in the fall of 2005, i worked part

-time and took care of my infant son for most of the day while my wife Olli Doo was at her job. We didn’t have any family in the area, and we had lost most of our child-free friends, who wondered why we stopped coming to their fabulous parties. Communication between Olli and me was limited to reports on meals, naps, and dia-

per changes before one of us headed out the door to work. For the fi rst time in 14 years together, we experienced serious strain in our relationship. Our son Liko was our main company, a diaper-clad bridge between her workplace and mine.

On sunny playgrounds I taught Liko to walk, his little fi sts clenched around my aching forefi ngers. Pushing a swing, I’d

THE 21ST CENTURY FAMILY

eye the mothers and they eyed me, or so I imagined. I was typically the only father. The moms seldom spoke to me and I was frankly afraid of them. I feared—it sounds ridiculous to admit—that if I initiated a real conversation, they’d think I was hitting on them. Deep in my bones, I felt that I didn’t belong on weekday playgrounds. Not just because I was a dad; I didn’t even feel like a parent, not then. I felt like a spy, an inter-loper, an anthropologist studying a lost tribe of stroller-pushing urban nomads.

In addition to our drooly, poopy, giggling baby boy, the main thing my wife and I shared during this period was our isolation. Yet in at least one respect, we had plenty of company: Research shows that most parents today face the same challenges we did. “Increasingly, new families are created far from grandparents, kin, and friends with babies the same age, leaving parents with-out the support of those who could share their experiences of the ups and downs of parenthood,” write University of California, Berkeley, psychologists Philip Cowan and Carolyn Pape Cowan in the 2003 anthology All Our Families. “Most modern parents bring babies home to isolated dwellings where their neighbors are strangers.”

The Cowans studied 200 nuclear families over two decades and found that today’s parents face a range of challenges that earlier generations did not. In addition to the time-less problems of sleep deprivation, putting food on the table, and learning to take care of a baby—stressful all by themselves—the Cowans found that most husbands and wives with new babies come to feel isolated from each other—as well as their friends, families, and communities—and this isola-tion can harm their health, well-being, and marriages.

What’s more, the Cowans found that “strained economic conditions and the shifting ideology about appropriate roles for mothers and fathers pose new challenges for these new pioneers, whose journey will lead them through unfamiliar terrain.” In other words, not only are we geographically isolated from family and friends, but we’re cut off from tradition as well: Modern condi-tions make it diffi cult—if not impossible—to emulate older family models, leaving us with few clear templates for what our families should look like.

30 Greater Good Fall 2007

Kids will destroy your life, reports Jeremy Adam Smith. But don’t worry, parents: You’ll get a new one.ALL PHOTOS BY JACKIE ADAMS

Playground Pioneers

Olli Doo, the author’s wife, playing with Ezra Mass, the son of their friends Jessica Mass and Jackie Adams. “My friendships have given me a lot more confi dence in what I’m doing as a parent,” says Olli.

In the Cowans’s fi ndings, I see my fam-ily and I see every family I know. But I’ve discovered that the isolation and pressures the Cowans describe are only half the story: Though we might live in isolated times, we are not condemned to lives of lonely desperation. Eventually, Olli and I overcame our isolation, and so did many of the families around us, building new lives, identities, and communities in the process.

As Richard Ross, a 47-year-old dad, once told me, “Sure, kids’ll destroy your life. But don’t worry: You’ll get a new one.”

Against the wall“Through most of history,” writes family historian Stephanie Coontz in her essay “How to Stay Married,” “marriage was only one of many places where people cultivated long-term commitments. Neigh-bors, family, and friends have been equally important sources of emotional and practi-cal support.” She continues:

Today, we expect much more inti-macy and support from our partners than in the past, but much less from everyone else. This puts a huge strain on the institution of marriage. When a couple’s relationship is strong, a marriage can be more fulfi lling than ever. But we often overload marriage by asking our partner to satisfy more needs than any one individual can possibly meet, and if our marriage falters, we have few emotional sup-port systems to fall back on.

