Single Parenting

Being a single parent is never an easy job! Single Parents face many obstacles, from talking to our children about sex & drugs, to discipline. This portion of our website is here to assist you with those parenting choices and ideas for coping with parenting duties. Two thumbs up to those who give it their ALL as single parents!!
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As seen on "Oprah", 11/13/2006--"The Secret Language of Babies". Learn the "5 universal baby words" that all parents should know. The babies use only these "5 baby words to tell you what is wrong with them". If You missed the episode of Oprah, you can watch it on Oprah.com .

The Dunstan Baby Language DVD
Pre-order your copy at www.dunstanbaby.com (available Nov. 27).

Being a parent can be a tough job for two parents, being a single mother can be an even tougher job!  This section of our website is devoted to providing helpful tips and ideas for single parents!

7 reasons babies cry and how to soothe them

Babies cry. There's no way to get around it.

Editor's note: Columnist MP Dunleavey and eight other women have come together online to strip away the myths surrounding money, lay bare their assets and liberate themselves from debt. Follow the quest for financial fabulousness of these "Women in Red" every second Monday in Dunleavey's column on MSN Money.

Dating Again? - Tips to Introducing a New Person to Your Kids

Editor's note: Columnist MP Dunleavey and eight other women have come together online to strip away the myths surrounding money, lay bare their assets and liberate themselves from debt. Follow the quest for financial fabulousness of these "Women in Red" every second Monday in Dunleavey's column on MSN Money.

Whenever you hear stories about women having children later in life -- think TV anchor Joan Lunden's twins or the 66-year-old Romanian woman who conceived a couple of years ago -- the focus is usually on health risks or ethical concerns.

But what about money?

For those of us (ahem) contemplating parenthood at the not-so-tender age of 40, the financial risks can be equally high. Yet you're more likely to be warned about the potential for diabetes or Down syndrome than what will happen to your retirement plans.

Especially if you haven't been terribly aggressive about making those sorts of prudent, future-oriented financial plans to begin with.

Not that I know anyone who fits that description.

This is not to say that older women shouldn't be having kids. But if you've postponed starting a family, as my husband and I have, it's vital to do a more detailed cost-benefit analysis of what having a child will mean financially and emotionally.

The older-mom trend:
The trend toward women having children later is well-documented. According to the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003 was a record year for births to women between the ages of 40 and 44.

At more than 100,000 babies, it was the largest number of births in that age group recorded in a single year.
It was a 5% increase over the previous year; it also was double the 1981 number of births for mothers in that age group.

Between 2002 and 2003, the birth rate for women ages 35 to 39 also rose by 6%.

Of course, one of the reasons people postpone childrearing is so they can further their careers. But whether that means many of these women, single or married, found themselves in more stable economic circumstances is unclear.

Let's hope so, because having kids is expensive for anyone -- but when you're older, the timing of those expenses can take a toll.

The cost of child rearing:
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual report, "Expenditures on Children by Families," in 2004 a two-parent family was likely to spend over six figures to raise one child from birth to age 17.

• The cost of raising a child from birth to 17
• If your pre-tax income is: You're likely to spend:
• Less than $41,700 $134,370
• From $41,700 - $70,200 $184,320
• More than $70,200 $269,000
• Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2004.

Obviously you don't shell out all that money at birth; the costs build as your child grows and his or her needs increase. But the numbers are even more daunting when you consider some of the other parental expenses my fellow colleagues and I have written about:

• The additional health and lifestyle costs of pregnancy and prenatal preparation are not included in the above estimates. (Read "Raising your quarter-million-dollar baby.")
• Dozens of "hidden" new-baby expenses aren't included. (Read "A bouncing baby can bust your budget.")
• The cost of a break in one's career isn't included. (Read "Cost of being a stay-at-home mom: $1 million.")
• The cost of college tuition is not included. (Use The Baby Center’s calculator to add in college costs.)

