Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m a sole parent (mother), and I recently moved from a big city to a small town with my two elementary school–age kids. My kids could not be more different from each other, but socially, I’m seeing the same pattern with both of them. They mention a child at school whom they are getting on well with. I get in touch with the child’s mom to ask if they want to come over sometime. (Our house is just down the block from school, and I work from home, so we’re easy to schedule.) Lots of wrangling follows about the other family’s busy schedules and their sports calendars and so forth, things get attenuated, and often the play date never happens. (This has been the pattern with my older kid, who is the more socially adept of the two.) Or the child comes over once, everything seems to go really well, but then the parent ices me out, or I offer to host again and the parent objects “Oh, but we need to reciprocate first!,” and they never do.
This has made for incredibly awkward situations at pickup and drop-off and school events; some of these moms just won’t talk to me anymore or make eye contact. The effect seems to be spreading too. Our neighbors, initially welcoming, have begun to give off an air of disdain or even dismay whenever we interact. I’m a fairly shy person and can safely say that I don’t push this stuff too hard. I know you can’t force people to like you or want to spend time with you. And certainly, I don’t expect everyone to welcome a new family with open arms when they’ve got their own routines and social circles established. On the other hand, I’ve never had much trouble making friends or finding my spot in a new place, my kids genuinely seem to be friends with these other children, and I’m starting to feel confused and—I’m embarrassed to admit—kind of paranoid. Are these just the growing pains of being new in a small town? (A possibly relevant data point: I have not encountered any other single parents, much less sole parents, in the community.)
—Is It Me? Am I the Problem?
Dear Is It Me,
Oof, this is really painful. My heart aches for you.
Listen, something is going on. I don’t think it’s paranoid to wonder whether you (and your house? And your kids, as collateral damage) are being shunned. I’m an anxious person myself and I’ve whipped up, in about one minute, a whole list of possible reasons this is happening. Being the only sole parent in a small town that doesn’t even include any other single parents (and no sets of parents other than cis-hetero ones, I’m guessing?) may make you an object of suspicion/distrust—did the other parents discover this fact about your family life only after that one-and-done visit? Did the previously friendly neighbors not realize that you were raising your kids alone and that there was no father anywhere in the picture? Is there anything in your house, or any rules of your house, that you think, based on what you’ve observed about these other families, might give them pause? Do you (or your kids) talk about things that these families consider forbidden topics? Do you talk in a way, or dress in a way, that strikes them as alien? Does religion play a part in this? Does your job? Does the art that’s hanging in your house? Any of these could be the culprit—which is not to say you’re “at fault”; I’m just trying to help you think the situation through.
Or, more benignly, is this a town that doesn’t have a culture of kids playing at one another’s houses? Are there some unwritten bylaws about how kids get together or how their get-togethers are set up by the adults—or are they not set up by the adults at all? Do the rest of them just meet up outdoors, informally? Or are the kids in all the other families fully booked with organized activities, so that you’re the only one requesting one-on-one playtime—and you’re asking more than once, which makes them think there’s something “off” about you?
I’m afraid you’ll never know until you ask. I know that this is going to be hard. But is there one person you haven’t had a troubling interaction with, to whom you might speak frankly—someone who has smiled at you or looked uneasy when another parent hurriedly stepped away? Or maybe one of your kids’ teachers? Or even one of those neighbors who had seemed so welcoming before the mean parent crowd got to them?
If it’s your politics, religion, race, ethnicity, child-rearing practices, or anything else along those lines, I think you’re going to have to think hard about whether you really want to stay there. But if there’s something in the culture that you just haven’t figured out on your own, and that culture is something you think is worth adjusting to for the sake of the life you’d dreamed for your family, then you can give it a try. But if no one will tell you what the problem is—if they insist you’re imagining things, that there’s no problem at all—then I think you have your answer.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I have a question about deciding whether to have children—it’s something that weighs heavily on me almost every day, and I feel very conflicted. My fiancé and I began our relationship convinced that we did not want children. Both of us were confident about this, and we made everyone aware of it. Our families were a little disappointed but ultimately supported us. Then, in 2022, I had a miscarriage. It was a fluke of a situation because my IUD is supposedly 99 percent effective. I miscarried at nearly six weeks, and I found out about the miscarriage at the same time I found out about the pregnancy. My reaction was visceral: I was an emotional mess. But, in the moment, I told my mom and my partner that I needed to wait and see how I felt as time passed because my response might be influenced by hormones. What hit me hardest was my fiancé’s reaction. I expected empathy if relief, but what I got was empathy and disappointment. He said that we would have figured it out had the pregnancy taken, and he would have been happy to be a parent with me.
