A Book Is Born !!!

Decades in the making and my book, Creating Your Perfect Family Size has finally arrived!

Look right >>>>>>>>>>>and you’ll see the links to your favorite booksellers. My wife says it took 28 years, because she adds the 13 years that I worked on my PhD (dissertation topic = family size decisions) together with the 15 years post-doc. My children say, “Dad’s coming out of the basement this year!”

If you follow the Wiley link above, you can read the entire first chapter on their website. That’s terrific, except that there’s only 5 chapters in the book so you’re getting 1/5 of the book for a free click. I assume the logic is that you’ll like the sample so much you won’t be able to resist the main course.

The Book Title: My working title for 3 decades was “Family Size Does Matter” but the PR experts at Wiley felt that Creating Your Perfect……was more marketable. Folks, I’ve already started getting emails, “So Dr. Singer what exactly is the perfect family size?” As I state throughout the book….As many or as few, as long as you think it through.

The Video Trailers: So how am I going to be able to keep these blog posts interesting for you, the reader, in the next month as Wiley distributes the books? Of course, by using video book trailers. The goal of each trailer is for you to Tweat it and FB it to your closest 10,000 friends and then it goes viral....hey thanks loads! My son-in-law Noah is editing each trailer and posting it to YouTube (Thanks Noah!) and then I’ll blog about each video as it is released. That’s because, at Noah’s insistence, each video is low on hoakiness and high on actual content from the book.
Please let me know what you think of Chapter 1 and the videos.
AMS

As the Economy Tanks, So Does the U.S. Birth Rate

The number of babies born in the United States fell by 2.3 percent in 2009, and the number is continuing to slide. The recent drop in births puts the U.S. total fertility rate below the replacement level of about 2.1 births per woman.

These are the findings that are posted on the Population Reference Bureau website in an informative article by Mary Mederios Kent.

"The recent fall is not surprising given the current economic downturn—couples facing economic uncertainty often postpone having children. Many had predicted fertility decline given high unemployment rates, the home mortgage crisis, and slow economic growth since 2008. The Great Depression of the 1930s and the oil-shock of the 1970s were also periods of record low fertility in the United States.

I think this quote from her article is fascinating, "For the first time in years, the rate of births to unmarried women declined. However, births to married women declined even more, which pushed the percentage of all U.S. births to unmarried mothers to 41, an all-time high." As you have seen me write elsewhere, I am on record as predicting that in 2017, the rate of births to unmarried women will hit the unprecedented level of 50%. That means that 2 million or so babies each year in the U.S. will be born to unmarried women. What Kent's statistic shows is that even though births to the unmarried dipped a bit because of the recession, relative to the larger dip in births to married women, the percent is at an all time high.

"Will fertility bounce back when the economy improves, or will low fertility become the norm for Americans, as it has for Canadians and Europeans? Will couples eventually have the babies they postponed during the recession? For now, we can expect to see continued declines over the near term."

Children Under 5 Make Up the Bulk of Americans Treated in the ER After Swallowing Medications

Home sick today and popping medications, advil, and vitamins, gave me this chance to blog about Liz Szabo's recent piece in USA Today about child safety and medications.

According to Szabo, "Most such poisonings occur in 1- and 2-year-olds — an age group whose curiosity and climbing skills often outstrip their judgment — according to a new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. About 90% of child poisonings happen in the home, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Thanks partly to better caps and packaging, child poisoning deaths have fallen by 80% since 1972.

And most people don't store medications properly, says Lara McKenzie of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. When people are sick with colds, they often leave cough syrups and other drugs by the sink. More and more people also now request "easy open" caps on bottles or day-of-the-week pill organizers, Casavant says. That can be especially dangerous when children get into a grandparent's open purse or begin exploring her house."

"Experts offer these tips to keep children safe:
•Properly dispose of unneeded or expired medications, advises the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
•Don't take medications in front of children, which may inspire them to try to imitate you, Casavant says. Tell children never to take medication unless you give it to them.
•Never refer to pills as candy.
•Because children can sometimes open child-resistant caps, keep medications out of sight, out of reach and in a locked container.
•Keep the national poison control center number — 800-222-1222 — on or next to all of your phones."

Forget Big Brother; Your Children Are Most Likely Watching You

Parental estrangement is a miserable topic to be sure, but unfortunately for some, it is a common part of family life. Several weeks ago, I planned to blog about this topic but then I came across a story that made me re-focus my thinking which I described in my monthly Home News Tribune column.

