The Case for the Only Child by Susan Newman, Ph.D.

If there is one thing I have learned as a parent so far, it is that people will ask you some SERIOUSLY intrusive shit about your personal choices. Are you breastfeeding? Are you going to sleep train her? Are you going to stay home with her? These are all potential minefields and must be handled with care. Luckily, though, I am confident enough in my parenting choices to answer these questions firmly and then not give a rat's ass if I get any static. You think supplementing with formula is akin to poisoning my daughter? Tough tootie, lady in the Safeway produce aisle. Deal with it.

But there is one question that pops up again and again, and that is: when do you think you'll have another? At first I didn't get it, and I thought they meant another crying jag or shot of tequila. FOR THE LATTER I HOPE SOON. But then I realized: they meant baby. When do you think you'll have another baby?

Sometimes I say, "Oh, someday." Sometimes I say, "Let me tell you what it feels like to stare at the same patch of wall every day for 13 weeks, to see your brand new baby attached to wires that beep and ping when she STOPS BREATHING. I am never, never doing this shit again in a million years." The response? "You really need to give your daughter a sibling. You don't want her to be lonely." Sometimes I say that we really want to adopt, thinking that will make everybody happy. But even that was not enough to put off one interrogator from her quest for a biological sibling for my little girl. "What if she needs a KIDNEY TRANSPLANT one day?"

Hello, I am Cath. This is my husband, James, my daughter, Lulu, and my other daughter, Backup Organs.

But most of the time, my answer to the question? Is "I don't know." As in, I don't know when or I don't know whether. Maybe one kid is enough. Maybe two would be nice. How can I know? How can I be sure?

"Dr. Susan Newman provides a guide to help you decide for yourself how to best plan your family and raise a single child," read the blurb for The Case for the Only Child. Caitlin over at Chaotic Compendiums hosted a giveaway and I entered to win, thinking this book would have the answers I wanted. And I won, and it came in the mail, and I sat down with my highlighter like a good former law student and I began to look for those answers.

The Case for the Only Child is a summary of Dr. Susan Newman's twenty years of experience studying only children and their families. In it, she debunks myths and stereotypes associated with only children--that they are lonely, isolated, spoiled, selfish, introverted--by presenting information from sociological studies and from 200 interviews she conducted of families with singletons in many different geographic and socioeconomic situations to show that only children are actually the "least predictable subgroup in [the] family dynamics model, precisely because they have no siblings."

The book was most interesting for me when we heard from parents and singletons in their own words. But these instances were sadly glossed over in most cases. "Anne Marie had gestational diabetes," Newman writes, "And had to give herself insulin injections. As a result, she is sure: 'I can't do a baby again.'" My ears (eyes?) pricked up when I read this, and I was hoping for more, but Newman moves on to a description of a research effort by British scientists. I would have liked to know more about Anne Marie, her pregnancy, how she feels about her decision today, if she ever doubted herself--it would have been so much more compelling than percentages and statistics that pepper these pages. Similarly, I would have liked to have known more about the lives of only children--as kids, teens, adults. In their own words.

Did this book convince me to stop at one? No. Did it help me learn to deal with "pressure from friends, relatives, and strangers to have a second child?" No. But that's not the book's fault; it's because people are dumb. I can't imagine that if telling somebody that my child would literally starve to death without formula wouldn't change their minds, that a heap of statistics from psychological studies would be more convincing for them.

Did the book raise some interesting questions and change the way I think about singleton families? Yes. But did it give the answers I was looking for? Am I any more decided on the issue than I was before? Do I feel like I REALLY understand the singleton experience?

Not really.

However, I did appreciate knowing that if I do decide not to have any more children, Lu will join an exclusive club of "singular sensations" comprised of such auspicious members as Indira Gandhi and Sarah Michelle Gellar. That, in itself, is almost reason enough to stop at one. I wonder if they have a secret handshake? Or superpower rings? A battle cry? "We are our parents' sole heirs...GO SINGLETONS!"

Laughing all the way to probate court, bitches.