Viru Gupte, 40 years old, grew up in India, where most marriages are still arranged by parents and communal life remains very strong, even in the country’s dense urban areas. “In Indian cities, the people around you become your family,” says Viru, who was raised in Delhi. “The kids practically grow up in their neighbors’ apartments. You just walked in whenever you wanted, and they fed you. There’s a lot of intergenerational mix.”

After Viru came to the United States to attend college, he met Beth Saiki, who grew up in New Mexico. For nearly 15 years,

they maintained a long-distance relation-ship (for three of those years, they lived in different countries while Beth served in the Peace Corps), and their plans and social lives were driven by their respective careers.

Then Anna Priya came along. “The hardest part of becoming a parent for me was fi guring out what to drop at work so that I could be home,” says Viru, who is the self-employed co-founder of a small information technology fi rm. He was also shocked at how alone they became.

“You have to really ask for help here in the United States,” he says. “And I’m not talking about friends; I’m talking about family. If something goes wrong, you can’t just expect help.”

In the fi rst trimester of Beth’s second pregnancy, something did go wrong. Beth grew very sick and could hardly leave the bedroom. In India, says Viru, his family members would have dropped everything to help, but in America—with both sets of relatives far away—Viru was forced by their isolation to assume a new caregiving role. He virtually quit working for three months while he took care of both his daughter and his wife.

Even without health complications, living so far from family and friends can exacerbate the typical strains of becoming a new parent. Jackie Adams, 42, grew up in a mountain town east of Lake Tahoe that always felt too small and conservative for her. She left a month after she turned 18 and ultimately settled in San Francisco. Ten years ago, she met 37-year-old Jessica Mass, and from the beginning the couple talked about hav-ing a child together.

After Ezra (“the only name we could agree on”) was born in 2005, Jackie says that “he felt like the missing piece of the puzzle.” But with no family in town to help, no friends with children, and her partner at work after just two weeks of parental leave, Jackie faced the transition to parenthood alone—an isolated condition which, note the Cowans, “poses a risk to [mothers] and their babies’ well-being.”

METHODS

Bringing Baby HomeBY JILL SUTTIE

When spouses become parents, they can expect challenges beyond dirty diapers

and sleepless nights. In a study that followed 130 couples from the time they married until their fi rst babies turned three, researchers John and Julie Gottman found that 67 percent of the couples experienced more confl ict, less intimacy, and higher levels of depression after becoming parents. All of these factors contribute to a higher divorce rate and can have a negative impact on children.

Alarmed, the Gottmans developed a two-day workshop for new parents dubbed “Bringing Baby Home” (BBH), which teaches these parents how to manage confl ict, build intimacy, and read their babies’ social-emotional cues. “We really focused on giving couples concrete tools that cover all aspects of a relationship,” says Carolyn Pirak, director of the BBH Program.

Pirak was part of a team that recently evaluated the BBH over four years. Compared to a control group, couples attending the BBH workshop experienced higher relationship satisfaction and stability, signifi cantly less hostility toward their spouses, more participation by husbands in child rearing, and lower rates of post-partum depression (22.5 percent compared to 66.5 percent). Their babies also benefi ted, dealing better with frustration and showing fewer language delays.

Pirak says an important part of the workshop is helping parents, particularly fathers, better understand their babies’ needs. For example, she and her colleagues developed a special deck of cards: On one side of each card was a child care activity; on the other was an explanation of the research into why that activity is valuable to a baby’s development. The dads used the cards to pick tasks they wanted to commit to doing, which gave them a sense of control while helping moms feel they were sharing the responsibilities of child care.

The Gottman Institute is now training educa-tors around the globe to deliver the workshop to new parents, and John and Julie Gottman recently published a book, And Baby Makes Three, that offers parents tips for preserving their relationship after having children.

“It’s the small changes—like working out responsibilities and learning how to express gratitude and appreciation—that really make a relationship work,” says Pirak.

I’ve discovered that today, as much as ever, parenting is a social activity that no human can do alone.

Fall 2007 Greater Good 31

“I don’t think I slept for literally a month after Ezra was born,” recalls Jackie. “I remember being with him 24-7, and I don’t remember sleeping. I remember actually hit-ting my head against the wall at one point, because I just couldn’t control it at all.”

