this phantom check list, stuck between the soccer team list and the recycling schedule, while pouring my coffee every morning, it would startle me every time. No more kids? Happy with two? But the answer, for now, is decidedly yes.

And so I've taken a hiatus, probably because I wasn't quite ready to say it out loud yet, but certainly not because I'm not still intrigued by kid count. It's just that the premise of the blog was sort of me researching the perfect family size for us.

But even if we've already found that happy number, and perhaps also because of that, my cultural fascination with kid counting continues. And I intend to reinstate my research for all eager readers in the weeks to come.

Student sequel

2009-04-29T05:48:00.000-07:00

I have a sweet follow-up to the post I wrote about my student who comes from a family of five children. See: ("the subtleties of kid counting") He was again in my office two days ago, discussing his final essay draft, in which he compared a Langston Hughes poem, "Mother to Son," to his own mother and the relationship he has with her. In the assignment, he notes that his mother had a child later in life, when most of her friends were well beyond their child-bearing years. This, of course, caused me pause, because my own mother had me when she was 42. (See the essay that spawned the blog: "An essay on the origins of the kid counting fascination")

"Are you this youngest child?" I asked my student, holding my finger on the sentence where I'd left off reading.
"Yeah," he responded, barely looking up.
"How old was your Mom when she had you?"
"45," he replied, raising his chin.
"Really? My Mom was 42 when she had me," I said, with, perhaps, a little too much enthusiasm in my voice. "And, I'm also the youngest of five," I added, without thinking.
I'd slipped.
He looked up at me, confused, his eyes saying, quite clearly: how do you, my dear English professor, know how many siblings I have?
I'm a kid counter, I could have told him, and maybe I should have. Family size is certainly a topic I would have liked to bat around with him. But instead, before he had a chance to utter a word, I told him I remembered his sibling kid count from one of his in-class writings (which is true, I'll have you know). He seemed perplexed, but satisfied, and maybe even impressed.
"How far apart are you from your next closest sibling?" I asked, breaking the moment of perceived awkwardness.
"Eighteen years."
Wow. There's a first. I've never met someone with a family dynamic so similar to my own. When I was born, my siblings were 16, 18, 20 and 22. When he was born, his were 18, 20, 22, and 24. I was, as you might suspect, dying to ask him more, more about how it was for him growing up, more about how well he knew his siblings and their children, more about how he felt about having older parents. But I didn't. We had an essay to edit, I had a nanny to relieve and an afternoon to spend outdoors (or indoors as the weather then dictated) with my sons. What I would have asked first, had it been more appropriate, was "Do you, 20-year-old you, imagine having a big family yourself?"

outdated post on Octomom

2009-04-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

I say I write a blog dedicated to pondering kid size--and my oh my is Octomom dabbling in the large family lifestyle. It's shocking that I've not posted a single word about the mom of 14. Perhaps I was too busy reading about her to have the time to write about her. Embarrassing, I know. I've not been able to keep up with all the new updates on her family--new house, new toenail polish, new babies all home from the hospital--and, as I've stated before, her version of mega-family isn't exactly what I'm most interested in covering here. However, I think it bears back patting (my own, of course) that I foreshadowed the Octomom phenom back in my blogging heydey (before two kids hampered my blogstyle) in my Big Hollywood Families post. Here's a snippet:

There's lots of talk about how Brangelina is championing adoption, making it cool and Hollywood-ish to adopt from outside the US, but what about their sheer numbers? Will the size of the Jolie-Pitt family influence others (excluding those who are already influenced by religion or a lack of access to and/or knowledge of effective birth control) to make more babies?

Uh, yeah. Hello Octomom. Maybe the answer was obvious. Maybe I'm not as soothsayerish as I think. I definitely didn't predict that the mother of a brood bigger than Brangelina would also artifically adopt the same face as Ms. Jolie.

Scooped again

2009-04-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

Lo and behold, I'm not the only one pondering kid count. See: "In an Era of Shrinking Broods, Larger Families Can Feel Attacked" from the front page of the Sunday Styles section in the New York Times a few weeks back. Per usual, I wish I wrote the article rather than read it three days after it came out, exhausted, in bed, settled in with a bag of Pirate's Bootie and a Vitamin Water sans energy. What I need to do now is cruise the 73 (most likely) contentious comments this article spurred. Maybe I can squeeze it in between the boys' bath time and the return of Survivor post-NCAA tourney tonight. Prioritizing has never been my strong suit, lest that wasn't already obvious.

the subtleties of kid counting

2009-04-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

When I sat down a couple weeks ago to grade papers for the college writing class I teach, I was struck with a good, illustrative example of my kid counting fascination. I approached the stack of 18 in-class writing assignments on my desk in a post-teaching, post-lunch, long-after-the-coffee-has-worn-off, I'd- be-napping-if-I-was-home-right-now haze. And although I wasn't reading them with as close an eye as I might read some of their more significant essays for class, I still managed to uncover this lovely kid counting gem.

There weren't a lot of mechanical problems to fix in this particular piece--the author is a stand out in my class, albeit a young man with a persistent, quirky smile who I've had a hard time reading this semester--so I found myself fixating on a minor detail he'd added to bolster his argument: he's the youngest of five siblings, and at least one of these siblings has children of her own.

So there I was trying to get through the rest of the surprisingly insightful responses on how texting is or isn't impacting the intellectual and social skills of teenagers today and all I could think about was this student's family--his older sister and her phantom family, where he grew up, what his house might be like, his parents...

The next week, this student happened to be in my office for a meeting, and I've got this internal dialogue batting around in my brain, like: "Do I ask him about his family?" "No, he'll think it's creepy" "No he won't. He'll be impressed you retain so much from his writing." "No he won't. He'll think it's weird. He'll think YOU are weird." Did I say anything? Of course not. But I'm still curious as all get out.

Back to counting

2009-02-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

Well...it's been a supersonic long time since I've written. Too long, I'd say. And boy do I have a list of excuses. The biggest being my boys (who don't do the nap overlap (yet. I'm still hopeful)). But it feels a little wrong to blame my kids for not writing when the topic I feign to write about is having more kids. Like if you do the math, how much more would I write if I had three instead of two kids--a less than negative amount, I guess.

This is the sleep-lost way of saying, I DO want to get back to the blog and I DO want to make it more visually appealing, ramp up the content, and get reader feedback, and I DON'T want to use this as a forum for talking about how easy it is to procrastinate and not write when you haven't slept more than three hours straight for a good few months, though you'd really like to be posting everyday and it's not like you don't have the ideas all stashed upstairs and eager to spill out onto your keyboard at inopportune times like 3:32 a.m. when your 7-month old is nursing for the second time since nigh-nigh. Get it?

So I'm going to set reasonable new blogtastic goals for myself:

1 post twice a week (more if possible, but not less)
2 Spread word about the blog (don't use it as my personal incentive to write, solicit opinions to inspire more writing).
3 make it look good--scarp the dot art interface and make it look like something you want to come back and see everyday, or every four days (as my new posting regime dictates).

