I couldn’t agree more with #1 and #3, and my husband and I are still–TWO kids later–trying to do #8. Sigh.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!

My big boy turned two last week.  We threw the kind of party I said I’d never throw for a two-year-old–yes, complete with bounce house and elaborately decorated cupcakes.  The kid is into ladybugs, which was the catalyst for the above work of art.  So there you have it.  This is the parent I’ve become.

While this is by no means a comprehensive list of parenting books, I thought it might be interesting to do a rational review of the publications that I have consulted thus far in order to rear a child to the age of two.  When Zack was a first born, I spent many of his naps, reading furiously, beads of sweat forming on my brow, thinking, “What the heck am I doing here?”  While I don’t consult books about babies so ravenously now, I still usually have one on the nightstand that I might peruse here and there, looking for handy hints.

I essentially cherry picked books for whatever information fit my own instinctual sense of parenting, so I’m not sure if reading books ultimately helped that much.  But if you take parenting seriously, kind of like it’s one of your jobs (or maybe your only job), then maybe, like me, you try to do a little research here and there.

Here are the books that I read.  What follows is pure opinion, although I’ve attempted to filter it through the prism of rationality.

If anyone would like to chime in, I’d be very interested in hearing about your opinions on these or other books.

The Baby Book by William Sears, M.D., and Martha Sears, R.N.

A friend gave me this book, along with a pile of others, and since it’s textbook size, I assumed it would be a comprehensive guide to taking care of a baby.  There is a lot of useful information in it, but it comes with an agenda.  Sears espouses attachment parenting, a style of parenting that involves practices like bed sharing and baby wearing.  Dr. Sears engenders a lot of admiration among many moms, and others seem to find themselves enraged by him.  Click here for an amusing rant on attachment parenting by Mommy In Chief.  This is one of several I found online; Sears can get moms bent out of shape.  Many feel attachment parenting is just too intense and full of too high expectations and scare tactics.  And then there are die hard APers who just adore him.

Sears advice didn’t make me feel like an underachiever, but I do have questions about the evidence for some of the ideas put forth in this book.  For example, he advocates baby wearing, which is fine.  We did the sling occasionally, and we carry our son a lot now.  But some of the claims Sears makes about baby wearing don’t really hold up under examination, like this one:

Besides being happier, carried babies develop better, possibly because the energy they would have wasted on crying is diverted into growth.  Also, a baby learns much in the arms of a busy parent. (8)

There are no studies cited in this book, so these claims about slings are never fully explained.  (But these are such ubiquitous beliefs about baby carrying now that after labor, I received a hospital handout advising me to wear my baby to make him smarter.)  The thinking is that babies in slings cry less, so they’re more often in the “quiet and alert” state, so they are more receptive to learning.  There are quite a few leaps of logic based on the premise that babies cry less in the sling.  Assuming that much is true, crying less does not necessarily indicate babies are in the “quiet and alert” state.  Maybe they’re asleep.  And even if they are quiet and alert, how can one subjectively identify just when and what they are learning and compare it to what they might learn by playing quietly on a blanket on the floor?  If there’s a way to do this, I’m all ears, but Sears doesn’t provide any evidence of it.  But he doesn’t hesitate to tell parents that their babies will develop better if carried in a sling, so there’s a guilt factor there.  If you don’t do this, a famous doctor is telling you that you’re not doing right by your baby.

So while I’m sure baby wearing is convenient and a great way to hang out with your baby, to make the claim that it’s more beneficial for child development might be going a bit far.  (And if anyone can enlighten me here, fantastic.)

Sears also cautions parents to beware of baby trainers and trust their own instincts.  But then he uses a straw man argument by saying that “…baby training requires insensitivity.”  And then:  ”The basis of baby training is to help babies become more ‘convenient’” (9).  This is pretty emotional rhetoric, and when I read it as a new parent, I was horrified to think that these baby trainers existed and convinced I would never let one near my baby.  Of course, I was thinking they were training babies to do flips or ride unicycles.  What I did not understand (and would come to understand all too well) was that Sears is of course talking about sleep training.  If you paint sleep training as an insensitive act that parents only do to make their babies less trouble, rather than a way to help your baby learn to get himself to sleep, then yeah, sleep training looks bad.  But that’s only because Sears totally misrepresents it.