But this was only one source of stress for Jackie and Jessica. While Jackie was learning how to take care of a baby at home alone, Jessica struggled to craft a new role as a breadwinning, nonbiological mom—one for which she had few role models.

“I defi nitely didn’t feel like a father, because I’d grown up learning to be a mother,” says Jessica, whose extended fam-ily lives in New York. “Jackie was doing the mother’s role, but I wasn’t going to do the father’s role. To call myself the father felt like that was a further step away from being the parent.”

I know something of how Jessica feels, as unlikely as that might sound. Women cast into the traditional fathering roles—as she was—and men who embrace the mothering role—as I did—often fi nd themselves strug-gling to match their newfound identities against models they see in society at large. As the Cowans point out, pioneers in new family forms, like pioneers throughout his-tory, often fi nd themselves alone in places for which there are no maps. When nontra-ditional parents—who today are the major-ity of parents—step onto the playground, they’re not sure where they stand in relation to other parents. Their fear of not belong-

ing can keep them isolated from potential friends and role models.

Looking for helpWhile Viru was taking care of Beth and Anna Priya, and Jackie was pounding her head against a wall, I was pushing a stroller up and down the hills of our San Francisco neighborhood—in the early days when I took care of him, this was the only way I could get Liko to sleep. On these foggy afternoons, time slowed, and with every minute I’d feel more and more isolated.

I was of two minds about my isolation. On one hand, I accepted it with a sense of stoic and rebellious male pride. Only in retrospect am I able to say that I was, in fact, lonely—and more than a little depressed about it. And so on the other hand, I secretly craved the companionship of other parents. Most caregivers are still moms, but the simple fact is that dads who take daily care of kids need support and friendship, too. When University of Texas researcher Aaron Rochlen and his team studied 213 stay-at-home fathers, they found that social support was the most important factor that predicted the psychological well-being and relationship satisfaction of these dads.

“Social support seemed important in sev-eral different contexts—with their partner, friends, and family,” writes Rochlen. “Con-versely, those who had low social support in these areas seemed to be struggling more in their relationships and in life.”

Many of us new parents—moms and dads alike—learned this the hard way. Eventu-ally, sometimes out of desperation, many of us awkwardly sought out the kind of social support Rochlen describes. Some of these efforts were more successful than others. For instance, in an effort to build a community of parents, Jackie and Jessica joined a parent-ing group—which disintegrated after one of the couples broke up. “They weren’t the only couple struggling,” says Jackie. “And I think their breakup scared people. We felt more vulnerable.”

For Viru and Beth, the turning point came while Beth was sick. Beth describes herself as shy and reluctant to reach out to other parents, but Viru had been raised in a cooperative and tightly knit urban com-munity in India. Thrust into the role of stay-at-home caregiver for Beth and Anna Priya, Viru applied his sociable instincts to his new environment—and consciously set about building a community that could provide help and support.

“You have to work very hard to have a community here,” he says. “It requires planning.”

On playgrounds and at the neighborhood farmer’s market, Viru gathered phone num-bers and emails, and he organized family hikes and all-dad museum trips. Their circle grew—just as my own family’s was expand-ing. Though at fi rst my son seemed to cut me and my wife off from any wider community (as well as each other), at around 14 months

THE 21ST CENTURY FAMILY

32 Greater Good Fall 2007

Ezra Mass with Viru Gupte, father of Anna Priya. “In Indian cities, the people around you become your family,” says Viru.

he started to show an interest in playing with other kids.

It was Liko’s growing sociability—not my own loneliness, which I denied right up until the moment it vanished—that pushed me to meet other parents. And so I plucked up my courage and started to recruit moms and toddlers into a playgroup of our own. Later my wife and I organized monthly family brunches at our house—an idea we conceived explicitly as a community-build-ing activity. Jackie, Jessica, and Ezra came, and so did Beth, Viru, and Anna Priya; they were joined by a half dozen other families.

“The brunches are so warm and so nice, it’s something that we’re all looking forward to now,” says Viru. “They really structured things in our community.”