So, get ready. I'm back, with a little more perspective on how kid count can impact your life (and your blogging).

High kid count around every corner

2008-10-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

Without really realizing it, it appears I took a blog vacation for the past month. Why? I guess because I ran on fumes for most of August, and when the fumes ran out, all that was left was one exhausted mama. And so, today, I am emerging with limited energy during a limited window while both my boys are taking (hopefully) unlimited naps. I apologize if I'm a little rusty.

I felt like it was impossible not to come out of the clouds right now, what with the media teeming with examples of high kid count. I'll spell them out today and take them on individually in future posts. The top four:

Sarah Palin: Governor of Alaska, Vice Presidential candidate, Mother of five
Laura Bennett: Former Project Runway contestant, Blogger on Tina Brown's The Daily Beast, Mother of Six
Brangelina: Movie stars, Humanitarians, Activists, Parents of six (with rumors of a new adoption in the works)
The Duggars: Evangelical Christians, Reality television stars, Parents of 17, with another on the way

Got these down just in time. My window just shut. Little Reed is awake and threatening to head plant on my keyboard. Would my fingers ever again touch the computer in the afternoon if I had more than two kids...

The reaction to high kid count

2008-08-29T11:47:00.001-07:00

For the first time since Reed was born, I'm able to get on the computer before 9 p.m. (it's 8:58) and devote my time to something other than skimming day-old emails and uploading photos. In this newfound window of web time, I thought I'd share some of the reactions I read to the Babble story referenced in the previous posting.

The responses to the piece, written by a woman who harbors dreams of having a large family, really covered a wide spectrum of opinions. Some were aggressively disparaging, others cautiously supportive. What was most apparent from reading the replies is that people are eager to tell the story of their own upbringing -- the forgotten child among many, the daughter engulfed by the love of older siblings, the somber son with no siblings to share memories with.

It reminded me of a conversation that came up at a New Parents Group meeting I would go to on Thursdays when Ben was an infant. One day, one of the new mothers (our children were mostly sub-three-months old at the time) expressed an interest in having another baby, soon. The ensuing debate occurred after nearly every parent told of their own experience with siblings -- a brother so much younger that they had nothing in common, a sister just a year older who barely acknowledged her younger sister's presence (and still doesn't), three siblings each three years apart who were inseparable and remain the best of friends to this day.

No clear answers emerged from this share-fest (only aghast expressions that the woman who sparked the conversation could be considering another night-waking, breast-sucking, loud-yelping baby at the point when most of us were still questioning our decision to have the child nestled in our lap). There was evidently no right way to space your children in order to create the perfect family dynamic. Every story was different.

And so was the case with the replies to the Babble article, although a few common themes did arise, some of them which I hope to spend more time discussing in future entries. A smattering of folks lamented that a larger family means a larger carbon footprint, or more negative impact on the environment (and an equally large group made the opposite claim). A few brought up the over-population argument and some naysayers referenced the NY Times Magazine piece I talked about a few posts back on the low birth rate in Europe. Others argued that having more than two children is a selfish act on the part of the parents. One Christian woman said she feels the pressure from her community to have more than two children, while parents who only have one kid said that they are constantly critiqued, and criticized, for not having more. A few women said they felt validated by the story, which conveyed their sentiments as well; feelings they keep mum in their real lives.

The bottom line: it felt like judgment after judgment after judgment, leaving me with a lot of fodder for thought, but not one centimeter closer to defining an optimal kid count, and all the more aware that if that if your kid count edges anywhere up or down from two, it's sure to spark controversy.

Increased kid count

2008-08-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

I'm now one kid closer to having a big family. My second and precious new son arrived in good health and good spirits just 45 minutes after Chris and I pulled into the hospital early last week. We named him Reed, and we are now in the process of adjusting to a two kid count lifestyle. It's been fun, and exhausting, and exhilarating -- and all of the other adjectives new parents use to describe the indescribable joys and pains of having a new baby.

In many respects it has been easier than I anticipated. Breastfeeding is smoother, spousal communication is better, and I'm more relaxed than I was when Ben came into our lives. My sleep deprivation has yet to catch up with me and Chris has been home for the past two weeks, so we've been happily coexisting as one big family, sharing meals together, taking outings to the park and the farm, playing in the yard. Reality will certainly strike once I'm home alone with the two buggers and pulled between chasing Ben en route to the roaring river and nursing a starved Reed on the park bench.

In the days before Reed was born, there was an article related to kid count published on Babble.com titled "Full House: Why is it crazy to want six kids". What I found as intriguing as the article, which relates a lot of the same sentiments I have chronicled thus far on this blog, are the 57 (as of today) comments in response to the article -- the vast majority which I have yet to read. In my copious free time in the coming couple weeks, I'm going to delve into the feedback on this piece, and get a better gauge on how the general Babble-reading public feels about big kid count. Perhaps I'll be surprised.

Money money money

2008-07-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

I have this irrational throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude when I start to conceive of what it would be like to have a large family. It comes in part from my Mom, who is one of my most frugal people I know, but has told me on numerous occasions that she and my Dad didn't worry about the cost of raising children, nor the expenses of college, when they started making babies in the 1950s. My Dad had gotten his undergraduate degree courtesy of the GI bill and my Mom had decided that nursing and teaching weren't for her and taken an office job after a year in college, so neither of them accrued much, if any, debt at the hands of higher education. They were young, and perhaps they were naive, but things worked out for them and their family. My Dad found success in his career and my Mom raised five children who now hold a combined 12 higher degrees. Am I wishing on a star expecting that the same good fortune could bless my growing family?

For today's entry I am going to select three "cost of raising a child" calculators on the internet, fill in a kid count of one, and share the results below in an attempt to get some perspective on what impact kid count has on your pocketbook:

The first calculator I used was called "Cost of Raising Your Child" on Babycenter.com, a site that I perused with some regularity during my first pregnancy, and found to be generally unbiased and informative. The site asks five questions, including the year your child will be born, where you live, your income, type of household, and intended college, before it hits you with the damage. For us, the total for our second baby, poised to be born any day now, came to:
$418,702.

Using the "Cost of Raising Children Calculator," provided by ABC News, I inputed my household type, income range, and age of child, and I came up with a slightly lower number, $308,847, but this only accounted for expenses up to age 18, meaning that college was excluded. The calculator allowed you to input the ages of multiple children, though only up to three (what is the message here? if you have time to calculate cost of children on the web there is a high probability that you don't have more than three kids?), so I gave it a whirl, assuming I had kids aged 1, 3, and 5, and the number I came up with was: $539,708.

The "Baby Cost Calculator" on the Babyzone.com site allowed me to tailor to my own situation a little more. For example, I could input how long I intended to have my child in daycare rather than assuming the costs would continue past kindergarten. The number they gave me was slightly more tame: $164,278 (again, excluding college tuition).

