Ideal Child Spacing and Other Things You Don’t Need to Worry About
The older I get, the more I realize that I do not know all of the things I think I know. Case in point: I spent the better part of my life believing that five years between children was not only optimal child-spacing, but that it was positively superior! There were three girls in my family, each spaced about five years apart. This meant that ever so often, for a period that began with my September birthday and ended with my older sister’s November one, the three of us would be five, ten and fifteen, or ten, fifteen and twenty. As a child, I judged this set up to be really cool. I was positively smug about it! I can even remember solemnly congratulating my parents on their cleverness and foresight, as I shook their hands with the kind of gravity that only an eight year old can muster.
“Oh, but people should have their kids close enough so they become friends! Children born so far apart will never be close!” I must have heard that refrain dozens of times from people who made it their business to comment, the scorn blossoming in my underdeveloped bosom every time. How could people not grasp the brilliance of our system?
There were other advantages apart from the cool incremental number thing. It was a shock to discover that many of my friends and their siblings not only regularly screamed at each other, but that they actually physically fought with one another; not just wrestling, but actual hitting and punching and hair pulling. I can remember intentionally hurting each of my own sisters only once in the entire course of my growing up. At four I bit my older sister in the hand, and at seventeen, yes SEVENTEEN, I kicked my younger sister across the room. Both incidents stand out in sharp relief because of their shear rarity! Our house seemed so much quieter than the riotous, rollicking homes of my friends, and as a thinking, bookish sort of child, that was the way I liked it.
At the time, I simply assumed that the reason we had so much peace and quiet at my house was that we three girls had nothing to fight about. Born so far apart, we weren’t interested in the same kinds of games or toys. We didn’t borrow and have the opportunity to ruin each other’s clothes. It never occurred to me until I had children of my own that maybe the reason no one raised their voice at my house was that my parents were not the screaming kind. We had no loud conflict role models.
And so it was that after college, and marriage, and the birth of my son, I serenely folded my hands to wait the requisite four years before getting pregnant again with our second child. My daughter, however, had other plans.
My son was twenty-two months old when I skipped a period. That wasn’t too unusual given the fact that he and I were still a nursing pair, but a few weeks later when my nipple began hurting as he latched on, I felt a nervous twinge and went looking for that test at the back of the medicine cabinet, left over from our attempts to get pregnant the first time. I didn’t even wait until morning like the directions said, but went straight into the bathroom to pee on the stick. Oh dear God! I had a plus sign! I hope my daughter will forgive me for putting this in print, but I cried and cried when I found out I was pregnant ahead of schedule. It was simply inconceivable! My perfect plan all in ruins. From the age of five I had visualized how my perfectly spaced family would look: girl and a boy five years apart! I am a woman who likes a plan, and this one was one of my favorites! I had been foiled by five day old super-sperm, and the fierce spirit of a child too determined to allow the opportunity to slip by! “Ha!”, said the universe. “You will have two years and seven months between your children, and there is nothing you can do about it.
I spent my pregnancy imagining the worst: I would have to wean my son before he was ready. Jealousy was going to eat his heart out when his rightful place in mama’s arms was filled prematurely by this newcomer. My kids would end up hating each other. I was looking forward towards eighteen years of screaming, hitting and hair pulling, followed by strained Thanksgiving dinners ever after!
You know what? Not one of those things came to pass. Want to know what happened instead? One day I looked down at my two babies, one latched on to the right breast, and one latched on to the left, and they were holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes. The epiphany descended upon me slowly: My kids were absolutely smitten with each other. I could not have been more surprised if they had been transformed into goats before my very eyes. Humility was knocking politely at my door.
And since? My kids get along great. There are certainly hard moments. They do fight over the same games and toys, and they do wear the same clothes sometimes, though they are not yet of an age to care about stains. What I note is that they have a deep affection for one another, and more often than not, they have each other’s welfare in mind. It’s as if they accept that they are members of the same team and their behavior out in the world reflects that. My children will share the last cookie without being prompted, which is something my sisters and I never would have done.
My child-spacing lesson in humility, prompted me to make something of a study of child-spacing and sibling relationships over the last couple of years, and here are the results of my non-scientific research: It makes very little objective difference how you choose, or don’t choose, to space your children. Their subsequent relationships will be determined far more by the unique temperaments of the children involved, and by the dynamics within the family, than by how far apart they are in age. I know at least half a dozen families with children spaced almost exactly like mine, and each sibling relationship is as unique to the pair, as is a child a unique being unto herself.
There are a few things I believe you CAN do to help your children create a positive bond, especially at the beginning. My son saw my daughter born, so he was very clear about where she came from, and there was never any enforced separation from me during labor or afterwards. I tandem nursed my two, and though that decision proved to be enormously challenging for me, I would not now change the way it went. I really think tandem nursing was an invaluable tool that helped my children build intimacy with each other. Sleeping together as a family helped my son stay within the circle of our arms during those first months of nesting in, so he rarely felt as if he had been pushed aside in favor of a usurper. Nowadays I credit attachment parenting with the positive relationship my two kids have created together.
I still like it quiet. My partner and I are not the screaming kind either, and I spend a lot of time hoping that without loud conflict role models, the atmosphere of our home will be as peaceful as it was in my parents’. So far the results have been mixed! Oh, and by the way, contrary to the beliefs of the nosy doomsayers from my childhood who knew the “right” way to space children, though we did not play very much together as children, my sisters and I have developed close and loving relationships in our adult lives. Children raised in the same family understand each other in a way that no one else really can, no matter how far apart they are spaced.