Be sure to read Dr. Woolverton's email to me (below)

Frederick Woolverton’s essay on parental estrangement, The Most Hated Son in the New York Times Magazine, had a deeper message which became apparent to me. In it, he describes his estrangement from his aging mother (now 89) and his efforts to improve their relationship after three decades of silence “before it was too late.”

Woolverton states, “We’d been estranged since I was nineteen, when I made harsh, yet true, statements about the horrors of living with her at the custody trial for my younger sister. My family’s unstated code had been that nobody was allowed to reveal my mother’s alcoholism. She was enraged that I broke the rules of secrecy.” I can only imagine what went through Woolverton’s mind before he testified against his own mother, knowing that she may never speak to him again as a result of his testimony.

What particularly caught my attention in his essay was when Woolverton described a recent trip he took with his daughter to visit his mother and described, “My mother had cut off all my siblings over the years, and my brothers and sister were shocked that I even went to see her, especially because she always hated me the most — even before the divorce trial. I was the smallest, weak and sick as an infant. She once screamed that she’d wanted to let me die, like an injured animal. Did I forgive her? Absolutely not. Would I protect her now, if she needed anything? Yes. On the ride home, my daughter said what my own mother couldn’t: You are a good son.”

In my opinion, that last sentence says a world about parental role modeling. We have all heard people say that their children hear and see everything, or that a particular incident will be permanently embossed on their child’s memory.
But what I think is more important than what a child retains from a singular event, is what she retains from the on-going series of events known as daily family life. As parents, we have opportunities every single day to be good role models, or the opposite. When we make a mistake, we need to admit it, apologize for it and our child will benefit from that experience exponentially. When you least expect it, they will hear you or see you doing something. This applies to both good and bad role modeling.

Woolverton regretted his estrangement from his mother and attempted to make amends. The unexpected byproduct of bringing his daughter along was what his daughter witnessed and the enduring impression it left. He can be comforted by the fact that he likely won’t be transmitting estrangement to future generations by showing his children that even an all but lost relationship, deserves sincere effort and determination.

Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is the author of Creating Your Perfect Family Size (Wiley 2011) and is a Marriage Therapist in Highland Park. Please respond to this column via his website www.FamilyThinking.com

Dr. Singer,
I read your piece on my visit to my mother and appreciated your understanding and description of my daughter's unexpected part in that visit. What you wrote seemed insightful and very accurate, thank you.

Frederick Woolverton, Ph. D.

The American Dream That Beckons Your Teen; Let It Wait

Bill Doherty, who I cite in this blog every chance I get, raises some terrific questions in his Psychology Today essay on Abby Sunderland, the teenager who sailed around the world. He makes some crucial points about the role of modern parents in how they give guidance and supervision to their children.

When the American dream is calling your child, how do you say no?
How have we allowed our adolescents to become adults and our children to become adolescents?
And how do parents lose their moorings when children profess a dream of competitive success?

Doherty described his own family this way: “Back in the ancient 1980s, before the age of the super child, when my son asked to add a second sport to his schedule, we said sure, if you want to drop the first one. We were not yet burdened by the cultural norm that every child is a bundle of undiscovered potential that parents are responsible to uncover and develop, no matter the cost.

Of course, the young have always had dreams, but we used to think that they should grow up before deciding on which dreams to pursue as part of an adult life. From Abby’s blog: "It has been my dream since I was 13 years old and began single-handing, to one day sail solo around the world. I am 16 years old and this blog will contain the story of my attempt to become the world's youngest solo circumnavigator.” Note the contemporary twist on the familiar round-the-world travel dream: it's to be solo and the youngest in history.

We now know that the human brain does not fully mature until around age 25 on average; that means Abby has 9 years of brain development to look forward to. For now, it's the job of parents to provide the missing prefrontal cortex for their offspring.

Abby's father said: "Sailing and life in general is dangerous. Teenagers drive cars. Does that mean teenagers shouldn't drive a car?” When a parent of a minor child compares a year of solo sailing around the world, including in the South Pacific hurricane season, to driving a car in the neighborhood, it sounds delusional to outsiders. But it feels sane to parents who have been seduced by today's culture of competitive childhood where the dreams of youth distort the judgment of adults. Behind every super child is a supportive but ultimately wimpy parent.

Doherty wisely concludes: “The antidote is simple: let high-achieving children be children first, with time to grow up, and in the meantime let parents be the adults in the family.”

I encourage you to read Doherty’s entire piece by clicking here