East Bay Moms in the News

From the San Francisco Chronicle, 3/23/06 by Paul McHugh

Moms take a hike

East Bay Moms is a business that functions like an outdoors social club. It's designed for women with babies or toddlers. Typical outings consist of 90-minute hikes followed by a picnic lunch. In addition there are social functions and educational programs. Annual membership is $90, which entitles a member to attend hikes such as those listed below. Other outings sometimes have additional fees. First meetings are free. Quarry trail hike at Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley, 10 a.m. Friday. This walk will cover a moderate 3-mile loop. (510) 653-7867. www.eastbaymoms.com.

From Parents' Press October, 2005

Daddy/Mommy & Me
(Treats for Parents of the Very Young)

Walks in the Wild & Evenings with New Friends:
East Bay Moms, now a decade old, continue to hang in there, providing support, companionship and networking for the parents of infants and toddlers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Weekly Friday morning hikes-with-baby (e.g. a trek along Berkeley's Strawberry Canyon Fire Trail on Oct. 14) keep members in shape, and there's also a stroller outing at least once a month, plus field trips, such as the October 20 visit to Gymboree in El Cerrito. This month's evening event is a talk by Dr. Mike Riera about different styles of learning (Oct. 27). For more about membership ($90 per year; prospective members are encouraged to attend an event before joining), contact (510) 653-7867, eastbaymom@aol.com, or www.eastbaymoms.com.

Oakland Tribune, The (CA)
February 25, 2005

Preschool gives kids edge--but it costs

Author: Alec Rosenberg, BUSINESS WRITER

AT KITAYAMA PRESCHOOL in Union City, children are coloring, making necklaces with Cheerios and sifting through cornmeal with measuring cups.

Family photos decorate the classroom. At the entrance, "welcome" is printed in 12 languages from Chinese to Spanish.

Parent Anahi Mendoza is pleased. Her 31/2-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, is learning English, having fun and attending a school near their home for free.

"It is good," Mendoza said in Spanish. "I like it here."

Finding a preschool can be challenging. For low-income parents such as Mendoza, free and low-cost programs tend to have waiting lists. For higher income parents, private preschools can cost more than $1,000 a month, or four times the California State University tuition.

But there are plenty of resources to help choose a preschool, and a movement is growing to provide publicly funded, free preschool for all 4-year-olds in the state.

You've probably seen! the First 5 California television ads with businessmen Eli Broad and Lewis Platt touting the benefits of quality preschool.

Research has found that children who attend quality preschool are more likely to be better students, earn more money and stay away from crime.

But California ranks 37th in the nation in preschool enrollment rates. Only 47 percent of the 1.17 million preschool-aged children attend preschool, including only 37 percent of Latinos.

The problem is especially acute among low-income families. More than three-fourths of the state's publicly funded preschool programs have wait lists, according to a recent survey by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California.

"We have a real crisis here in California that needs to be addressed," said Catherine Atkin, president of Oakland-based Preschool California.

The group advocates voluntary preschool for all 4-year-olds in California. It is working with actor/director Rob Reiner, the First 5 California chairman, to craft a June 2006 ballot initiative that would raise $2 billion a year to make public preschool freely available to any 4-year-old who wants it.
"It's an idea whose time has come," said Mark Friedman, executive director of First 5 Alameda County, which has funded improvements at child-care facilities, provided early childhood education and given stipends to teachers.

Across the Bay, San Mateo County is the first in the state to implement free preschool for all, using $10 million over three years from the county, First 5 San Mateo, First 5 California and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

After three years of planning, the first classes for 80 preschoolers will begin next month in Redwood City, said Jeanie McLaughlin, director of Preschool for All - San Mateo County. Other counties also plan preschool for all programs, including San Francisco and Santa Clara, she said.

For those looking to find a preschool, a good place to start is your local resource and referral agency. Each county has at least one. Alameda County has three, including BANANAS in Oakland.
"Some people call us before they have their bab ies," BANANAS program director Arlyce Currie said.
BANANAS offers free parenting information, workshops and referrals to child care and preschools. Parents should look for safe schools with a variety of activities, good teachers and good communication, Currie said.

"Focus on your child, not what the world thinks is good," Currie said.

Oakland resident Danielle Rinsler, a financial planning manager, and husband Patrick Heron, a software development manager, began looking last fall for a preschool for their daughter, Anna, who is now 11/2. They have talked to 10 schools, visited four and found waiting lists for the ones they like.

The full-day private schools cost from $1,000 a month to nearly $1,400 a month, but price isn't their biggest issue.