We belong hereAs a result of all these regular, planned activities—monthly brunches, weekly play-groups, and the weekly rendezvous at the farmer’s market—our bonds tightened and we started helping each other out in various ways. We set up weekly kid swaps so that

the parents could take turns going out on dates, and we all developed genuine affec-tion for each other’s children. One day on a beach outing, reports Jackie, a woman next to our little gang said she “couldn’t tell which kids were connected to which parents because all of the adults gave equal amounts of attention to each kid, and each kid seemed familiar and comfortable with each of us.”

Scientists have a name for this kind of behavior: alloparenting, where individuals in addition to the actual parents take on responsibility for children. “Among humans living in foraging societies,” writes the anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy in her 1999 book Mother Nature, “a helpful mate and/or alloparents were usually essential for a mother to rear any infant at all.” In recent American history, childcare fell exclusively to mothers and their female relatives—but perhaps economic and social changes are rendering that arrangement obsolete. In a time when biological families are scattered across the world, we might once again be seeing a need for dads and other adults to

form voluntary tribes that can share in the care and rearing of children.

Indeed, I’ve discovered that today, as much as ever, parenting is a social activ-ity that no human can do alone. As our community grew, my wife and I largely recovered from the anxiety and depression that shadowed our son’s second year. “It’s a chicken and egg thing,” says my wife Olli, who is now Liko’s primary caregiver. “Finding friends made me feel better, but feeling better helped me to get more friends. My friendships have given me a lot more confi dence in what I’m doing as a parent—I guess because I see other people struggling with the same things, and I’m appreciating their solutions and they’re appreciating my solutions.”

These friendships also provide a combi-nation of emotional and practical help. “I feel like I can call on friends for help when I need it, like watching Liko when I’m going to the dentist or just to be there when I feel like I’m going crazy,” says Olli.

“It’s also helped me avoid falling into bad patterns. If Liko wants to go to the playground and I’m depressed and don’t feel like going out, it helps to have someone to call and see if they also want to go to the playground.”

Thus our growing circle of families helped repair our frayed emotional lives, as individuals and as a couple. Other things changed, too—for example, we carved out more time for ourselves as a couple and developed a saner, more fl exible sched-ule—but fi nding our new community was critical to becoming happy parents. Indeed, Philip and Carolyn Cowan found that creat-ing groups in which couples could talk with other couples, and individual spouses with other spouses, “can buffer men and women’s dissatisfaction and keep their marital disen-chantment from getting out of hand.”

“Friends are the secret weapon,” Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist at the Uni-versity of California, Santa Barbara, told me. “When couples have kids, they tend to look inward and focus completely on each other

and the baby. You can see the temptation of doing that, and yet that’s not the only way to deal with that transition. Some couples do [build] connections to friends and extended family, and the couples who do that are less likely to experience the depression that sometimes happens when people transition to being parents.”

Curiously, the families who now form our circle are very different from each other in certain ways—racially, culturally, and eco-nomically. But we apparently do not need to be homogenous in order to form a coopera-tive and caring community. “Respect plays the main role in my day-to-day existence,” says Jackie. “When I see other parents respecting other parenting styles that are unlike their own, I take note and appreciate their abil-ity to be open and accepting. I fi nd myself instantly drawn to them, and I, who used to be an extremely shy person, am sparking

up a conversation and making a new friend. Parenthood has defi nitely turned me into an open person—something I thought I would never be.”

Today when I take Liko to the play-ground, I no longer feel like a spy. I feel like I belong there—and I know many of the parents around me now feel the same way.

“I remember this one day at the park when I looked around and realized that I knew all the parents and kids playing there,” recalls Beth. “It was one of those moments when I thought, ‘Wow, this is cool. We’re part of this neighborhood. We belong here. This is our extended family.’ It was a great feeling.”

Jeremy Adam Smith is managing editor of Greater Good and author of Twenty-First-Cen-tury Dad, forthcoming from Beacon Press. He blogs about the politics of parenting at Daddy Dialectic (http://daddy-dialectic.blogspot.com).

“You have to work very hard to have a community here. It requires planning.”

Fall 2007 Greater Good 33

The author with his son, Liko.