Germinal writings on parenting multiples
I read this book with a twinge of nostalgia – and nausea.
My twins have now outgrown all-night breast-bottle feedings, infant bouts of inexplicable crying and multiple poops a day. The toddler years are not exactly peaceful, but that sickening sleep deprivation and round-the-clock care of the first year is over. Reading Twin Set brought back both the difficulties of those first few months as well as the sheer amazement of giving birth to, and caring for two tiny twins.
Twin Set is a practical guide to pregnancy, birth and the first years of parenting twins. The book doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive guide to parenting in general. If you want details on prenatal care, breastfeeding or toilet training, you’ll have to supplement with other books. But Twin Set does a good job of highlighting differences between parenting twins and parenting singletons. And as mothers of twins know, almost everything is different: pregnancy, birth, post-natal care (both for you and the babies), feeding, bathing, getting out of the house, discipline, starting school – and everything in between.
The best part of this book is that the advice is not simply the authors’ opinion but was gathered through a survey. According to the introduction, the authors surveyed 300 mothers of twins “from around the country” (presumably the US). The scientist in me wanted to know much more about this survey: how it was conducted; what questions were asked; how the mothers were chosen etc. Still, there is wisdom among 300 mothers, and that shows in the book.
Twin Set would be most useful for parents about to give birth to twins. No one is reading just after the birth, and within a year or so you will have figured it all out anyway. But for the parents-to-be there are many useful insights: just how difficult bathing two slippery, crying infants can be; the importance of recording all feeding and pooping in the first few months because you’ll forget who did what and when; that grocery shopping will never be as quick and easy, partly because most shopping carts have only one kid’s seat.
I do have a couple of gripes with the book.
The information is very (although implicitly) US-centered. Some things, like a “Snap ‘N Go” or leaving your kids in the car while you run back to the house, may not make sense outside America.
I also got tired of the book’s cutesy language and general dumbing-down. Consultant pediatricians, for instance, are called “Mommy Doc” and “Daddy Doc”. Really, we can handle a real name and title! And I’ve yet to meet a mother who would spend precious alone-time getting a manicure or doing word-puzzles.
My biggest gripe was with the book’s slant on the environment. Buying bottled water by the case-load (or at all) is simply irresponsible. Trying filtering. And, sorry, teaching your kids to play with empty toilet rolls does not negate thousands of disposable diapers in the land fill. Yes, there is debate on cloth versus disposable diapers (see The Great Disposable Diaper Debate) but telling parents to just “stop worrying” rather than make a conscious and informed decision seems, again, irresponsible (as is failing to disclose Twin Sets partnership with Pampers!).
Gripes aside, this is a useful and realistic book for parents embarking on the head-spinning adventure of raising multiples.
(Thanks to Random House for the review copy.)
This question has been on my mind since I started reading mommy-blogs – more so since I started my own.
What is the difference between showing cute photos of your children to relatives, friends, or even acquaintances met on airplanes, and posting those same photos to a blog? In my mind, a big difference.
Sharing pictures and guess-what-my-kid-did-today stories with relatives deepens a personal and hopefully enduring connection. Same for friends. Sharing with strangers and acquaintances strengthens your connection with that person, but does little for your kids.
In all of those circumstances, though, you have control over who sees the photos and hears the stories, and more often than not you get direct feedback, so you know whether you want to continue sharing with this person.
Not so with a blog, of course. That photo of your baby breastfeeding, your toddler in diapers or your preschooler sleeping are out there for anyone with an internet connection to see.
Call me paranoid, Luddite, introverted (I may indeed be all of those) but I have a problem with posting intimate moments of my child’s life to the world. It is, after all, their life.
“Your children are not your children,” as Kahil Gibran famously wrote and Sweet Honey in the Rock beautifully sang.
That photo, now cataloged on the internet, is a fragment of a life that will expand in a million directions to form a complex adult with a very real and personal past. We’d think twice about posting a candid bedroom shot of our spouse or an entertaining faux pas of a sibling. I don’t think children are different.
Informed consent and benefit-sharing are two basic ethical principles drilled into every student of moral philosophy. It’s generally acknowledged that receiving informed consent from a young child is impossible. As for sharing benefits? Well, why do we blog? To share our “lessons learned” with a community of peers; to see our writing and photography published; to be heard; to gain a following; to earn money….
Few of these benefits go directly (if at all) to the main subjects of the blog, our children. Yet they carry a fair share of the risks, mainly loss of privacy although one could imagine worse.
So where do you draw the line? Have I already crossed it, despite attempts to respect my family’s privacy? Are all memoirs – and blogs are memoirs of a kind – exploitative? As with most ethical issues, debate is open and sometimes the best criterion is “I know it when I see it.”
I’ve seen plenty of insightful, respectful mommy- and daddy-blogs. I’ve also seen many where my sole thought is, “Are those kids going to be pissed….”