So in short, this book might be useful, but for me, it didn’t hold up to a skeptical examination, so it was ultimately hard to trust its advice.  I did, however, do some bed sharing and baby carrying, and I admire that Sears crusades for these practices.  I agree they are legitimate choices for parents that may have been suppressed in the past. I get that.  He just goes a bit too far and claims without proof that his parenting choices are the best ones.

The Complete and Authoritative Guide:  Caring for Your Baby and Young Child, Birth to Age 5 by the American Academy of Pediatrics

I have to admit that only just now as I typed the title into this post did I realize that the first part of it is, “The Complete and Authoritative Guide.”  Pretty confident aren’t they, the ol’ AAP?

This book was a great reference.  I am making my way through the chapter on how two-year-olds develop.  Common illnesses are listed in the back of the book.  Sample menus for different ages help you figure out what your child is “supposed” to be eating.  All information is presented very factually, and there are cute illustrations.  If there is one book I would recommend to new parents, it’s this one, mostly for the basic medical and safety information, as well as the descriptions of developmental milestones and growth.

Of course, the AAP can claim to be authoritative, but that doesn’t mean we have to bow down to its authority.  Any time there is a policy stance stated in the book, it is separated into a little box and stated as a policy of the AAP.  We’ve written quite a bit on this blog about the AAP recommendation to breast feed exclusively for four to six months and then to continue until “at least the baby’s first birthday” (80).  However, the AAP doesn’t lay it on quite as thick as Sears, assuring mothers, “But it’s important not to feel guilty if you decide to bottle-feed your baby….infant formula is an acceptable and nutritious alternative to human milk.”

Similar to Sears’ book, this one has no references or bibliography.  And similar to Sears’ book, this one will hurt your toe if it falls on your bare foot.  It’s big.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child, by Marc Weissbluth, M.D.

This is a great overview of childhood sleep and how it develops.  References to studies are provided in the back of the book.  Various approaches to sleep are covered, including sleep training and bed sharing.  The book explains sleep training in some detail.  My only complaint about this book is that either Weissbluth or his ghost writer are absolutely dullsville.  The prose leaves a lot to be desired.  Maybe the tedious tone is meant to provide parents with a little sedative so we can get a good nap in.  If you can muddle through, there’s a lot of information that will help with the sleep thing–which is the main thing for new parents.

Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron

A friend saw this on a bookshelf recently and hissed at it.  This is another book that brings on the guilt for many parents who attempt to make and freeze all baby food.  I was fully prepared to take this on, but as it turned out, my son hated purees and went almost directly from breast milk to broccoli and brown rice by the fistful at around eight months old.  So I never really played with Yaron’s recipes.  I hear that the super baby porridge and a lot of the other concoctions are great.  So I’m sure this is a book that would come in very handy if you decided you were going to make all your baby food.  I didn’t, and the book sat on the shelf.

Ruth Yaron also natters on quite a bit about topics that are very beside the point of making baby food.  At one point, she advises readers to stand far away from their blenders, since the electromagnetic radiation can be dangerous.  I think it was at that point in the book that I stopped trusting her nutrition expertise.  In her introduction, she says that she learned everything by going to many, many sources, including lots of health food stores.  It seems like she probably got tons of great information and mixed it in some crazy information.  So that’s a real negative of this book for me, but if I had actually needed make baby food, maybe I would have been able to see the little blurb about my blender as charming.