"Compared to what we're paying for a nanny, it's less expensive," Rinsler said. "It's all relative."
But they do want something beginning this fall near their Rockridge District home. Ideally, ! the teacher would speak Spanish, like their nanny.

"We're expecting we're going to have to make some concessions," Rinsler said. "But we're hopeful we can find something comfortable."

In most cases, parents should start looking for a preschool nine to 12 months in advance, said Oakland resident Lee Eisman, founder of East Bay Moms.

East Bay Moms publishes a preschool directory and hosts an annual preschool fair, which last month attracted about 500 parents.

Most traditional preschools cost $500 to $1,000 a month, Eisman said. Co-operative preschools, which require a lot of parent participation, can start as low as $200 a month, said Eisman, whose son attended a co-op.

"The key is to be able to go and watch, so you're seeing the way the teachers respond to problems," said registered nurse and mother Rona Renner, radio talk show host of Childhood Matters in Berkeley. "Whether it's the most expensive or most sought after doesn't mean it fits with your values."

Fremont private, nonprofit agency Kidango is doing its part, thanks to its partnership with the state and New Haven Unified School District in Union City. Three years ago, it became California's first program to make available subsidized preschool to every family in its school district.

Kidango has preschool classes at all New Haven elementary schools, including Kitayama, and at its high school and adult school. They serve 600 children, or one-third of the district's preschool-aged population. They are open to all California residents, but 99 percent live in the district. Some classes have waiting lists, and if demand increases, more classes could be added.

Classes are free to low-income families - about two-thirds of participants. For those with higher incomes, the fee is around $400 a month for part-time care and nearly $600 a month for full-time care.

New Haven is on the cutting edge, but the growing interest in preschool for all could lead others to try it, said Paul Miller, Kidango executive ! director.

A morning class of 22 at Kidango Kitayama ends with circle time. "Sientete," center director Renuka Hiremani said. That's "sit down" in Spanish.

Hiremani, a native of India, speaks four Indian languages, some Urdu and keeps a Spanish language dictionary by her side.

Parent Shirley Ng likes that it is a fun environment, close to home and free. Her 5-year-old son, Edgar Tang, who previously attended a private preschool, has been in the class for six months and already has improved his language skills and made friends, she said.

"Before, he could not speak English very well. At home, he spoke Chinese," Ng said. "Now he speaks better. Now he can socialize better."

(c) 2005 The Oakland Tribune. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Media NewsGroup, Inc. by NewsBank, Inc.
Record Number: 2584590

Moms nurture home businesses

By Dan Laidman
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

When Cindy Harris' son was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, medical tests and injections came to dominate their daily routine. Harris, a former teacher who homeschools her son, wanted a distraction for both of them.

"I was getting a little too caught up in his medical condition, and I needed something else to focus on," she said. "But I wanted to be at home."

The result was Come for Tea, a business Harris started in a spare room at the family house. She registered www.comefortea.com and by 2003 began selling a handful of teas over the Internet. Today she sells more than 50 varieties, as well as a line of gifts. And Cameron, now 11, helps with inventory.

Harris casts her transformation from professional to stay-at-home mom to home-based entrepreneur in generational terms.

"I had a stay-at-home mother, but for the first 10 years I was married I had a career," she said. "So I've seen both sides."

It is a balance that a number of East Bay mothers say they have achieved through starting their own business.

Erin Fuller, the executive director of the National Association of Women Business Owners, said about a third of her organization's 8,000 members have children living at home. While figures from recent years suggest the number of self-employed women is growing rapidly, precise data on female entrepreneurship remain scarce, she said.

"Women's entrepreneurship is a fairly young market in this country," Fuller said. "It wasn't until about 1988 that I could go get a bank loan without having my father or husband co-sign it with me."

Ellen Parlapiano, the co-author of the "Mompreneurs" series of advice books, agrees that strong data are scarce, but she estimates that almost half of the 13 million home-based businesses in the United States are now being run by mothers.

"It's absolutely a trend," she said. "We've been watching the trend for almost 10 years now, and we've seen it absolutely growing, especially with technology."

The Internet in particular has been key to the rise in mothers' small businesses, Parlapiano said, by making home-based businesses so accessible and easy to create. Meanwhile, such technological and workplace trends have intersected with social factors.

"The Generation X moms certainly have much more of a desire to continue to work but do it their way," she said. "Their moms were the trailblazers who set the whole stage for women working at all."

Fuller said that no matter the particular path, all women business owners share a common core desire.

"In terms of why all women start businesses, control is the number one thing cited no matter who does the research," she said.

For Lee Eisman of Oakland, who worked as a training manager at a bank, fate intervened and changed her career plans when she was laid off in the mid-1990s as part of a wave of corporate consolidation.

