Re: Baby making

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 04:52:19 +0000, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

In article <proto-73BE8B.00343520082007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Walter Bushell <proto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <JMzyyv.Guv@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:

I'd
suggest having the second child when the first child is 5 or 6 or
whenever he's old enough to go to school.

NO, NO, NO. The worst time is going to school time. Here the kid is
separating from his family and a rival comes at exactly the time he is
feeling most insecure. Younger or later is better for dealing with the
problem.

If you mean, so young that the kid doesn't really notice that
there's ANOTHER KID come into his life, monopolizing his parents'
attention, then yes. I have a photo somewhere of my son, aged
sixteen months, peering over the rim of my chair as I nurse his
sister, age twenty-four hours. He's *fascinated.* What IS that
strange new creature? A new kind of kittycat?

They got along fine when they were very little. Of course, I
was run nuts, taking care of two tinies all day, stranded in the
wilds of suburbia. I'm not sure who I would've killed first,
them or me, except that a kind lady called me up and said "Let's
find you some day care so you can get a job."

And that's the problem, you see. If you have two or, worse yet,
several small children all being toddlers together, their mother
is going to go insane. Taking care of small children is HELL.

I saw a mother in a park here in Nashville one day with 8 children, four
pairs of fraternal twins. They all looked enough alike that I am pretty
sure they were siblings. The oldest pair were about 10 years old, the
youngest pair not quite 2 years old. The mother looked exhausted. She
was of Middle Eastern ethnicity, and dressed in a chador, so I suspect
that her husband was probably tradition-minded enough that she was having
to do all of the child-rearing.

--
John F. Eldredge -- john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

.

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