Most people see children as a joy, a priceless gift -- and so they are. But those powerful emotions make it hard to weigh what that extra $269,000, deposited into a retirement account -- instead of soccer lessons -- might yield.

Or how the timing of junior's college career might affect the security of your old age.

For example, Anna, one of the Women in Red, is 41 and has a 16-month-old toddler. She will be grappling with tuition costs at the very moment when she and her husband will also be facing retirement.

Given that tuition, fees and other college-related expenses can run you more than $10,000 a year at a public institution and exceed $30,000 at a private one, most older parents will struggle to fund both their child's 529 plan and their own 401(k) at the same time.

The return on investment:
But of course, this isn't just a financial decision. In fact, as my husband and I have debated this issue while sitting comfortably on the parental fence, the financial costs have taken a back seat to a much bigger concern for us:

What do you get for this investment?

Raising your own little zygote is of course a blessing and a privilege, but what I've wanted to know is if the emotional and psychological yields are worth it.

While the benefits of marriage, in terms of health, longevity, resistance to depression and even greater wealth, have been demonstrated repeatedly, the effect of children on your quality of life or well-being isn't so clear.

No parental advantage:
Like many people, I've assumed that, as you get older, your children become a source of comfort, well worth all the financial and emotional energy you invested over the years.

Not necessarily. Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, a sociology professor at the University of Florida, published a study in 2003, which found that older parents and people without children enjoy similar levels of well-being in their later years.

Nor do people with children seem to enjoy any greater happiness in their younger years.

A study of 13,017 adults published last month in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, found that parents experience significantly higher levels of depression than nonparents.

And in a now-famous study published in the journal Science, in 2004, when researchers asked 909 women in Texas to record the events of a single day and rate how much they enjoyed various activities, spending time with their kids didn't even crack the top five, which were: sex, socializing, relaxing, praying or meditating and eating.

Gains and losses:
It's not that parents don't love or value their children, says Richard Easterlin, professor of economics at the University of Southern California. The trouble is that children are a constant source of stress, particularly financially, and that seems to wipe out the emotional gains for many people.

"If you look at family satisfaction in relation to children, you see a significant positive effect," says Easterlin, referring to the data he has analyzed. "If you look at parental financial satisfaction, you see a significant negative effect.

"So if you look at overall happiness, which is influenced by these two components, they wash each other out."

Yet it's clear that, no matter what children require in terms of time, energy or money, the investment must be "worth it" -- because people keep having them. Which leads me to believe that there is a reward, at least for some people, that goes beyond mere happiness -- perhaps to something you might call fulfillment.

More than money:
"People aren't having kids because of some cost-benefit analysis," says Clark Derry-Williams, director of research for Northwest Environment Watch, a research group that focuses on quality of life and sustainability. "We have kids for huge numbers of complicated reasons."

Derry-Williams has made it his specialty to keep up with research in the field of economics and happiness. "In the short term, if you look at the dollar value you lose, it can be substantial -- but at the same time, it's like an ongoing, lifelong investment in happiness," he says.

Perhaps that's why, despite all the reasons why a 40-year-old woman might want to think twice before having a child, she finds herself thinking a third time and deciding she might not want to miss what could be the experience of a lifetime. No matter what the price.

That isn't rational. But the best decisions in life rarely are. As a mother of four wrote recently on the Women in Red blog, "When I balance our budget book each month I fight back tears of frustration and fear at our precarious financial state and lack of progress," she says.

And yet, she adds, it's not about the thousands they've spent on home renovations and two cars and "soccer practice, gymnastics practice, swimming lessons, violin lessons and band practice, all in the same week -- sometimes the same day!" It's about the intangibles:

"…Dandelion bouquets, seed art, cheering that winning soccer team, watching our daughter perform her first recital, the laughter that seems to make your heart fill until it explodes as our youngest splashes in the pool with his daddy, and that little voice saying, 'Night night mummy. I love you,' as I tuck in our two-year-old each night." (Read the entire conversation, “Kids: A Cost-Benefit Analysis.”)