As you can see, the numbers varied significantly, though no matter how you read them, they are big six digit bundles and when you start multiplying them for increased brood size, they only grow (and here I demonstrate some of my exceptional math skills). The college question still puzzles me. Recall my conversation, highlighted in my long initial post on the origins of my kid count fixation, when I visited the helpful representative at T Rowe Price. Her tally for a four-year private college in 2024, when Ben would be packing off for school, was $339,824.

So, I'm left a little stumped, and also a little curious, about who uses these calculators and how accurate they actually are? I need to find some parents with larger families, and gauge their awareness and/or concern about the impending and current costs of family life. The reality is, however, that I don't actually know that many people my age with more than two children, or plans to have more than a couple. I'm going to work on finding some good interview candidates, though, and get some more insight on this topic up here in the next few months. Stay tuned.

Counterintuitive kid count findings

2008-07-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

After feverishly fighting my viral battle, Ben caught the dreaded bug, and then Kristen, our nanny, succumbed to something similar, and so, for three weeks, I have been low on blog time, and with my baby due in less than a week, I don't imagine the window of opportunity is going to be flung open again anytime soon -- so here I am, writing long-winded run-on sentences in an attempt to get out at least a few of the ideas I've been pondering during my offline time. I'll start where I left off in my last post: the "Childless Europe" article that appeared in the June 29 issue of the New York Times magazine.

What I found most intriguing from this article, as related to my kid count obsession, is that sociologists have found that women who's better halves are actually close to better and share in the responsibilities of managing a family household -- who drop the kids at daycare, change the dirty diapers, do the dishes, and make a game out of bath time -- are more likely to want to have another child than women who do more than 75 percent of the housework and childcare. As a result, families in seemingly family-friendly countries like Italy, Greece, and Spain, have the lowest fertility rates in the world. Simply put, in these places it is more common for women to stay home and deal with the kids day in and day out without the aid of a husband and these women are, thus, less inclined to have more kids. On first read, at least for me, it was counterintuitive. I expected, perhaps naively, that the more traditional old-school family structure = more children. But, honestly, when I think a little harder about the three weekdays I spend at home alone with my one son, who I adore, it's not difficult to see how these mothers who spend the majority of their lives glued to their children, without the useful assistance of their husbands, get a little turned off at the idea of mass production.

On the flip side, the article highlights how women in the Netherlands, and other northern European countries with greater gender equality, have among the highest fertility rates on the continent. When women are working and husbands are helping out on the home front, the urge to procreate is convincingly stronger. These studies don't translate perfectly to American society, which doesn't offer the same parental benefits (termed "generosity" in the article) as its European brethren, but it does offer, according to the article, more flexibility for women, who can leave their jobs for a handful of years and then return to the workforce sometime down the road. (I'm not 100 percent sure I will see this born out among my friends who have passed up their careers to stay at home, but the article does claim that America is more flexible in this regard than most European countries).

This leaves me pondering what the ideal situation for having a higher than average kid count is. Would the recipe for prospering (and I use this word with purpose) with a kid count of four be two working parents in a household where chores and childcare responsibilities are divided equally between husband and wife? And, if so, at what cost? In my next post, I think it's high time I take a closer look at the financial realities of raising a larger than average family.

Virus adds new spin to kid count

2008-07-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

How do they do it? How do parents with multiple children survive when the primary caregiver falls ill -- like so ill that they can't swing their legs out of bed, they haven't the energy to pull the sticky piece of adhesive tape off a diaper, they can't open the refrigerator without feeling winded? I've had an especially bad ten days of battling what I now think was two separate viruses, and just as I was emerging from my sickie cocoon earlier this week, Ben came down with his own fever and sore throat.

I can't tell you the number of times I've thought about my post glorifying the Cheaper by the Dozen family's fight against whooping cough over the past week and half and wanted to de-post it stat (but, let's be honest, I was too exhausted and achy to figure out the technology of it, much less use my fingers to do anything besides take my temperature for the 14 millionth time or help roll my pregnant body over to sleeping position option #2 (the final option) on my other side).

Now, really, this isn't going to be a post of complaints. I'm better now and thankful for that. And I think my sickness has given my rosy colored glasses an even less flowery tint than before when it comes to my own family's potential kid count, which could certainly influence the direction of this blog. I don't know what I would have done if I'd had more than one child, a husband who couldn't take time off work, and a nanny who didn't come twice a week. I sound spoiled rotten just writing it. For a bad situation, I was in a good situation. I wonder if I'm really cut out for caring for a brood of kids. I'm having doubts, that's for sure.

What I really wanted to post about last week was not a daily dose of my health statistics. In the NYTimes magazine the week following Virginia Heffernan's media post on big family television programs, there was a front page feature article on how kid count (aka birthrate in this case) is falling in Europe -- and how this is something to be concerned about, perhaps not just across the pond, but on the homefront as well (despite the fact our healthy "replacement rate" for children in the US remains a steady 2.1).

There were many fascinating insights in the article, which was titled No Babies? Declining Population in Europe. The problem is, it's now been well over a week since I read and digested the article (and a rough week at that), so I'm no longer prepared to pull the related gems from the piece and discuss them here. My goal, however, is to reread the story this evening and pontificate on the journalistic findings in my post tomorrow (that is, if Ben decides he is going to nap again -- the other disturbing thing that happened this week is that my son went on a nap strike, leaving his mother little time to blog (horrors!), or to do much of anything, save reconsider what a reasonable kid count is for our little family).

More soon.

Slowed by sickness

2008-06-29T23:33:00.000-07:00

It is 2:30 a.m. on Monday morning and I am sitting on the couch in my family room next to a plush duck puppet, travel soap dish, Ben's bathing suit and unused swim diaper, a pair of treaded red socks, and a couple library books. I'm hot; too hot to sleep. I've had a fever over 100 degrees for more than 24 hours and although Tylenol helps bring it down, it takes a regretfully long time for it to kick in, and I'm in one of those holding patterns right now.

It's been a rough few days, but Chris has been a saint, taking off Friday to take care of me and Ben and basically doing everything around the house this weekend (including full-time parenting) to prepare for the arrival of my two sisters and their families this week. After he put Ben to bed tonight, he started up the grill and fixed chicken and vegetable kebabs, while I sat on the deck and appreciated my first foray of the day into the great outdoors.

"Can you imagine if I was sick like this and we had three kids?" I asked from the kitchen table as Chris de-skewered our dinner onto our plates. It's a question I'd asked myself a couple times that afternoon while lying on my left-side with a cold compress on my forehead, counting the fetal kicks of my 36-week-old baby.

What does Laura Bennett do when she gets sick and can't manage the pack of boys racing around her NYC apartment? Better yet, what would Michelle Duggar do if she was laid up sick during the final weeks of her 18th pregnancy? At what kid count do you start relying on your kids to take care of your other kids rather than leaning solely on your partner?