Dear Parent:  Caring for Infants With Respect and Your Self Confident Baby by Magda Gerber

I probably ended up leaning more Gerber than Sears in the end.  Magda Gerber’s main message is to let babies explore on their own from a very early age so they can develop self confidence.  There are references in her books, but she mostly draws on her experience with young children.  She founded Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), a group that still conducts classes here in LA (and probably many other cities).  Her philosophy of letting babies and toddlers be independent and explore, and have their own space, resonated a lot for me.  She’s very anti sling, swing, and anything else that restricts a baby’s movement.  I couldn’t really agree or disagree with her on those points, but I liked the underlying message of independence and minimal parental interference and being confident that your baby will learn as he needs to learn.

I picked up many of the language cues I use with Zack from reading Gerber’s ideas about setting limits and telling children what is going to happen next.  But honestly, most of what I liked the best about these books just seemed like common sense to me.  It was nice to read the advice and think, “Yep, that’s what I do!”  Some of the ideas are difficult to put into practice.  She recommends refraining from praising play, since it could turn your child into a performer, always seeking praise.  This makes sense to me, but it’s tough to remember in the moment.

There were some aspects of Gerber’s thinking that seemed way off, for instance her opposition to rocking, which she describes in Your Self-Confident Baby:

I don’t feel we have to use rocking chairs to soothe babies or put them to sleep.  Both rocking chairs and cradles bring about an altered state of consciousness, which is, in effect, an escape from reality. (41)

Dude, if Magda could get into an altered state of consciousness from a rocking chair, I just so wish I’d gone to college with her.  Imagine the hangovers you could save yourself if the rocking chair could actually help you escape from reality.  Great stuff.

The Sleepeasy Solution by Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivack

This is a step by step guide to sleep training, and it’s very user friendly.  We read it carefully when the time came for us to let our son cry it out.  It’s a very supportive book for parents and explains the ideas behind sleep learning thoroughly.  The Redhead has still never quite slept as much as this book insists he must, and I finally looked up in the AAP book and found a much broader recommendation for the amount of sleep that’s considered acceptable.  So I believe this book might be sort of rounding those numbers up, which has been slightly guilt inducing for me, since we can’t get close to the amount of sleep they’ve listed as optimal.

What to Expect..When You’re Expecting, The First Year, and oh yes, Eating Well when you’re you know what.

Of this series, I enjoyed the First Year book the most.  It was factual, concise, organized, and very helpful.  We would look up the milestones each month.  I really loved having this book around.

What to Expect was also helpful.  What to Eat is great but can make you a little nuts if you let it.  Just eat the cheeseburger with fries.  You’ll be fine.

The No-Cry Discipline Solution by Elizabeth Pantley.

Full disclosure:  Elizabeth often sends emails to Rational Moms, letting us know that we will be entered into a free drawing to win one of her books if we just mention one of her books on our blog.

So as of this moment, I might be getting compensated with a free book by Elizabeth Pantley.

With that conflict of interest out of the way, this is the book that I currently have on my nightstand.  It is not really a no-cry discipline solution.  It’s a collection of hints and tricks Pantley has learned from being a parent to four kinds.  As with the Magda Gerber books, I just pick what  I like and leave the rest.  Overall, Pantley’s philosophy of discipline agrees with my already pre conceived notions, so I like her book.  She focuses on respecting small children’s perspective by doing things like making transitions easier, for example.  It’s tough to leave the park.  So you would not just yank a kid out of the park when it’s time to go but instead give adequate warnings, starting around five minutes.  Warn that the transition is coming, and then when it’s time to go, leave.  If you stay longer, you give the message that what you say doesn’t mean much.  I think my husband and I could have figured this one out for ourselves, but the reenforcement in black and white is helpful.

I cannot believe it, but I’m done reviewing my giant pile o’ books.  I would love to hear more  recommendations of books to try to get around to reading, or of books to go ahead and avoid.

The average mum makes 11 new friends outside her original circle of friends at antenatal classes, baby and toddler groups and at the school gates – but apparently can’t stand more than 50 per cent of them. Six in 10 mums claim they have nothing in common with most of the people they socialise with – and as such are forced to talk about children 100 per cent of the time. And 43% would never have considered socialising with half of their ‘mum friends’ if they hadn’t started a family.