Eisman turned her attention to raising her young child. Among her favorite activities was to take her son hiking, and eventually she turned her mother-baby hiking group into East Bay Moms, a for-profit enterprise that provides recreational activities to local parents.

"Because of the kind of work I do now, I can do it anytime," said Eisman, who has a home office. "I work at 10 and 11 and 12 o'clock at night a lot."

Parlapiano said Eisman's tale of starting a business related to one's parenting experience is increasingly common.

"You tend to think of ideas that make your own life easier," she said.

The late-night hours also ring true to the "Mompreneurs" co-author, and Parlapiano said that mothers should take some caution. Without enough care paid to scheduling and priorities, she said, work can encroach on one's home life.

"You may be available to go to that afternoon parade, but if you're staying up until 3 in the morning to get work done, that can set you up for burnout as well," Parlapiano said.

Such concerns led Shelley Hunter to abandon her plans to start a home-based business.

The Danville woman worked as a computer programmer before deciding to stay at home and raise her daughter. After worrying about the infant's exposure to the sun when they went for walks, Hunter invented a cover for her baby carrier to protect her.

Hunter initially planned to market the product herself, but it became too difficult to balance the work with her family, especially after she had two more children. Something some women do not realize, she said, is that many of the mothers who have drawn publicity for their entrepreneurial ventures can afford to employ nannies and other domestic workers.

"I had this notion that I could do it all, and I felt like I wasn't doing either well," she said. "I wasn't the best mom I could be, and I wasn't the best business woman I could be."

Eventually Hunter licensed her product. She now invents on a freelance basis while raising her three children.

One Walnut Creek woman with a similar story of an invention born from motherly necessity is Tamara Monosoff. She has turned parenting into profit by marketing inventions by mothers who are not able to do so themselves.

A former business consultant and staffer in the Clinton administration, Monosoff became an inventor after developing a creative solution to her young daughter's tendency to unfurl all the family's toilet paper.

"I thought, I can't be the only mother in America who's dealing with this," she said.

The product Monosoff came up with to stanch the waste of paper, an elastic locking device known as the TP Saver, became the basis for a new business venture known as Mom Inventors Inc. Along with her husband, Brad Kofoed, a veteran of corporate sales, Monosoff dispenses advice to other entrepreneurial mothers and also brings their inventions to market.

"I would drive my kids around until they fell asleep," she said of the early days of Mom Inventors. "And then make business calls from the van."

With a dose of early publicity and products like a sandwich crust remover and a sticker set to teach children left and right, Mom Inventors forecasts a healthy profit on revenue that could top $2 million in 2005. Meanwhile, Monosoff is writing a handbook for mother inventors for publisher McGraw-Hill.

Meanwhile, with help from a cable television "do it yourself" show, the couple moved their base of operations from a cramped room to a renovated garage-office. No matter how big Mom Inventors gets, however, that is where Monosoff would like to stay.

"I want to stay inside the house," she said. "I'm definitely creating my world the way I have always wanted it to be."

PROFILES

• COMPANY: Come for Tea
  • PHONE: 510-799-5414
  • WEB SITE: www.comefortea.com
• COMPANY: East Bay Moms
  • WEB SITE: www.eastbaymoms.com
• COMPANY: Mom Inventors
  • PHONE: 925-932-6674
  • WEB SITE: www.mominventors.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Laidman covers small businesses and professional-services firms. Reach him at 925-943-8263 or dlaidman@cctimes.com.

OAKLAND TRIBUNE ARTICLE 5/14/00

Moms hike Bay Area's trails and bring their babies along
By Paul Sterman

To hike the paths that run from Montara to Mount Diablo
is to be reminded of the Bay Area's geographical treasures.
Everyone from babies to seniors can enjoy a hike.
Go along with our writers as they take you on some of the best trails.

So today is Mother's Day. And you want to do something special for mom.

How about taking her on a hike?

I would be a nice way to enjoy the beauty of the outdoors together, spend some quality time talking and get some exercise in the process.

And a vigorous walk might be just the perfect thing to work off that big Mother's Day brunch - or build up and appetite for one.

Hiking with Mom is exactly what Aidan Murphy was doing on a recent morning in Tilden Park in Berkeley. The 90-minute trek up to Wildcat Peak and back was a challenging workout, but Aidan didn't even break a sweat.

Then again, you wouldn't either if you were snugly strapped on your mom's back the whole time.

Aidan is 9 months old. And the little tyke clearly likes this kind of hike. Resting comfortably in his mom's spacious backpack, he languidly gazes around, nods off for a while and later snacks on a handful of Cheerios - the baby hiker's equivalent of a Power Bar.