"We'd figure it out," Chris replied. "It wouldn't be that big of deal. I mean imagine if you stayed home with three kids everyday. Would it be that different?"
"I guess not," I said, "but by the time we have three kids, if we do have three kids, it's likely Ben would be be in school, at least part of the week."

Here I am trying to have it all -- the kid count I dreamed of as a kid and the manageable lifestyle I've lived with for the first 32 years of my life. At some point, something's going to have to give. I know that. But for now Chris and I are just taking happy baby steps toward an unknown familial destination.

These past few days, as I've fought this persistent fever and general case of the blahs, have reminded me of how crucial it is to have a supportive, equal, like-minded partner when raising a family. Now it's time for me to go rejoin Chris and, with any luck, get some sleep.

The kid count cringe

2008-06-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ran into a woman I can't say I know, but I recognize. In the dark afternoons of post-nap winter, her husband and I ran in the same library circle, bringing our kids to the children's reading room at the same time every Friday. I'd met his wife a couple times around town -- at the park, at the parents center -- and her son would recognize Ben and I'd say something awkward like "I know your kids from the library" and she'd say "Oh yeah, my husband's been taking them there a lot" and then we wouldn't have much more to say. I ran into her yesterday in the school gym after the children's performer had wowed our little ones with his juggling, balancing, and unicycling antics, and noticed she was pregnant. We chatted, as usual, quite briefly.

"I didn't know you were pregnant," I said. (how would I have known? I don't know her, nor do we have any common friends that I know of)

"Yeah, we'll be outnumbered soon," she replied, smiling and tossing a look at her two children, who were indistinguishable in a sea of small heads. "When are you due?" she asked.

"End of July."

"Oh, you're lucky, so soon. I've got until September."

"Good luck," I said, sashaying to the right to pull Ben from step one of the entertainer's small ladder.

A boring conversation on the surface, but one that made me think about how I react to other people's pregnancies, especially when it is the third, or more. Essentially, I try to be positive, but fear I end up sounding fake, over-compensating in my enthusiasm for actually meeting someone who dares to overstep the standard family parameters. [Just because I live more rurally than the women on UrbanBaby.com, doesn't mean I'm surrounded by the farm-family mentality -- it's uncommon for my fellow mothers here to have more than two children, and very rare for them to have a kid count of four plus].

I usually sense that there's some reluctance to reveal a third plus pregnancy in my peer-set -- the news comes out very late, it arrives with a disclaimer "not exactly planned but..." "we aren't sure what we were thinking but..." "you might think we've lost our minds but..." I sensed this reluctance in the woman in the school gym, even though I can't put my finger on why. Am I projecting? Hard to say. I just know there's a glossed-over shame that comes with admitting, as an educated, middle-class woman over 30, that you might want more than two kids. I'm not making it up. I feel it in myself and I feel it when I talk to other mothers, and I want to continue to chip away at the real reasons why it's somewhat socially unacceptable to think big, in public.

Our morning

2008-06-25T09:55:00.001-07:00

Ben and I have accomplished a lot today by my standards, and it's not yet 1 o'clock. We hit a few bumps early on, waking to a depleted oatmeal supply and a refrigerator bereft of milk, meaning no Cheerios or Corn Flakes, the cereals of choice in my household. I suggested, in my I-will-talk to-my-toddler-like-an-adult-voice, that we head out for breakfast at a local coffee shop and Ben happily obliged. He might not be two-years-old yet, but he is quite capable of articulating that he'd like a muffin when the opportunity presents itself. We set off, in our newly repaired 1994 Saturn station wagon, beginning our morning odyssey with our coffee-food stop. Instead of a muffin, Ben tasted his first self-selected croissant, which went down well, while I nibbled on a blackberry ginger muffin and observed the other pre-8 a.m. patrons (or rather, watched them observe me).

I'm eight months pregnant with a toddler, so I get some looks when I'm out in public. It's not like it's such a weird thing. I can rattle off many families I knew growing up who had two or three kids, each separated by two years. But for some reason when you're watching a Mom trying to navigate two objects of food, a cup of hot decaf coffee, a lidless paper cup of water, a cumbersome wooden high chair, a full diaper bag, and a 30 lb little boy, to an empty two-person table in a busy coffee shop, the stares start coming in. Some are sympathetic (yet there were no helping hands emerging from behind newspapers or laptops), some bemused (the all-knowing look of an seasoned parent, out alone after dropping her two children, a more reasonable four years apart, at a local summer camp), some indifferent (a glance, then a glance away), some critical (the older, athletic gentleman who chose first to sit next to me, but then opted to move down three tables in the opposite direction a few moments later). Frankly, I thought we looked pretty damn cute, Ben and I enjoying a breakfast date, something that we won't likely have again for quite some time after baby #2 arrives. It is curious to think about what the reaction would be if it had been Ben and me and baby #2 and 3.

After coffee, we headed to the bank, but misjudged a turn and ended up at the grocery store instead. With a list of more than 20 items in hand (many never-before-purchased), I knew it could be a challenging shop. After only a few missteps (do we really need peanut oil? No. Do the pretzel goldfish need to be opened now? Yes.), we were back in the car, off to the bank (I did the lazy-Mom's drive-through method to save my back from an extra in-and-out of the car) and then onto the mechanic's, where I paid my bill and picked up my keys. A quick jaunt home to unload perishables, while Ben emptied the baking racks and trays into the middle of the kitchen, and then into the car again and off to a neighborhood elementary school for a vaudeville-like juggling and joking performance by a local kid entertainer.

Could I have done all this before 11:30 a.m. if I had two kids with me? Of course I could have, but how would I have handled it? Did I watch the families in the gym at the elementary school and note that not one of them appeared to have more than 2.5 kids in tow? Yes. Tomorrow I'll discuss the brief, yet telling, conversation I had with a mother of two with a third due in September, while Ben beelined for the entertainer's unicycle and four step ladder.

What the online gossips have to say

2008-06-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

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?

NYTimes Mag on kid counting

2008-06-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

I read my Sunday New York Times in this order: Sunday Styles (pretty much front-to-back, with a skim of the weddings), Week in Review (never get through it, but always take a stab), the magazine (almost always cover-to-cover), and then the Book Review. If time permits, which it rarely does, I read through one or two of the front page stories. I also always scan the photos in the Travel section, as a reminder of where in the world I might be able to go once I can swallow traveling afield with an undetermined number of children. It's a fantasy flip through for now.

This week, however, I never made it past the magazine. When I reached page 14, I was stopped dead in my reading routine by the article headline: "Family-Size: TV shows about huge broods are a favorite for online gossips." "Chris, look at this!" I shouted from where I was hunkered down at our kitchen table, trying to get through as much of the paper before Ben arose from his afternoon nap. My alarmed husband shot back from the sink, thinking I'd discovered an even larger species of ant than already inhabits our house on the moister days of the spring. "It's my story!" I wailed.

