Ryan's an only child, of course. I was one of five children, so that's a bit of a difference. We were actually talking about this last night. (We were talking about personality traits, and what he thought his were. We agreed he was best off assessing himself with reference to the other kids at school, because when he's at home it's all adults and that's going to skew things.)

I'd always hoped to have two or three kids, but with the various dramas in my 30s it didn't work out that way. Not that I really mind. My main regret is that I think Ryan would be a pretty awesome big brother.

Thinking back on when I was a kid, I'm realizing just how much my mom did. During the school year, I'd maybe see my dad for a couple minutes in the morning before he left for work, but often he'd leave before I woke up. My mom would get us up and ready, and pack our lunches and drive us to school. My mom would usually serve us dinner around 6, and then my dad would eat the leftovers when he got home at 8 or so. Then he'd usually fall asleep pretty soon after eating dinner. He'd usually read me a story before bed, but I really barely saw my dad on weekdays. And my mom had a double bypass when I was in kindergarten. She badly injured her ankle and had to use a wheelchair for at least several weeks, then crutches for a while after that, when I was in second grade. She had three major surgeries when I was in sixth grade. And for most of those years, she volunteered at pretty much every school thing, was PTA president for at least one year (maybe two?), was on a bunch of committees at the synagogue.

And I can remember a bunch of times when other kids had problems -- like an emergency early dismissal from school and someone's mom couldn't leave work to pick her up, or the kid who lived in the house behind us whose mother had had polio as a kid and was getting really sick around the time we were in fourth grade, or other sorts of "there's a kid who needs a place to be for a while" things, and I'd always feel completely confident telling those kids to come home with me, since she'd always welcome them. (Adults weren't always welcome -- our house was never very neat, and she was embarrassed about letting other adults see the mess, but I guess she figured kids didn't care, or that taking care of kids who needed it was more important than being embarrassed about the state of the house. And the house was, often, by any standards, a total mess. Not dirty or unhygienic, but sometimes getting close to Hoarders territory.)

I just don't know that I'd have the energy to do all of that.

Though, I also remember that she'd usually take a nap for an hour or two each afternoon, and my sister and I knew that we weren't supposed to wake her up unless it was an emergency. (I remember debating whether or not "I got Silly Putty stuck in my hair" was an emergency. When my sister decided that the only solution was to cut my hair, I decided that it was enough of an emergency to wake up Mom.) And a few times that she missed picking us up from school or an after-school activity because she'd fallen asleep and didn't wake up in time.

There's a head cold that I brought home from school and shared with DH. He noted that he could have managed child care or work with it, but both was real hard. I think juggling both work and childcare (especially with health concern) is very difficult.

Both my parents worked, but Dad had a good amount of self-determination in his schedule, and I had 4 grandparents and various other adults willing and able to provide childcare up through at least middle-elementary school.

We have "aunties" and "uncles" around, but they're not always the most reliable humans, and we're already feeling the difference not having family nearby makes.

I think juggling both work and childcare (especially with health concern) is very difficult.

Stupid capitalism.

Yeah, my mom stayed at home when I was young, but for several years ran a daycare out of our house for money. But she went back to school when I was in high school so I imagine my brother who is 6 years younger had a very different experience. It's weird to think about how even though we grew up in the same family we had different experiences.

There's an 8 year gap between me and Skippy. We had VERY different experiences.

There's just three years between me and my sister. Our mother worked part-time when we were little, but then stopped when I was in kindergarten and my sister was in fourth grade. We had a babysitter/nanny who'd take care of us while my mom was at work when we were tiny, but I only have vague memories of her -- once I was old enough for full-day nursery school, I went to that, and since my mom was only working part-time, she was usually home when I was home.

I was one of 4 and my mom was at home. She hadn't worked since WWII. Dad didn't do kids. He really just didn't know how to communicate with non-adults. He did take care of us when my mom had health issues, but we had a family friend who stayed with us to help. We were Mary's kids and he loved us as extensions of her, but we didn't really interact much until we were adults.

I managed to have 2, but 4 of my nephews, and my niece were only children. My brother made up for it by having children with 3 different moms. He had the last 2 with a women who had 4 already.

There's an 8 year gap between me and Skippy. We had VERY different experiences.

I study gene-environment interaction, so I teach about differences in sibling experience in class. The differences can be large, especially if there is a big age gap. Promotions, job losses, divorce, parental medical problems can all shift the world.

In class I use my own mother as an example. She was 13 years younger than her siblings, and the age difference straddled crucial differences in the lives of her family and the world they lived in.

My mother's sibs were born to an impoverished Swedish couple, struggling to survive in a strange and confusing new country, in a language they did not understand. The sibs learned English as quickly as they could when they started school. They were embarrassed by the stench of foreignness that they carried with them and did everything they could to hide it. Their father struggled to find work as the country descended into the Great Depression, and economic worries were constant.

My mother was born to a prosperous Swedish-American couple, living in a nice house in a middle class neighborhood. That house was dominated by two American-born teenagers who taught her English in the crib. HER father was a respected union carpenter in a union town who always had plenty of work in the mobilization for WWII and the economic boom that followed. She lived in a world of baseball and hot dogs and optimism, and she felt free to love everything Swedish because she never had to worry that she was not American enough fit in.

I tell the class that my mother and her sibs had the same genetic parents but very different phenotypic parents, and very different environments created by those parents. These kinds of difference can set kids off on very different life trajectories.