Remarkably, when I plug those lines into my mental spreadsheet next to the under funded retirement account and the skyrocketing cost of college, that little voice trumps them all. As I keep discovering over and over again in this column, whoever suggested that we humans are economic creatures was dead wrong.

No brats allowed! Is American society increasingly intolerant of tots?
By Victoria Clayton
MSNBC contributor / Updated: 11:31 a.m. CT Aug 15, 2006
For Cindy Nooney's 3-year-old twin boys, playing with the Thomas the Train set at their local bookstore in Southern California is a major thrill. Jack and Sam push Thomas, Arthur and friends down the track, they run around the table, jump up and down — and, of course, they squeeeaal.

Nooney expects as much in the children's section of the store. But on a recent afternoon, she was surprised by an employee who confronted her, calling her darling Jack a tyrant.

“He was a little loud but this is a children’s section,” says Nooney. "They run a noisy, cavernous bookstore but they don’t want kids to make any noise? It just seems ridiculous and leads me to believe that they don’t want kids, they want silent kids.”

The bookstore is not the only place that likes quiet, controlled children — and isn't afraid to say so. Across the nation, there are signs of a low-burning uprising against children supposedly behaving badly in public.
Eateries from California to Massachusetts have posted signs on doors and menus saying “We love children, especially when they are tucked in chairs and well behaved” or “Kids must use indoor voices.” In North Carolina an online petition was started last year to establish child-free restaurants — the petition loosely compared dining with children to dining with cigarette smoke.

In response to an MSNBC.com story about the controversy over pets in public places, some readers wrote in to say they'd much rather see a dog at dinner, the movies or the mall than little "cretins." Dogs are better behaved, they smell better and they're much cuter, wrote one reader.

Josephine Charlton, a public relations consultant in West Hollywood, Calif., says she loves children but feels they are becoming public nuisances nonetheless. Her local Whole Foods has been overrun by “breeders” with an oversized sense of entitlement, she says, museums are now inappropriately clogged with strollers, and even first-class travel has morphed into "Romper Room" in the air.

“You can’t work on planes anymore because of kids running around,” says Charlton. She recalls a recent flight when parents allowed their toddler son to run up and down the aisle in first-class. “My friend said, ‘Hey, would you mind watching your child?’ You would’ve thought he wanted to nail the kid to a cross!”

Charlton, who doesn’t have children but describes herself as an adoring godmother of two, says too many parents act as if the earth revolves around their children, and the general public should treat them as such. Yet kids are more out of control than ever, she says.

Is it true? Are children these days allowed to run amok like never before? Has public etiquette gone to hell in a hand basket or — er — a Dora The Explorer backpack? Or is society simply becoming more intolerant of little tikes?
Etiquette maven Cindy Post Senning argues it's the latter. “Almost every generation will try to say that the current generation is worse than ever,” says Senning, director of the Emily Post Institute, an organization founded in 1946 by our nation’s first grand dame of good manners, Emily Post, Senning’s great-grandmother. "I don’t think children are any worse than they’ve ever been.”

Good parenting equals quiet kids?
Diane M. Hoffman, an associate professor of education at the University of Virginia who studies how culture influences parenting, agrees that society is becoming more child-unfriendly. “We have a lot of pro-family, pro-child rhetoric out there but there’s little action behind the words,” she says. “We continually marginalize children."

Hoffman notes that even experts and parenting resources that are supposedly child-centered can be blamed. Widely accepted standards of “good” American parenting such as giving children time-outs and naming emotions (e.g. “You don’t hate your brother, you’re just frustrated!”) have helped foster the notion that children are pint-sized puzzles for adults to figure out and master rather than real human beings, she says.

The “parenting industry” that has sprung up over the last few decades, she contends, promotes a style of parenting that leads both parents and onlookers alike to believe good (read: quiet) children are a reflection of mastering proper parenting.