I'd been scooped! I felt immediately threatened by this piece, with it's accompanying aerial photo of a table set for 18 -- and yet I hadn't read word one of it. So I got a glass of orange juice, a handful of fresh strawberries, calmed myself, and started in on the two-page spread by Virginia Heffernan.

I'll let you link to the article yourself to get the full extent of her analysis, but the take-away of the final paragraph is that TLC and Discovery Health -- the two cable channels that air reality programs on mega-families, like "Jon & Kate Plus 8" and "Duggars' Big Family Album" [the Duggars are a family who was featured on "Kids by Dozen" -- they are currently planning for their 18th child; what exactly this prep entails is unclear. I imagine readying a nursery or buying a double stroller would illicit laughs of mockery from the Parents Duggar] draw their audience from a group of viewers (who I can't help but assume is largely female) with exponentially fewer children who are struck, perhaps knocked down flat on their fannies, by the fact that these families exist and function in a country where the average kid count is 2.1. Heffernan quips in her last line: "Now get back to your own families and stop complaining."

I am not threatened by Heffernan's piece, as I thought I would be -- I am inspired to blog away by it. There's a clear interest in family size -- the New York Times is on to it, and so am I. Heffernan mentions a number of websites where vocal advocates and critics go to voice their opinions on controversial parenting topics like kid count, a few which I've never visited myself, but will this week. The article also reminded me that I should make clear here, as I mentioned in my long original essay, that the definition Chris and I have for a large family is more than three kids. That means four kids makes a big family; not 17. Seventeen kids makes a huge, off-the-radar, insane-asylum-inducing family (that I'm happy to voyeuristically check in on via reality TV, but have no interest in recreating in my comfortable four-bedroom home). And, in truth, it's not the degree of kid count I'm interested in covering on this blog. Though it does, as Heffernan astutely points out, make great fodder for the many other online gossips out there.

Media and Me, the sequel

2008-06-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

I've got a brief sequel to my how-media-influenced-me-as-a-kid post from a couple days ago. This time it deals with the boob tube. Although I said that I didn't watch much television as a young kid, I sort of lied. As I got a little older, I did have few shows that caught my aging eye. Most often I watched them at other people's houses, where there was a captive audience of pony-tailed and baseball-capped heads surrounding me. This always bested watching television solo with Mom and Dad after a healthy, well-rounded dinner and a second stab at my homework.

My soon-to-be-revealed revelations on television almost certainly will find a broader audience than my film analysis -- I mean, it's pretty unlikely that someone else's VHS collection was the same as my family's slim and wholesome pickings. But, there is a high probability that I watched some of the same television programs as my pre-teen counterparts in the mid-1980s.

[As an aside, I had Chris add the modern remake of Cheaper by the Dozen to our Netflix queue, so perhaps I'll add a movie review here -- I feel confident it's not at the top of his list, though, so don't count on that happening anytime super soon.]

Between conversations with Chris and a couple friends this week I started to compile a list of programs that we, as a group, watched growing up. Here's what I came up: Little House on the Prairie, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Who's the Boss, Growing Pains, Brady Bunch, Silver Spoons, Small Wonder, Webster and Different Strokes. It was a television world without reality programming and adult cartoons. Every show we watched was family-based, and many of them projected the same image I talked about in the films -- the more kids, the merrier.

When ratings started to falter for Family Ties and Growing Pains, what did producers do? They threw a fourth child into the fray. When the five kids from the Cosby Show weren't so cute and innocent anymore, what happened? Denise's stepdaughter waltzed into the brownstone and lit up the living room with her endearing one-liners. There's a curious connection that might be drawn between how producers chose to add more kids to a show to give it new life and whether parents similarly choose to have just one more child in the hopes of keeping that youthful energy aglow in their homes.

There's a strong argument, which I'm sure has been covered before, that these collective programs were not a true reflection of American home life. They were, instead -- as my desires for a big family also are -- a bit of a fantasy. The next generation of programming, including shows like Roseanne and Murphy Brown helped redefine, perhaps more realistically, family life. But still, I can't help but point out the impression these family-based programs left on me -- even if I only watched them a handful of times a season.

The impact of media on Me

2008-06-17T17:29:00.000-07:00

In my quest to find academic, accredited studies on how representations of big families in the media impact society, I selflessly overlooked one key researcher: myself. After an enlightening phone conversation with a friend yesterday, I realized that if I take a self-centered stroll back through my prepubescent media experiences, I start to notice a remarkable trend.

I watched very little television as little kid, not because it was banned in my household, simply because there were always more engaging things to do -- pull cicada shells off the big Maple tree out front, climb the Magnolia and smell the delicious white blooms, argue with the neighborhood girls about who's Chinese jump roping skills were best, wade deep into the creek and upend rocks in search of a succulent crayfish, or choreograph some memorable interpretive dance performances for tolerant friends and family.

However, when I wasn't launching myself off the deck in my First Communion dress to the tune of Like a Virgin or wrapping myself up in a bolt of fabric from my Mom's sewing station while Material Girl blared in the background, I did sometimes watch the occasional movie. In my family's early VHS collection there were three films: The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, and National Velvet. Somewhere down the line my Dad also taped the original Cheaper by the Dozen from television and it was added to the mix. I watched each of these movies dozens of times plus during my childhood. And now, when I reflect on it, they all had something in common (save for National Velvet where the kid count was three); they all portrayed big families. The Sound of Music, seven kids; Fiddler on the Roof, five daughters; Cheaper by the Dozen, of course, a hearty 12 children).

I don't believe my parents were covertly trying to brainwash me into thinking the bigger the family, the better, but it does bear mentioning that each of these movies no doubt left its impression on me. For those of you who don't have the fortitude (or free time) to wade through my lengthy post on how I came to be a kid counter, the short story is: I am the youngest of five, but my closest sibling is 16 years my senior. I got to experience the best parts of growing up in a big family: the jolly holidays filled with presents, the vacations where we took up a significant swath of the beach, the homecomings and graduations and birthdays. And, as I result, I've always had a fantasy of having a big family; although the rose-colored glasses have slipped down the slope of my nose a little in recent years.

For one, I've got a kid of my own now, and another on the way, so I have a firsthand grasp of what it's like to raise a family; I'm no longer sitting a healthy six feet back from the television, curled up on the couch, keenly observing big family life. Back then, when the dazzling dozen came down with the whooping cough in Cheaper by the Dozen, I coveted the attic room lined with single beds for sick kids. How fun to be crammed together, coughing in unison, swapping germs like a stickers on the playground. The fact that the kids in the Sound of Music were treated like military brats, summoned by their father with a piercing whistle, before Maria came on the scene didn't phase me one bit. I relished in the opportunity to see them shoulder-to-shoulder in formation -- that way I could analyze their personality quirks and take note of how much (or little) they looked like each other. In Fiddler on the Roof, I must sadly admit, the background of the story, the horrors, displacement and travails of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, were lost on me, as I obsessed about how Chava's red hair stood in striking contrast to her sisters and pined for a gaggle of same-aged cohorts like these most fortunate long-haired young women had.