Yes! Exactly! I had a baby, I quit work, I started making new friends at playgroup and later school, and I found myself surrounded by people with whom I had nothing in common, at all, except that we had reproduced. Don’t get me wrong, these are very nice people! But we didn’t necessarily have any common ground. Except the type of diaper we bought, or the preschool we chose, or the ball team our kids were on.

So, I needed some friends I could relate to, and have intellectual conversations with. I started becoming active in the skeptical community, and that helped, but all my new skeptifriends lived hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. So, finally last August, we started a local skeptics meetup. And it turns out there are people near us with whom we have more in common than what Girl Scout troop we are in! Things like worldviews, politics, and religion. So exciting…

So, what about you? Did you find yourself making “Mom friends” once you had kids, and then realizing you had nothing in common?

Dear rational moms,

I am writing to you from Hamburg, Germany, where I live and work as a molecular biologist and have two kids age 2 and 5.  When I found out that even educated women turn off their brains once they get pregnant and start doing all kinds of weird things (like holding incense near their toes to make the unborn baby turn into the right position), I was at first surprised and amused, but after a while just angry and feeling helpless.

About a year and a half ago I discovered your blog, which I read regularly.  Since, unfortunately, there is no German website with infomation on what makes sense and what doesn’t concerning all this stuff, I decided to write a blog myself. Thanks for inspiring me to do that!

It went online yesterday: www.scienceblogs.de/mutterwitz.

Off course I put your page on my blogroll!

I will have a look at your blog regularly to get some ideas in the future, and I am glad that at least some problems you have to cope with are virtually non existent in Germany, like Christian fundamentalism.

But on the other hand, in Germany you are considered to be quite exotic when you do not trust homeopathy.

When I mentioned your website to two other mothers I met at the Skeptics Organisation here in Germany, one of them shouted out: “Hooray! We’re not alone! ” But there are still to few!

All the best and if any of you are able to understand German, you might want to have a look at my blog.

Best regards,
Julia Offe

I grew up in a Catholic household. My mother was raised Baptist but converted to Catholicism shortly after marrying my father. If the term “Holy Roller” could be applied to Catholics, this would describe my parents. They volunteer at the church, participate in the mass, bring communion to the housebound, and never miss a weekend mass.

In my mid-20s, I came out as an atheist. My family isn’t known for it’s tolerance, so my skepticism and loathing for religion doesn’t go over well at holiday reunions. Usually I’m the butt of jokes (my dad gave me a “I LOVE GOD” yo-yo one Christmas), or the subject of “her soul is going to hell” head shaking.

So, all of this backstory is leading to an exchange that took place not too long ago.

During a visit, my mom sneezed. My eldest daughter (then about three) said, “Excuse me!” only to have my mom correct her. “No, sweetie. Say, ‘God bless you.’” My daughter dutifully repeated it and I felt my spine straighten.

I turned to my mom. “Please don’t teach her to say that. That’s not something I want her to say.”

First, my mom tried to rationalize the teaching, and then she launched into her religious tirade. “Well, what if you’re wrong? You were baptized and your daughters weren’t. So, if you’re wrong, then you’ll be in heaven and your daughters won’t.”

Where to even begin?

I tried to remain level-headed, but the exchange did make me angry. I love my mom dearly, but she is a religious zealot. Which is fine. I just don’t want her beliefs influencing my kid. At the time, I think I made a few snide remarks about a big cocktail party in the sky when we die and then left the room. (Hey, if atheists need a poster child, I’m not it.)

I want my kids to discover religion on their own, through careful research and investigation when they are old enough to make sense of it all. I don’t want it shoved down their throat from birth. But, how do I not cause a rift with my parents in the meantime?

So, if you have religious parents, have their views ever influenced your kids? If so, how did you handle it?

