Strong Happy Family: Unexpected Advice from an Ivy League Mom of 10 - Paperback

by Donna Baer (Author)

When I meet someone for the first time, I try to avoid mentioning that I have ten kids. It's not that I'm ashamed of them, or that I fear ridicule- I really love my kids and our big boisterous life. I avoid mentioning the brood because it's a conversation stopper. Or at least it stops the part of the conversation that intrigues me. While I'm curious about my new acquaintance's family or work, all of a sudden I find myself answering questions about "the big life." My hunch is that new friends query me in order to sift out some advice that could help them in their scaled-back version of a Strong Happy Family. Though I would really love to hear their stories, I remember what it was like to be a young mother starving for parenting advice, so I usually wind up answering questions.The questions I'm asked often huddle around certain themes. This book attempts to answer ten of the most frequent. They range from big-picture items (How do you get your kids to listen to you?) to the nuts and bolts (How do you keep them all fed?), and they are answered in no particular order. If you read this book and we ever get to sit down for coffee together, then we can talk about your life! I'd like that.

Author Biography

I grew up just outside Manhattan, and attended Brown when it was very trendy to do so. (I was there when JFK Jr, Bill Mondale and other glitterati graced the campus.) I met the love of my life at Brown; we married, moved to Chicago, and became yuppies. I was made an officer in an investment-banking firm, and was poised to fall into a typical, high-achiever power-track career when I was blindsided. By a baby. Now I don't mean that the pregnancy was unplanned and I struggled to find where the little creature would fit into my career plan. No, I mean I was completely caught off guard by how I fell head over heels in love. Twitterpated, dumbfounded, jaw on the floor. How could this happen to me?Suddenly, nothing mattered to me but caring for my baby, and making a home. When my maternity leave ended, I called my boss to say that I was not returning to work. My friends thought I was insane-that a few weeks of being home all day with a pre-verbal sack of demands would cure me of my ailment. But just the opposite happened. The more I cared for my daughter, the more I fell in love with her. The more I created amazing meals, the more I enjoyed cooking. The better I made our hip little apartment look, the more I appreciated-dare I say the word?-housekeeping! Despite my Ivy League degree and my high-powered work experience, I was becoming the very thing I had once disparaged: a homemaker! And I had never been happier. Then it dawned on me: if one child could create so much joy, what could two children do? My husband, who had fallen in love with our little girl too, and who was a major beneficiary of my discovering the lost arts of homemaking, agreed to test the hypothesis. We discovered that the joy to child ratio varied not geometrically but logarithmically! Of course, to validate our test results we needed to repeat the experiment, so in the space of just three years we had three children. And while moving from "man-to-man" to a zone defense required adjustments, the test results were the same: more kids = more happiness. My husband and I are the "all-in" types. We don't do things half-heartedly and we don't phone it in. What does a couple wired this way do with the test data I've described? We pulled the goalie for good. That was it. Bring them babies on! And did they ever come! For over twenty years straight I was pregnant, nursing, or both. We received ten children, two girls and eight boys. And we are a Strong Happy Family. stronghappyfamily.org