Since then, I’ve been torn. My sister had twin girls shortly after my miscarriage, and his sister had twin girls a few days ago. I go from one extreme to the next. One day, I’m convinced I want kids because I loved seeing my brothers-in-law become fathers and our sisters become mothers. Their experiences were so similar and yet so different, and my nieces are the best! On the other hand, we have goals, and I’m not sure those can be achieved with the financial and emotional burden of a child. My aunt and uncle own a home across the country that we hope to buy once they retire, and to do that we will need to save every penny. I’m 30 years old; he is 29. I feel as if I’m making the decision between a lifelong dream (the house with land in the state we love) and the recent interest brought on by tragedy (reconsidering parenthood).
What do I do? I told my fiancé that I feel the best plan is to have my IUD removed once I settle into my new job (teaching) and he has at least three years at his job (law enforcement). Then, if it happens, it was meant to be. If it doesn’t, we’ll find happiness in all the ways we have planned. But I’m terrified of regret … one way or the other. Help!
—To Be or Not to Be DINKs
Dear To Be or Not to Be,
Forgive me for parsing your words so carefully (it’s the occupational hazard of a writer), but when you refer to having a child as a financial and emotional burden (rather than, for example, responsibility or challenge, or even cost), my antennae go up. Just as they do, if not quite as high, when you use the word interest instead of desire. Am I “reading too much into” the words you “happen to have used”? I don’t think it’s possible to read too much into the words with which we express our feelings.
It sounds to me as if you don’t want to have a child. At least not now, or soon. I have a feeling that other things are driving this conflict (including what I think you’re reading correctly as your fiancé’s not being nearly as set on “no kids for us!” as he said—and perhaps thought—he was before your accidental pregnancy). You two need to have a real talk about this. Your current plan, which you seem to have made unilaterally—to stop using birth control and, if you happen to get pregnant, it’ll mean it was “meant to be”—is a pretty terrible idea. Do not have a child unless you want to. Talk it through with your fiancé now, and revisit that conversation periodically, until you both feel sure you want to be parents, or until you both feel sure you don’t. It may be that this will never happen; it may become clear that you two aren’t on the same page (at which point you’ll have a decision to make about your relationship). It may be that at 33 or at 35 you’ll experience what I did—a sudden and utterly surprising longing to have a child. But do not leave becoming a parent to chance.
One final note: I do not believe that you have to choose between your dream and becoming parents. You don’t say anything about how long it will be before your aunt and uncle retire, or whether they’ve made special arrangements with you so that you’ll be able to buy their house at less than market value—or anything else that helps me understand the specifics that will make owning this house and land a reality—but it is certainly possible to raise a child without going broke. Many, many people do it. I think you’re setting up a false equivalence.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
Our daughter and son-in-law are expecting their first baby (our first grandchild) this summer. We are all ecstatic. They will be wonderful parents. One issue has me very concerned, though. Based on comments made in the past, I’m pretty sure they don’t plan on vaccinating the child. I’m worried for our future grandchild’s health. How bad is it not to vaccinate? I’ve asked them to research both the pros and cons from both sides of the issue.
—Stick It to the Kid
Dear Stick It,
It’s very bad. There is no pro- and con- around this issue—there is science, and there is anti-science. Asking someone to “research” both sides of a matter of science is an invitation to pick and choose what they believe, and given that the word research has lately been invoked to describe “things you can read on the internet,” it’s a pointless exercise.
Of course, you can’t make your daughter and her husband vaccinate their children against diseases that once killed numerous children or made them seriously ill. But you can gently educate them—which means you first have to educate yourself.