The older I get, the more I realize that I do not know all of the things I think I know. Case in point: I spent the better part of my life believing that five years between children was not only optimal child-spacing, but that it was positively superior! There were three girls in my family, each spaced about five years apart. This meant that ever so often, for a period that began with my September birthday and ended with my older sister’s November one, the three of us would be five, ten and fifteen, or ten, fifteen and twenty. As a child, I judged this set up to be really cool. I was positively smug about it! I can even remember solemnly congratulating my parents on their cleverness and foresight, as I shook their hands with the kind of gravity that only an eight year old can muster.
“Oh, but people should have their kids close enough so they become friends! Children born so far apart will never be close!” I must have heard that refrain dozens of times from people who made it their business to comment, the scorn blossoming in my underdeveloped bosom every time. How could people not grasp the brilliance of our system?
There were other advantages apart from the cool incremental number thing. It was a shock to discover that many of my friends and their siblings not only regularly screamed at each other, but that they actually physically fought with one another; not just wrestling, but actual hitting and punching and hair pulling. I can remember intentionally hurting each of my own sisters only once in the entire course of my growing up. At four I bit my older sister in the hand, and at seventeen, yes SEVENTEEN, I kicked my younger sister across the room. Both incidents stand out in sharp relief because of their shear rarity! Our house seemed so much quieter than the riotous, rollicking homes of my friends, and as a thinking, bookish sort of child, that was the way I liked it.
At the time, I simply assumed that the reason we had so much peace and quiet at my house was that we three girls had nothing to fight about. Born so far apart, we weren’t interested in the same kinds of games or toys. We didn’t borrow and have the opportunity to ruin each other’s clothes. It never occurred to me until I had children of my own that maybe the reason no one raised their voice at my house was that my parents were not the screaming kind. We had no loud conflict role models.
And so it was that after college, and marriage, and the birth of my son, I serenely folded my hands to wait the requisite four years before getting pregnant again with our second child. My daughter, however, had other plans.
My son was twenty-two months old when I skipped a period. That wasn’t too unusual given the fact that he and I were still a nursing pair, but a few weeks later when my nipple began hurting as he latched on, I felt a nervous twinge and went looking for that test at the back of the medicine cabinet, left over from our attempts to get pregnant the first time. I didn’t even wait until morning like the directions said, but went straight into the bathroom to pee on the stick. Oh dear God! I had a plus sign! I hope my daughter will forgive me for putting this in print, but I cried and cried when I found out I was pregnant ahead of schedule. It was simply inconceivable! My perfect plan all in ruins. From the age of five I had visualized how my perfectly spaced family would look: girl and a boy five years apart! I am a woman who likes a plan, and this one was one of my favorites! I had been foiled by five day old super-sperm, and the fierce spirit of a child too determined to allow the opportunity to slip by! “Ha!”, said the universe. “You will have two years and seven months between your children, and there is nothing you can do about it.
I spent my pregnancy imagining the worst: I would have to wean my son before he was ready. Jealousy was going to eat his heart out when his rightful place in mama’s arms was filled prematurely by this newcomer. My kids would end up hating each other. I was looking forward towards eighteen years of screaming, hitting and hair pulling, followed by strained Thanksgiving dinners ever after!
You know what? Not one of those things came to pass. Want to know what happened instead? One day I looked down at my two babies, one latched on to the right breast, and one latched on to the left, and they were holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes. The epiphany descended upon me slowly: My kids were absolutely smitten with each other. I could not have been more surprised if they had been transformed into goats before my very eyes. Humility was knocking politely at my door.
And since? My kids get along great. There are certainly hard moments. They do fight over the same games and toys, and they do wear the same clothes sometimes, though they are not yet of an age to care about stains. What I note is that they have a deep affection for one another, and more often than not, they have each other’s welfare in mind. It’s as if they accept that they are members of the same team and their behavior out in the world reflects that. My children will share the last cookie without being prompted, which is something my sisters and I never would have done.
My child-spacing lesson in humility, prompted me to make something of a study of child-spacing and sibling relationships over the last couple of years, and here are the results of my non-scientific research: It makes very little objective difference how you choose, or don’t choose, to space your children. Their subsequent relationships will be determined far more by the unique temperaments of the children involved, and by the dynamics within the family, than by how far apart they are in age. I know at least half a dozen families with children spaced almost exactly like mine, and each sibling relationship is as unique to the pair, as is a child a unique being unto herself.
There are a few things I believe you CAN do to help your children create a positive bond, especially at the beginning. My son saw my daughter born, so he was very clear about where she came from, and there was never any enforced separation from me during labor or afterwards. I tandem nursed my two, and though that decision proved to be enormously challenging for me, I would not now change the way it went. I really think tandem nursing was an invaluable tool that helped my children build intimacy with each other. Sleeping together as a family helped my son stay within the circle of our arms during those first months of nesting in, so he rarely felt as if he had been pushed aside in favor of a usurper. Nowadays I credit attachment parenting with the positive relationship my two kids have created together.
I still like it quiet. My partner and I are not the screaming kind either, and I spend a lot of time hoping that without loud conflict role models, the atmosphere of our home will be as peaceful as it was in my parents’. So far the results have been mixed! Oh, and by the way, contrary to the beliefs of the nosy doomsayers from my childhood who knew the “right” way to space children, though we did not play very much together as children, my sisters and I have developed close and loving relationships in our adult lives. Children raised in the same family understand each other in a way that no one else really can, no matter how far apart they are spaced.

gaelenbillingsley_childspacing.doc | |
File Size: | 35 kb |
File Type: | doc |