I was blinded by the lure of the big family -- the big meals, the big celebrations, the kibitzing, the camaraderie, the crammed car and horse-drawn carriage rides, the collective conniving capabilities these siblings had. And the message I took away from it all was really quite simple: the more the merrier.

Kid count and family health

2008-06-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

My attempts at researching how media representations of large families impact society -- like whether "Kids by the Dozen" makes more families think in double digits when it comes to kid count or whether Brangelina implicitly encourages couples to think beyond the standard family of four -- came to a grinding halt this morning when I uncovered a series of provocative articles on two disparate topics, the first of which I'll touch on here today.

[As a side note: there appears, after my very cursory web scouring, to be more research on family representations in the media -- mostly on alternative families: single parents, gay parents, etc. -- done in England than in the United States. The one study I found on family representations in the media here had to do with how Buffy the Vampire Slayer is "an example of popular culture that explores both the advantages and dangers of non-normative family forms, specifically the non-genetic or 'chosen' family.'" It's an interesting topic, but a little off-base for my kid counting calling. I'm going to keep searching, and try to find some experts to weigh in (even if they haven't done the exact related research), but in the meantime, let me get back to the relevant findings.]

Perhaps I should just let the headlines do the talking: "New Study Shows Family Size Affects the Development of Stomach Cancer," "Family size, environment increase Alzheimer's risk, study says," "Family Size Tied to Brain Tumors, Study Suggests," "Family Size Begets Parent Size," and "Asthma Prevalence, Family Size, and Birth Order."

Yeesh. Population control proponents should seize hold of this combined data and craft a searing portrait of the big family. As a mild hypochondriac, I could easily see such a portrait scaring me into curbing my kid cravings after my second child is born next month. Of course, I haven't yet given a close enough read to any of these studies to know how exactly they define family size (among other mitigating factors). For example, at what kid count do you start predisposing your offspring to have stomach cancer and brain tumors? It's a valid question.

Once I can print out all the articles and give them a responsible read I'll try to respond to this query and others with a summary of the facts, though I can say at first glance it appears the only positive spin on big families gleaned from this collection is that if you have more children, they will be less likely to have asthma. This, actually, is the most compelling reason for me to keep having kids, since both Chris and I were plagued with childhood asthma and Ben spent the better part of this past weekend battling bouts of wheezing tempered by his good ole nebulizer. I guess the real question is: at what point can I safely stop having children -- beautiful, cherub-like children who will remember me in old age and not compromise my thin figure -- and guarantee that none of them will have to carry an inhaler to track practice?

That's the magic kid count I'm looking for.

Big Hollywood families

2008-06-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Usually when you think of "big Hollywood families," names like Coppola, Douglas, or Baldwin spring to mind, but it's probably no surprise that for me the definition of a big Hollywood family is slightly different -- it's a Hollywood couple with a high kid count.

Every couple of weeks when my husband (henceforth referred to by his given name, Chris, on this blog) goes off to run an urgent evening errand -- like pick up a gallon of whole milk, grab a pint of ice cream, get a packet of CC batteries -- he'll return home with a treat that trumps any carton of Ben and Jerry's: a copy of US Weekly. As with the unexpected large family that crops up on television, it's the unusual Hollywood couple who's procreated with abandon that sticks with me after I've reaffirmed that stars are just like me and Britney Spears has challenged fashion sense. A few couples (who would in normal circumstances be as interesting to me as the human interest stories in rival magazine People) always stay on my radar because of their big broods: Warren Beatty and Annette Benning (four kids), Justin (of Grey's Anatomy) and Keisha Chambers (five kids) or even Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, who pushed the envelope and had three.

And then, of course, there's Brangelina.

As star gawkers worldwide wait anxiously in our moderate-sized homes with our moderate-sized families for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to announce the arrival of their twins -- and officially expand their multi-cultural crew of children to six -- I can't help but wonder if a high-profile couple with a big family will have any trickle down affect on kid count in America. There's lots of talk about how Brangelina is championing adoption, making it cool and Hollywood-ish to adopt from outside the US, but what about their sheer numbers? Will the size of the Jolie-Pitt family influence others (excluding those who are already influenced by religion or a lack of access to and/or knowledge of effective birth control) to make more babies?

I recognize that glamorizing big family life is dangerous in a world where reality dictates that we can't all shuttle our kids to play dates on Leer jets and stroll hand-in-hand down the red carpet with our partner while our children cuddle up for one last book with their legions of live-in nannies. Yet I still can't help wondering if there's any quantifiable impact of big families in the media on mainstream America. It's something I'm going to try and research this week.

The kids we see on TV

2008-06-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

My husband and I have a few television programs (aka guilty pleasures) we watch in our basement after Ben's asleep, mostly the day after they're aired in real time, thanks to Tivo: Top Chef, American Idol, Project Runway, the original CSI, to name a few. When you think of television shows that highlight big family life, programs like the Brady Bunch or Eight is Enough, or the more modern large family reality shows like Kids by the Dozen or John and Kate Plus 8, or even certain episodes of Extreme Home Makeover probably spring to mind, but it was an unsuspecting season of Project Runway that really put my kid counting antenna in action.

A few seasons back on Project Runway, there was a contestant named Laura Bennett. I judged her from the second I saw her slightly protruding pregnant belly under a slim-fitting stylish black dress. She was older, maybe in her early 40s, attractive, seasoned and urban looking, and I assumed she was arriving late to motherhood, having achieved her career goals, married late and then, lo and behold, won a spot on the fashion reality show -- que bad timing! In (non-television) reality, her story was quite the opposite. This would be her (gasp, horrors) sixth child. Although I wouldn't say her designs were my favorite, much to my pleasure, Bennett made it to the final three and my husband and I, as loyal watchers, were invited with millions of others, into her family's Manhattan apartment/loft. It was fascinating.

I was somewhat surprised when I learned shortly there after that I'm not the only kid counter in the world. Her appearance on the show garnered some press coverage (and, again, not because of her stitching style). On October 11, 2006, MSN published a story titled: Bucking the norm, some families think big. It's been followed by a series of articles, which I casually track, equating having a third child with getting a fancy sports car or an in-ground pool -- it means you have the means to live large. Here are a few links to some of the other intriguing stories:

Kids as Status Symbols: The rich no only have more money, they may also have more children

Three Kids? You Showoffs.

In Some Circles, Four Kids is the New Standard

To me, it's a new way of thinking about larger families (and one that doesn't, for once, take into consideration religion). It's a topic I hope to delve into more here in the coming weeks.

An essay on the origins of the kid counting fixation

2008-06-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

I have a secret. It’s really not that big a deal. I don’t have a love child living in Brazil (that I know of). My husband isn’t a Chinese spy (or at least he’s not Chinese). I don’t hold conversations with myself behind the wheel (though I do babble along with my baby, Benjamin, who’s typically riding rear-facing in the back seat).