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This routine took place during a “World of Dance” competition and the internet is abuzz with outrage over the bawdy moves and risqué costumes. While talented, the dancers do sort of look like…well, women who dance for a living--and I’m not talking about at the Met. Two of the parents made an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America to defend the video. They say it was taken out of context and never meant to be viewed by millions of strangers. Apparently, this type of routine is normal, according to the parents.

What bothers me, other than this lame explanation, is the crowd reaction. The bumping and grinding get the biggest cheer from the crowd, which surely is made up of kids, parents and other adults. It’s all just so weird to watch. But, are we overreacting?

Yes, the girls dance in a sexually suggestive manner, but they won’t automatically become promiscuous later in life. That assumption would be ridiculous. I took a lot of dance classes as a young girl and we had recitals and performances. The costumes probably were a little more bathing suit-like than burlesque, but still pretty form fitting. Still, I don’t remember doing moves like this. Not because I couldn’t do them (I couldn’t) but because I shouldn’t. Like Chris Rock said, just because you CAN drive with your feet doesn’t mean you SHOULD. Just because an 8-year old can shake her moneymaker doesn’t mean she should.

So, I don’t fault the girls. The song is catchy and they are clearly great dancers. Long-term harm? Most likely none. But, I’m wondering what kind of parents think this is normal? What world these parents have immersed themselves in where this is age appropriate?

Or, am I just out of touch with what “age appropriate” means?

Let’s hear it, moms and dads out there. Weigh in on what your reaction was….

Atheism is not this cold, arbitrary, removed thought process or ideology that promotes immortality or unethical behavior, as so many people think. In fact, atheism generally includes quite an extensive set of rational beliefs that just about everyone can agree with (or at least not disagree with); the general public just doesn’t know enough about it, and they have a lot of disinformation and misinformation to sort through in order to come to some sort of a conclusion that’s based on fact.

And I am worried a bit about how to explain to my now-16-month-old daughter, as she gets older, exactly what Mom and Dad believe, why we believe it, and why we so often seem to disregard the beliefs of other people she encounters, especially the beliefs repeated by their children.

Children are amazingly insightful and intuitive. I’ve met very few children who couldn’t sense discontent when adults around them were trying to mask it. And I’ve met very few children who aren’t really listening to every little thing you say even when you think they’re not. (Perhaps this is evolution in one of its finer moments.) So when my daughter, Lulu, comes into contact with someone who tells her that a god is real and if she doesn’t believe she’ll go to hell, or when one of the kids in her class says to her that her kitty may have died but is in heaven, I know I have to say more than just “Oh, we don’t believe that, sweetie. Here, finish your dinner.”

Because that’s not true! Who is the “we” here? Your dad and I? No, we don’t, but you might. Really. Does it make sense to you? Do you think it’s possible? What evidence do you have? Do you think you need evidence to come to a conclusion about something like this? And if not, why not?

We’re rational people. We’re not closed-minded, but we’re also not so open-minded that our brains fall out. We encourage critical thinking. In fact, I want nothing more than to encourage critical thinking in my child, because regardless of where it leads her, it will always guide her.

For just as the parents who teach faith as fact to their children acknowledge that the child will most likely repeat it to other children, our children will repeat, in some form, our responses. Civility is key here, but misunderstanding in this kind of situation can so easily happen, especially with such vested interests in these kinds of beliefs.

So I ask the rational parents out there—all of you: atheists, theists, nontheists, and anyone in between—how have you handled a situation in which your child was confronted with faith as fact? What do you do? How do you explain it? What advice can you give other parents who really need some guidance on how to confront this problem?

The top places to be a mom are Norway, Australia, and Iceland. The worst places are Chad, Niger and then Afghanistan at the very bottom. Surprising (to me) was that the U.S. ranks 28th, which is actually down a spot from the previous year. Here’s why:

One in every 4,800 American women dies due to pregnancy. It’s one of the highest maternal-morbidity rates in the developed world. To put that number into perspective, in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Greece and Italy, the risk of maternal death is less than one in 25,000 — and in Ireland, it’s less than one in 47,600.