An excellent—and short, beautifully written—book on the subject is Eula Biss’ On Immunity: An Inoculation. It provides an unassailable argument along with a great deal of information—scientific, historical, and sociological. Read it yourself, then pass it along to your daughter and son-in-law.
And when you talk to them about vaccination, do not dismiss their fears (if they insist that “no vaccine is safe” or claim that there’s a link between vaccination and autism, then the fearmongers have gotten to them), their objections to compulsory health care, their distrust of government and/or Big Pharma. Listen first, without interrupting. Express sympathy. There is nothing duplicitous about this. Surely you are sympathetic, as I am, to a parent fearing that their children may be harmed. And nobody likes to be told what to do! (Plus, who doesn’t know that Big Pharma’s motives aren’t exactly altruistic? Not to mention how unscrupulous and self-serving many of the people holding elected offices have been!) Make sure you’re aware of what’s behind their fears/objections, from conspiracy theories they’ve bought into to a misunderstanding about the ingredients in vaccines. And make sure you come into the conversation well armed with actual information.
Then give it your best shot (no pun intended). Don’t get strident. Don’t raise your voice or wring your hands. And don’t give up after one try, OK? Wait a while and try again. The time to give up is only after—if—they say they’ve had it with you, that if you keep this up, they’re cutting off contact. I wish you luck. For everyone’s sake.
Dear Care and Feeding,
This isn’t a parenting problem—it’s a grown-childing problem, I guess. I’m 36, and I live on the opposite coast from my (single) mother. We’re close, as in we were super close while I was growing up and it was just the two of us, and to this day when we see each other, a couple of times a year, we kind of pick up where we left off—I’m glad to see her, and we can talk about pretty much anything. We have a good time together. But she wants more from me than I can give her. I have a stressful and demanding job, as does my partner, and our work hours often don’t match up, so we don’t have a lot of time together and have to maximize the little time we do have. Plus, when I do have a little free time of my own, and for a change I’m not exhausted, I use it to catch up with friends I rarely get a chance to see, or friends who live far away whom I rarely have time to talk to anymore. Or even to just, you know, sit staring into space and try to regroup. What I don’t want to do is spend that time on the phone with my mother.
And she hates this. She feels horribly rejected. Sometimes she’ll say something about it—like, she’ll text me and say, “Do you realize how long it’s been since I last heard your voice? I miss you!”—but more often, the texts just pile up till I’m completely overwhelmed and I feel so guilty I just shut down. Is there something I can say to her to make her understand that this isn’t personal? I feel bad that she feels bad, but I don’t feel bad enough to give up what little time I have for myself. (Side note: The problem isn’t that she has nothing in her life but me, so please don’t suggest she find a hobby. She has hobbies. She also has a job she enjoys and plenty of friends of her own. She “just” wants more of ME in her life.)
—Not a Bad Daughter, I Swear on My Life, but I Still Feel Like One!
Dear Not a Bad Daughter,
I’d like to say I feel your pain, but I’m with Mom on this. Maybe because I’m a mother whose grown-up kid has an emotionally draining job, who has little time for herself (or her partner) and clearly doesn’t feel it’s a priority to call home when she’s got some free time. I mean, I get it (I was in my 30s once, and my parents were most definitely not my priority), but now I think I was wrong—in fact, I was in my mid-40s when I realized that it was mean of me not to make time to talk to my parents, and at that point I started calling daily, or near-daily. (And, not to be morbid, but now that my father’s dead and I can never talk to him again, I am very happy I made that decision, which cost me nothing but a few minutes a day.)
I’m not suggesting that you call Mom every day. (If she’s anything like me, she wouldn’t want to talk every day because she’s busy too.) But I think both your mother’s daughter and mine should set aside 15 or 20 minutes every couple of weeks, put it in your damn calendar, and check in. You’re close; you love her. And one day she’ll be gone and you’ll never be able to talk to her again. (And lest you think I’m trying to guilt my daughter into calling me: She told me from the start she wasn’t going to read my column. As did my husband—which is why I feel so emboldened to talk about him in it. “Too weird,” they both said when I got this job. “And we already know all your advice anyway.” Not that they listen to it.)
—Michelle