Senning, who is the mother of two sons and author of “The Gift of Good Manners: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Respectful, Kind, Considerate Children,” says it’s mostly busy lifestyles that have conspired against kids.

“We have so many more single parents or families where both parents work,” says Senning. “People get the sense that kids spend too much time in childcare and that they don’t want to have more childcare, so they simply want to bring the children along with them.”

Sadie Wasmund, an Iowa City mother who quit working to spend as much time as possible with her daughter, Alyssa, age 2, completely understands. But she acknowledges it's not always appropriate to take kids out in public.
“I do think some people turn parenting into something it shouldn’t be," she says. "They want to take their children to fancy restaurants, art openings and R-rated movies instead of getting sitters.”

But claiming children have suddenly become public nuisances is ridiculous, she says.

Besides, kids aren't the only ones misbehaving, says Wasmund. "I see more adults behaving badly in public than children,” she says, noting they leave messes around the tables at bookstores, they speak too loudly on their cell phones and they’re more likely than children to be pushy and rude.

Christy Bell, a Vero Beach, Fla., mom, parenting instructor and former restaurant owner, says she's seen her share of misbehaved adults. "When I owned a sub shop, I had parents curse at me while I was taking their order, and then turn around and yell at their children for poor behavior,” she says. “Maybe we have to look at what adults, all adults, are modeling for children.”

She also says she’s noticed a certain amount of unreasonableness in what parents and society as a whole expect out of kids.

“In my parenting classes I had one parent who asked me what to do in the following situation: the family eats out every night and every night the toddler cries or throws food,” says Bell. “It seems to me that the answer is to understand what is a reasonable expectation for the behavior of a toddler. Is it really reasonable to eat out every night? That’s a hard time to expect a child to be confined for 45 minutes or an hour.”

Yet, Bell says, plenty of parents think it’s entirely reasonable and they’re shocked and dismayed when they can’t get their kids to comply.

“I don’t think the solution is more childcare or ‘better’ children. But I do think you have to make a lot of choices about where to go,” Senning says.

In fact, she says, sit-down restaurant behavior is learned and has to be worked up to. “You take a 2-year-old to the snack bar down at the park,” she says. “That way they get to experience the fun part of going to a restaurant and you get to manage the time and how well your child is doing. Next, you go to a family restaurant where you learn about ordering. But you always bring activities and toys.”

As parents, be mindful to encourage those businesses that are respectful and friendly to children. Along with the growing number of kid-unfriendly places there are coffee shops, supermarkets, shoe stores, furniture stores and even cell phone centers that are making efforts to welcome parents and kids. Some are installing play centers, handing out toys, providing supervised care or offering interesting shopping carts for children in an effort to make families feel more supported.

'Two rudes don't make a polite'
Still, there will probably always be people out there who will kiss Fido on the mouth but sneer at your little guy or girl.

“We’ve been in a few situations where Alyssa hasn’t even done anything and still we didn’t feel welcome. There were just these looks,” says Wasmund.
What's worse is if — like Nooney at the bookstore — somebody actually admonishes you for your child’s behavior and you feel the behavior is appropriate given the setting.

According to Senning, there’s a gracious way to handle even this. “I always say that two rudes don’t make a polite,” she says. “Just say something like ‘I feel Jamie is doing just fine but we’ll be done in a few minutes and I’ll be on my way.’”
Nooney wound up having a discreet talk with the manager. “It probably won’t do anything to change the attitude toward children but at least the manager understands that I’m not spending my money someplace that claims to be geared toward small children but isn’t.”
Senning says she handled the situation perfectly. “You don’t want to wind up in a confrontation. Remember, the golden rule of parenting is to always behave how you want your kids to behave,” she says.

Victoria Clayton is a freelance writer based in California and co-author of "Fearless Pregnancy: Wisdom and Reassurance from a Doctor, a Midwife and a Mom," published by Fair Winds Press.
© 2006 MSNBC Interactive

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