In some ways – as my husband often and amicably likes to point out – I’m actually the opposite of a good secret-keeper.

“That was a classic case of too much information,” he’ll say as we begin our drive home after a gathering with our new parents’ group.
“What? Everyone was telling their birth story,” I’ll counter.
“Not your birth story, the part about our new furniture.”
“The new furniture?”
“Yes, the details about our furniture!”

We recently bought our first grown-up bed frame and a hip, designer bookshelf at a local boutique. And, according to my husband, I can’t tell people about our exciting adult purchases without also letting them know that we paid for them with our tax refund.

“It’s totally unnecessary information.”
“What?”
“You don’t need to rationalize our purchases to practical strangers.”

It’s an interesting point. Benjamin is only nine-months-old, so it’s true, we really don’t know the people in the new parents’ group that well. But I actually think I’d be more apt to disclose my secret to a group of strangers than to my closest friends. I’m guessing this isn’t that difficult to believe, as I’m writing an essay about my secret right now; an essay that I hope will be read by many unfamiliar sets of eyes.

My secret is that I’d like to have a big family. There I said it. It’s out. I’m ready for the onslaught of unwanted and unfiltered comments. I’ve careful worded my secret. I didn’t say that I’d like to have a lot of kids. I’ve made this mistake before, only to be met with a predictable and disappointing series of responses: “Are you crazy?” “Why?” “Two is definitely enough,” “Do you plan to win the lottery?” or, the more tempered, “It’s an idea, but it’s not for me.”

In the months since my son was born, I’ve watched one overeducated friend after another attempt to gracefully balance her career and her new role as Mom like a toddler on a rickety seesaw at the local park – a seesaw that these Moms would like to see more often, but it’s just so hard to find the time. I’m one of these Moms myself. I’ve got two masters degrees, two jobs, two loads of laundry by the washing machine, and two hours while Benjamin naps to work on this essay without being interrupted – but I still can’t help wanting to have two more kids, at the least.

I come from a big family. I have three older sisters and one older brother. And I when say older, I mean older. When I made my mid-August debut in 1975, my siblings were 16-, 18-, 20-, and 22-years-old, respectively. Donny had just earned his college degree, fielding curious questions about his pregnant mother from friends at his graduation ceremony: “Is she your real Mom?” To which he replied, perhaps blushing, “Yes.” Carol was preparing for her return to Yale, where according to family lore she’d been dropped off barefoot three years earlier. Diane was packing up to ship out to college for the first time – and would get some quizzical looks when my parents visited her dorm room with a two-month-old later that fall. Laura was at home, likely adjusting to the idea of spending her anticipated years in an empty roost with an infant sister, and the fussing, diapers, and ample babysitting opportunities that came with her.

Over the years I’ve heard differing commentary on my unexpected arrival four months before my Mom’s 43rd birthday. I’ve been called “an afterthought,” “an accident,” “a blessing,” and, the moniker I like best, “a pleasant surprise.”

As a kid, I got a taste of big family life, and I loved it.

Now that I’m starting my own family, I want big Christmas mornings, with presents extending well beyond the circumference of the tree skirt and endless hours of unwrapping and yapping. I want photographs of all my kids with bed heads and eager eyes waiting in footed pajamas at the top of the stairs (even though we live in a ranch). My siblings humored me for years – like, maybe, my first 12 years – agreeing to still gather at the top of the stairs as they had when they were kids and have the traditional “first family” photo snapped before we all raced down to our gifts. I want a family that takes up an entire pew at Mass (even though my husband and I don’t go to church).

I want beach vacations where we all pile in the car in the wee hours of the morning and play car games and sing car songs. I want to feel crowded, like I did when I sat in the way-back of the Chevy station wagon, sandwiched between dozens of brown paper bags filled food as we drove to the shore in Maryland. I want late nights on the boardwalk and rowdy card games on the deck overlooking the ocean.

I want noise. I want busyness. I want every chair around the dining room table full and ideas bouncing off the family photos hanging on the walls. I want bunk beds and a wait for the bathroom in the morning.

I want all these things because they are my sweet memories of growing up in a large family. They are also my only memories, as my husband often and amicably like points out.

“You really have no idea what it’s like to have a big family,” he says. “You only got to experience the good parts. I mean, let’s be honest, you were practically an only child.”
He does have a point.
“You’ve never had to share a thing in your life.”
This is also somewhat true. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not generous,” I counter.
“Sure, but just because you’re generous doesn’t mean we should have five kids.”
Another valid point.

It’s just that I spent so much of my childhood yearning for a family full of like-aged siblings. And now that I’m in a position to produce my own brood, I can’t shake the idea. I spent years enviously eying the large families I’d see in church every Sunday. There was an Asian mother and her four impeccably dressed daughters who always sat in the front left pew; a local doctor and his lovely South American wife with their five bronzed beauties in the middle section; a row of four unkempt toe-headed girls behind us; and a family of three rambunctious young sons with two wise looking older sisters in front.

Instead of listening to the sermon, I’d map out the possible hair and eye combinations of my own future children. I’d picture the big van with plush bucket seats that we’d drive and the huge jungle gym erected in the backyard.

As a first grader, I remember telling my Mom that my plan was to get married, have a big family, and then become a nun after my husband died. I liked the idea of being able to do it all. (It’s unclear where my career fit into my thinking at this early age). Chris and I talk in loose terms about having more than three kids, which is our definition of “big,” but trading my best pair of jeans for a black habit is not something I’ve broached with my husband.

It is a relief to be able to talk about the potential of a big family with Chris, regardless of his myriad reactions: sometimes enthused, sometimes bemused, sometimes unresponsive – like when we are snug under the covers late at night and I want to discuss the idea with him one more time.

Having been married now for two years, it’s easier to reflect on the reasons why I’ve kept my secret from friends and family for the majority of the 25 intervening years since I told my Mom my life plan in the first grade.

Yes, I am apprehensive about people’s reactions, but I’ve also been silenced by the big, fat fear of failure. I can think of few things worse than having everyone feeling sorry for me because I couldn’t find someone willing to spend their life with me, or, worse yet, because I found that person and then discovered that we weren’t able to conceive a child together. The safest way to avoid any unwanted pity was to keep quiet – and to this day, I’m clearly still finding it hard to open up.

However, my reasons for remaining tight-lipped have shifted. For starters, I’ve married a handsome, witty man, who makes me laugh aloud at unexpected times and supports my bouts of irrationality – so I can tick the fear of meeting Mr. Right off my list. Our baby Benjamin was conceived the moment I stopped using birth control – so I know I’m fertile ground, alleviating my concern that I wouldn’t be able to have a baby.

Now my reticence about telling people my secret stems more from the realities of knowing what it’s like to actually have a child. My visions of working in the garden while Benjamin crawled around contentedly in the grass have been replaced with nightmares of him ingesting one of the hundreds of acorns strewn throughout our lawn. Images of him bouncing on my knee as I sip my morning cup of joe in the local coffee shop have been foiled by a nap schedule that rarely allows us to leave the house before 10 a.m.

