Chicago Tribune - Nov. 3, 1996

What's your Parenting Quotient?
What attributes make a good mom or dad?
The answer might not always be apparent

By Jan Greene
When Susan Thompson and her husband, Brian MacDougall, first got together in their late 20s, they talked about whether they would ever have children and agreed they were "70/30 against." At least that's what Susan thought.

"It turned out Brian was the opposite, he was 70 percent sure he wanted to have kids," she says with a laugh.

Fortunately, 12 years later, the Berkeley, Calif., couple's feelings about parenthood have evolved in the same direction. After plenty of discussion over the years, they decided that they would be living beyond their emotional and financial means to be parents, a role that neither felt strongly about in the first place.

Couples today are finding parenthood to be a more conscious choice than in the past, when many couples assumed that children were a part of marriage. Now couples, and single women, are giving it more thought. Many women in their 30s who have been in the workplace for a decade or more are thinking seriously about whether to add "mommy" to their resumes.

There has been an assumption that people should "just know" if they would make good parents. But child-development and parenting experts say that kind of vague thinking leads to some bad decisions. People who become parents for the wrong reasons or when they're not ready don't just make themselves unhappy; their children pay the ultimate price.

Unfortunately, there's no simple test to determine your parenthood quotient; the decision is too complex and different for each individual. But there are some questions to ask yourself and your partner, experts say.

Being emotionally ready to have a child is one of the most important things to consider.

Having a child means giving up much of your freedom, social life and time for yourself and your marriage, said Dr. Stephanie Cavanaugh, professor of psychiatry at Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center.

"You're responsible for that child until age 18, and the child always has to come first," Cavanaugh said.

At the same time, be prepared to make some mistakes along the way, said Cavanaugh. Parenthood is mostly learning on the job. It will take some time to feel competent.

That can be a problem for women coming to parenthood after years in the business world, where you know you can do a good job if you're organized and diligent enough. Not so with a baby.

"Any illusion that one can control events as one can at work is counter-productive," said Cavanaugh. "Going with the flow becomes an important survival skill."

Career women also find that the social supports they developed in the workplace don't help much at home.

Without that support, some people become stressed out by the isolation and responsibility, said Carol Johnstone, who runs parenting classes for Chicago's Child Abuse Prevention Services.

With families often so far-flung these days, a new mom can't always depend on support from parents or other relatives. Alternative support can come from friends who are mothers or form organized groups of new mothers. Think about that ahead of time, Johnstone urged.

Of course, a major source of support for a mother should be the child's father. Having a solid marriage is a big prerequisite to being successful parents, specialists say.

Dr. Murray Kappelman, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Maryland Medical School, suggests that potential parents make sure they've done most of the things they wanted to do as individuals and as a couple before adding a child to the mix.

"Ask yourself, 'Have our agendas been taken care of, and are we comfortable that we are going to make it?'"

There's no ideal age to have children, experts say. There are obvious pros and cons to becoming a parent as a teenager or late in life. For instance, older parents may have gained more maturity and patience, but have less energy to run around after a toddler.

But parenting experts say it's best to focus more on your particular situation than to apply an arbitrary age standard for parenthood.

All potential parents should think about why they want to be moms and dads.

When considering your motivation in having a child, think twice about it if you're mostly trying to please someone else, such as your families, or trying to save a shaky marriage, Cavanaugh said. Those motives are likely to cause trouble down the line for parents and child.

When she got marriage at 32, Kandi Barnes was certain she would never want children. "They just scared me," recalled Barnes of Andover, Minn., noting that she wondered if she would be smart enough to handle a teenager.

But things changed a few years later as she reviewed the admissions forms for new residents at the senior-citizen housing center where she works.

"The form asked, 'What is your greatest accomplishment?' and almost all of them said something about their children," she said. "I read those over and over again and thought: 'There must be something to this. There must be something I don't understand about having children.'"

Recognizing that her husband wanted children, Barnes decided to go ahead despite her fears. She now has a boy nearing his third birthday and an 8-month-old girl.

"What I have learned is that you grow with your children," she said. "I decided to take the risk and assume that with good parenting skills and learning and faith, I could do it well."

Some people who were unhappy in their childhoods worry that they'll bring up their kids the same way their parents did, and for Susan and Brian that was a disturbing thought. Their own childhoods left them without enthusiasm for parenting.

But with some thought and effort, it's possible to come up with new ways of doing things, Johnstone said.

"We ask parents what did they like about the way they were raised and what they didn't," Johnstone said. "Some people don't even think about that."

At the same time, you can intellectualize this decision too much. There's the old folk wisdom that if everyone waited until they were ready, nobody would ever have children.

Elizabeth Whelan was trying to decide whether to have a child in the early 1970s and ended up writing a book about it.

"I tried to rationalize what really is a highly emotional decision," Whelan said. "But you can assess what you're getting yourself into. Some people shouldn't be parents. The trick is to find out which category you're in."

Beyond the emotional decision-making, there are practical considerations, such as whether you can afford to raise a child.

Although it's certainly possible to be a good parent on a low income, it's a lot easier if a couple has planned ahead.

"If a couple if unable to put any money away, they're not ready to have a child, because a child take additional funds," Kappelman said.

Besides giving up half her income to child care, Jill Duman and her husband, Danyal, of Salinas, Calif., have lost much of their time together because they trade off caring for daughter Nora. Travel, dinners out and symphony tickets have also been written out of the budget.

The new mother said that even though she and Danyal thought and planned quite a bit, there was no way to prepare themselves for the major changes in their lives.

"When you have a baby it's like a bomb going off in your marriage," she said. "It's not necessarily a bad thing, but you never know where the pieces are going to land."