But it’s not just American moms who die due to pregnancy: American babies don’t fare so well, either. Our infant-mortality rate is pretty dismal for the developed world, with eight out of every 1,000 children dying before their fifth birthdays. A child born in the U.S. is more than twice as likely as a child born in Finland, Iceland, Sweden or Singapore to die before his fifth birthday. Also, the U.S. has the least-generous maternity-leave policy of any developed country, fewer women in elected government positions than other developed countries and fewer kids enrolled in preschool.

The list illustrates that access to education, economic opportunities and proper health care provide the best chance for mothers and children to survive and thrive. In the U.S., we should do a lot better. So, what’s the deal with the ranking?

First, let’s look at infant mortality.

“Infant mortality is defined as the number of children born alive who die after birth — but this differs state to state and country to country,” said Dr. Benjamin Sachs, a fellow of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

For example, he says in the U.S., a baby born at 17 weeks who later died would be considered a miscarriage. But, a baby born at 23 weeks who later died would count towards the infant mortality rate, even though it only had a 20% chance of survival outside the womb. In some other countries, this would instead be considered a miscarriage.

Abortion politics in the U.S. also are thought to play a factor.

“About 20 percent of the children who die in the U.S. do so from birth defects,” said Sachs. “In a country that has a liberal abortion policy, those children will die in abortion — some countries even allow third-trimester abortions so their rates [of infant mortality] are going to be lower,” he said.

Next, let’s look at maternal mortality, which is shockingly high for a country so rich as ours. Only, that’s the difference. If you’re a rich American, you’re more likely to be better educated, with better health care. But, if you’re in a lower economic class, or an illegal immigrant, you’re at greater risk.

Powers said Save the Children’s research has also found that pregnant “minority” women who seek medical care do not end up getting the same quality of care as pregnant women “in the majority.”

That is appalling.

There are 40 million people in the U.S. without health insurance, a large population of which are illegal immigrants. The doctors interviewed agreed that the rates would improve if every pregnant woman were guaranteed access to health care.

Also, other factors at play may include the obesity epidemic here as well as the older age of some mothers.

The bottom line: Maternal and infant mortality rates are complicated issues where more than one factor may be at fault. Still, the U.S. has a long way to go–especially when it comes to maternity leave, flexible workplaces, and affordable health care. We can do better for our mothers.

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Yep, you read that right. Take them and leave them. Alone.

Lenore explains it best in her blog:

The crime rate in America is back to where it was in the early ’70s. Crime was going up then, and it peaked around 20 years later. By the mid ’90s it was coming down and continues to do so. So the strange fact — very hard to digest — is that if YOU were playing outside in the ’70s or ’80s, your kids today are safer than you were! I know it doesn’t feel that way. In fact, here’s an interesting poll about how the majority of people feel crime is going up when actually its going down. But anyway, the point is:

Most of us used to play outside in the park, without our parents, without cell phones, without Purell or bottled water and we survived! Thrived! We cherish the memories! And if you believe the million studies that I’m always publishing here, kids are healthier, happier and better-adjusted if they get to spend some time each day in “free play,” without adults hovering.

I know there will be shrill voices insisting, “Predators are gonna love this holiday!” but keep a level head. Crime is down. Awareness is up. There is safety in numbers, which means getting kids outside again, together. This won’t happen until we actually start DOING IT.

She makes a great case about how we (Americans) are hovering over our kids too much. Let them play outside! Have you walked around in your neighborhood recently? I have, and I don’t see what I remember from MY childhood, which was a bunch of kids running around playing games together. We played hide-n-seek, kick the can, Red Rover, and more. Do kids still play those games outside?