That said, up to this point in my son’s short life, we’ve still managed to do our fair share of getting around. Benjamin’s been to six states, boarded eight airplanes, and done countless car trips throughout New England. Sure there have been times when he’s fussed in his car seat and one of has had to climb in back to wave rattles and other plush objects his direction or distract him with a dose of fresh sweet peas. But, for the most part, I think we’ve done a pretty darn good job at keeping our lives in motion and still having a good time of it since Benjamin joined our family fold.

However, when we were recently invited to wedding in Sweden, the idea of navigating international airspace with our wonderful wriggly baby boy did not strike me as so super fun. It’s one thing to take an hour-long flight along the eastern seaboard, but toting Benjamin and his behemoth convertible car seat through three airports and numerous modes of public transportation en route to Scandinavia is a different story – and it’s not a story I’m interested in hearing, unless fairytale gnomes are going to be there to help sooth my baby on that ten hour flight and put his little jet-lagged body to bed when we arrive.

Of course, the gentle voice in the back of my head is saying, “Sarah, you realize you only have one child. How do you expect to ever travel with a whole gaggle of them?” It’s a really good question: How do I?

My husband and I have discussed this predicament on numerous occasions. Travel is especially important to him. Growing up, I considered a vacation to be a week at the beach and a week at a family camp in West Virginia, while Chris spent his holidays traipsing through Northern India or exploring the Middle East with his well-traveled parents and younger sister. In my family photo album, I’m sitting at the edge of ocean, hair curled from the humidity, a blue bathing suit pulled awkwardly off one shoulder, squinting in the afternoon sun; whereas young Chris is perched below a monastery in the mountains of Bhutan, one hand gently resting on the leg of the guide who led him and his father on their trek.

Chris says he would like to do a family trip abroad every two years – and don’t get me wrong, that sounds like a good plan to me. It’s just hard to erase the memories of some of our longer pre-Benjamin flights together, like one particularly harrowing journey home from Nepal culminating with Chris hugging the toilet after an allergic reaction to airplane eggs. When I add four bed heads (with potential allergies), four Going to Grandma’s rolly bags, four sets of coloring books and washable magic markers, four high pitched whines and/or wails, and more than four fellow passengers giving me looks that could derail the Acela, I have really pause and ask myself: “If we have a lot of kids will we ever leave the country again before retirement?”

And this is making one huge assumption: that we’ll even be able to retire. Before Benjamin was born, I visited a local investment specialist to transfer an old retirement account into an existing IRA. I also decided to ask the associate about setting up a college savings plan.

“What year will your baby start college?” the helpful woman asked, tapping at her keyboard.
“2024,” I calculated.
“Hard to think that far ahead, isn’t it? You’re smart to get started early,” she said, tossing a nod to my pregnant belly. “Do you anticipate sending the baby to a public or private college?”
“Private, I guess. We might as well assume the worst.”
“Good thinking.” More tapping on the keyboard. “Okay, let me see here, in 2024 the tuition for a four year private college will total $339,824.”
Silence.
The woman looked up from her computer, made brief eye contact, and returned to her typing. “Let me calculate what you’d need to put away per month to reach that goal.” Tap, tap, tap. “Okay, let me see here, you’d need to save $1,753.56 a month.”
Silence.
“I know this sounds high.”
Silence.
The woman shifted in her chair. “Let’s hypothetically assume that you start with $50,000.” Tap, tap, tap. “Then your monthly contribution would be reduced to $1306.15 a month,” she said with a smile.

Was this one of those things people don’t tell you about childbirth? Are all infants actually pulled from the womb with a wad of serious cash in their tight newborn grips? This had not been addressed yet in our Childbirth 101: Becoming a Family class. But we still had a few weeks of coursework left.

In the meantime, it didn’t take a mathematician to calculate that even if each of our darling children was born with $50,000 strapped to their umbilical cord, we’d still need to save more than $1.1 million to put four kids through private college.

I’ve filed this knowledge in the far recesses of my brain, where it can only be accessed with a power-drill and electric saw. On the days when this stealthy file cabinet is somehow wrangled open, I slip Cheaper by the Dozen or the Sound of Music into the DVD player, curl up on the couch next to the baby monitor, take a long, deep breath, and watch my big family dreams come to life for the hundredth plus time.

I’m safe in front of the television in my basement, tucked underground below the chaos upstairs: the toys peppering our imported Tibetan carpet, the Oatios pasted into the crevices of the hair chair, the Diaper Genie that never grants my wish for a lilac-scented nursery. In the basement, I don’t need to field any questions about when we’re going to have our next baby, or how many more babies we’re planning to have. I can still savor my secret down there, away from the unwanted comments and aghast expressions. But once I reemerge at the top of the stairs and enter my well-used laundry room, I’m more willing these days to follow to my husband’s sage advice: “Let’s just take it one baby at a time.”

What is kid counting?

2008-06-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

I've been kid counting for as long as I can remember. This doesn't mean I spend hours lulling around the local library (where I am right now) creepily counting off the number of smallish heads that cross my path. My kid counting correlates directly with families: I've always counted the number of kids in any given family. When I was little girl and met someone new, I'd try to figure out how many kids were in my new friend's family before having to ask them directly. I'd listen for names, points of identification (Lisa plays soccer. Paul pulls my hair. Julie is away for the summer), piece together stories and chance sightings (a brother who drives carpools, a sister who can jump off the high-dive) and create miniature family trees in my head. I'd envision what life was like at their house, on their vacations -- busy, chaotic, fun. And I'd feel envious. Not because I didn't have a big family myself. I'm the youngest of five. But because my big family was different.

I wrote a long essay about my fixation on kid counting last year, which I'll post above as a prologue for what this blog is going to be all about (fear not: future posts won't be anywhere near this length). In the coming months, I plan to use this site as a way of analyzing kid count; quite simply: how many kids is the right number of kids? This question will undoubtedly lead in many directions: personal anecdotes (my son was up for four hours last night, I'm seven months plus pregnant, and the idea of bringing one more child into this world is inconceivable today...), eyewitness testimonies (I saw a family with six impeccably dressed (and well behaved) children -- white smock dresses, shiny pastel ribbons twisted into perfect pigtails, sailor caps tilted just so, and finger puppets waving -- waiting in the terminal of an airport in the south of France and, hard as I tried, I couldn't stop staring...), real research (studies show that fuel prices pale in comparison to the daily cost of raising a child, much less four of them...), and interviews (what is it like to be an only child, or, conversely, what's it like to raise a dozen?)

So whether your face turns green and slowly begins to rotate at the idea of more than two children under one roof or you can't imagine a household without a scab-kneed toddler tearing around the corner in a well-soiled diaper or you grapple day-to-day with how many kids you want to have, I hope this blog will give you a tad of good-humored insight on the ups and downs of any kid count. Enjoy.