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Larkin

First things first — the EPT was negative. So for now anyway, we're still one and done.

Next, thanks to everyone who posted or emailed to offer encouragement (and to suggest that Molly fire her OBGYN!). Your words were funny, wise, and provocative. One old friend sent this advice:

Her words triggered a lot of thoughts. In considering having a second child, was I, am I, really trying to duplicate my own childhood experience? Placing us against some conventional family template, and trying to make us fit?

Whatever kind of family you grew up in, there are bound to be things you want to preserve and things you want to do better. Some differences lie beyond our control; Larkin, for instance, is growing up in a family with less money than the ones Molly and I grew up in. Others reflect the different way we baby-boomer parents tend to view our children. Much more than our parents did, we place our kids smack at the center of our lives. We worry more, intervene more, hang out more. It's exaggerating only a little to say that a child today is part project, part friend, part fixation.

This brings me to the other challenging line in my friend's email. "Having more kids," she wrote, "will make you and Molly, well, less you and Molly." I can imagine readers bristling at this notion. What, if I have three children, am I not me anymore? Is personality really a zero-sum entity in family life — as they grow theirs, you lose yours? Is there some way in which my parents were fulfilled by having three children, while Molly and I would be ... depleted? And if so, what does that say about us?

As I was mulling this over, I happened across a recent column by the child and family therapist, John Rosemond. Rosemond has been a pet peeve of mine ever since I started reading his column years ago. He likes to tweak what he perceives to be Parental Correctness, condemning the indulgent style of today's parents. His emphasis on "respect," "authority," and "clear boundaries" always seemed punitive to me, a sophisticated version of "spare the rod, spoil the child," disguised as family therapy.

Well, that was before I had children. Nowadays, I'm a little worried to see that Rosemond sometimes makes sense to me. This week's column explains his belief that parents today pay too much attention to our children. In his view, we have convinced ourselves that our children's ultimate success or failure depends on how much we involve ourselves, moment to moment, in their lives right now. "The natural consequence of this state of over-focus," he writes, "is anxiety, self-doubt, and guilt."

And, yes a stressed and depleted marriage. Rosemond's recommendation is that couples find a way to be less involved with their children and more involved with each other, and with other adults. "In your wedding vows," he writes wryly, "you did not say, 'I take you to be my husband (or wife) until children do us part.'"

There's something to this. I'm sure every couple knows the feeling of their young child coming between them. Take Molly's and my vain attempts to have a conversation over our morning coffee, as Larkin shouts, "It's my turn to talk! It's my turn!" In fact, one of the reasons Molly and I considered having a second child is to make Larkin less central. To give her company and spread out the geometry of our family.

But the problem is more than that. To some extent, children come between the two of you because you have placed them there — at the center. Of course, a two-year-old is demanding. Just getting all the stuff done with her that needs doing takes up time and energy. But beyond that, both Molly and I find Larkin endlessly lovable and fascinating. The instinct, the reflex, is to pal around with her: to talk to her, and when she's not there, talk about her. There is a great deal of sweetness and fun to all this talk. But the flip side of it is a lot less time – and talk — for one another. In this respect anyway, I think my friend had it a little bit wrong. If having more kids will make me and Molly "less," it's not because we are trying to be like our parents, but because in some basic ways we are unlike them.

"The 1950s mother," John Rosemond writes, "went about her child-rearing with an almost casual attitude." Well, maybe my mother didn't feel exactly casual, managing two infants in a rundown city apartment while my father worked round the clock. But I think I know what Rosemond means. I remember what it felt like to be a kid in our family. There was no doubt that our parents loved us dearly. But there was a separateness. We didn't intrude on their pre-dinner cocktail hour. We didn't go to their parties or call their friends by their first names. And we didn't imagine that whatever our parents were doing at any given moment, they would rather be with us. We didn't have all that much interest in their world, and most of the time we didn't want them to meddle in ours.