I’m JUST as guilty as the next paranoid mom. But, I think I know why. When I was in elementary school, a girl in the grade above mine was raped and murdered on her way home from school. I knew her well and was friendly with her family. Did it traumatize me? You bet. And, our community changed the very day that happened. Parents kept their kids home after that day. (The murderer was never caught, so that didn’t help relieve parental anxiety.) There was a definite shift in the way kids were treated. No more walking home from school…no more playing outside. It’s sad, really, because another incident never happened and the kids were the ones to suffer.

But, as Lenore herself says, “Free-Range Kids never says there is no risk in the world, only that the risk is small and worth taking, as it always has been. The trade-off is kids who make up games, who solve problems, who discover nature and get moving (to coin a phrase). Kids who don’t need a screen to entertain them. Playing outside, on their own, is what kids all over the world do. We have forgotten how vital and wonderful it is.”

So, let’s embrace this day and get our kids back outside in neighborhoods.

[Via Motherlode / NYTimes]

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Even posting links to Dr. Tuteur’s articles here brought out the ire of our readers.  Some of their views were not related to the subject being discussed but to Amy’s reactionary stance on other issues such as gay parenting and single mothers.  She declared in an Open Salon post on single mothers:

It is morally imperative for women to recognize that if marriage is unappealing or inconvenient, they shouldn’t be having children. It doesn’t matter how much they want them, and it doesn’t matter that they can financially provide for them. A child is owed a father, and any woman who is unable or unwilling to provide one is making a self indulgent, selfish choice to conceive a child.

Yowza.  Tell me how you really feel there, Amy.  She goes on to say that on every measurable parameter of child well being, children with fathers do better. However, she provides no links to evidence of these measurements.

In the comment thread, she continues with the statement that a father is, “…a child’s birthright, and no adult has the moral right to take it away from a child simply to satisfy his or her own preferences.”  She makes it clear that her argument is a “moral” one, dismissing evidence from one commenter that kids in non traditional families do all right.

The study Emilia sent from the journal Human Reproduction is about lesbian parents and single moms.  The researchers gave questionnaires and interviewed children and parents of heterosexual, lesbian, and solo mother families.  The study concluded:

The female-headed families were found to be similar to the traditional families on a range of measures of quality of parenting and young adults’ psychological adjustment. Where differences were identified between family types, these pointed to more positive family relationships and greater psychological wellbeing among young adults raised in female-headed homes.

I asked Harriet Hall, a writer for SBM who sometimes helps us out, if this study looked decent. She deemed it “respectable” but said the number of subjects was small and the data self-reported, so not wholly objective. Thank you to Emilia for sending us this study.

The introduction to this paper refers to the body of evidence proving children of single moms have issues.  So there is evidence!  But the paper says the subject of mothers who choose to become parents without a father figure is entirely different.  Previous studies, “have largely focused on single-mother families that have resulted from parental separation or divorce.”

Sadly, children of such families have been found to have measurable problems:

McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) showed that adolescents raised by single mothers during some period of their childhood were twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to have a baby before the age of 20 and one and a half times more likely to be out of work in their late teens or early twenties than those from a similar background who grew up with two parents at home.

Yep bad stuff.  The kids from these homes have consistently higher levels of psychological issues, too.

But the key seems to be the separation and conflict that caused it, not the absence of a male figure per se.  Kids born into female-headed families who chose to be that way do not experience a painful divorce or a depressed and overworked mom.  The risks common to kids of single moms from divorced families do not apply.  Putting it in the most strictly common sense way:

…the quality of family relationships matters more than the way in which a family is formed.

This is only one study, but in any case, the studies I believe Dr. Tuteur was referring to (although she didn’t refer specifically to any) are the wrong ones.  If the single mothers to which she’s referring are divorced, that’s just not a good comparison to make to mothers who have begun parenthood without a father, by choice.

Golombok, Susan and Shirlene Badger. “Children raised in mother-headed families from infancy: a follow-up of children of lesbian and single heterosexual mothers, at early adulthood.” Human Reproduction 0 (2009): 1-8