The mother of this little guy, Alexandra Murphy, is a member of a hiking club called East Bay Moms. With their babies on their backs, the moms take weekly hikes to all sorts of scenic spots in Alameda County - Tilden, Roberts Recreational Area in Oakland, Briones Regional Park in Orinda and Valle Vista in Moraga, to name a few.

"It's great exercise," Alexandra Murphy says of the outings. "My legs have never looked better."

On this recent morning expedition at Tilden, there are 14 moms gathered - and one dad. Group members are well-prepared for the excursion. They have hiking boots, hats and water bottles. A few carry hiking sticks. Most have large backpacks especially equipped for carrying kids - complete with little "shade shields" over their heads.

The babies in the group range from newborns to those older than 2. The kids can be quite a heavy load; some of the older ones, for example, are 25 to 30 pounds - and the packs themselves usually add five pounds or so.

Walk uphill for an hour with 35 pounds on your back and you'll definitely feel it, say the women. But they happily plunge ahead.

"The fatigue is mitigated by the fact that you know this is your only way of getting exercise during the week," says Monica Gyulai of Berkeley.

The members of East Bay Moms say they appreciate the group because it's a great way to interact with other new moms while at the same time doing something positive and rewarding like hiking. Several point out they feel safer hiking in a large group.

The kids seem to like the hikes, too, say the moms: Many babies act mellow or do some napping because they find the steady movement soothing.

The contact with other moms is particularly important, say the group members, noting how isolating it can sometimes be as a new mother - particularly if you're suddenly at home full time after previously going to a job every day.

As the women walk, they share practical tips about subjects such as the best way to feed babies. Murphy says the club makes for a "good buddy system," because the hikers understand - and can lend a helping hand - when other moms need to stop to change a diaper or feed their baby.

"It's hard to hike with a baby with other people who don't have a baby," says the 32-year-old Oakland resident.

Gyulai, 33, recalls a time when she was hiking with the group and her 16-month-old son, Sebastian, wouldn't stop crying. Another mom kept Gyulai company the whole way, talking to her and reassuring her about the baby's crying.

Oakland resident Lee Eisman founded the group more than five year ago, having previously been a member of a similar group herself. East Bay Moms, which charges a $75 annual membership fee, has hikes every Friday. Along with doing hikes on unpaved trails, the group sometimes has stroller walks on paved paths.

Typically, the group walks for 90 minutes and has a picnic lunch afterwards. The club does other activities, such as taking their little ones to Kindergym together or having a regular "Moms Night Out."

Eisman says that besides the social and health benefits of the hiking group, it allows moms to discover pristine hiking areas just minutes from their homes.

"I think, where we live, there are just so many beautiful places," says Eisman. "I have people on these hikes all the time who say, 'Oh, I've lived in Oakland or Berkeley all my life and I never knew about this trail.'"

The Wildcat Peak hike in Tilden offers shaded trails snaking through pastoral hillside settings. Once you reach the top, there are sweeping views of the Bay and the San Francisco skyline. It's beautiful up here, and the moms clearly enjoy the scenery.

Among those on the outing are Jason Brickner - the lone dad - his wife, Donna, and their 1-year-old son, Will.

It's the Oakland couple's 10 year wedding anniversary on this day and they felt this was a fitting way to celebrate, because they love to hike together as a family, usually bringing along their dog, Maggie.

Making this even more of a family affair for the Brickners, Donna's mom, Nancy visiting from Santa Barbara, is along for the hike. While Jason - carrying Will on his back - trades parenting stories with some of the moms, Donna, 31, and Nancy, 54, drop back and walk together for a long stretch.

A mom hiking with her mom.

After the Tilden outing, Donna and Nancy plan to drop Jason off at work in San Francisco and then hike with Will around Golden Gate Park in the afternoon. "They're doing the walking tour of the Bay Area," jokes Jason.

Donna has her Ph.D. in biology and has worked as a botanist, so she enjoys identifying different types of plants when she walks. She's eager to pass on her love of the outdoors to her little son.

"I know he probably doesn't understand, but I try to teach him the names of things and the smells of things," Donna says. "I hope he grows to revere (nature), to take care of it and to respect it."

For more information about East Bay Moms, call (510) 653-7867 or visit the group's Web site: www.eastbaymoms.com.

- Paul Sterman

SAN FRANCISCO ARTICLE 8/24/01

Menopausal Moms
By Annie Nakao

At 51, Lynne Wilkins could be obsessing about hot flashes and mood swings. Instead, she's fixated on dirty diapers and teething. Wilkins and her husband, John, 57, are raising 13-month-old Elena Lucia, who has taken over their home and hearts since being adopted by the Oakland couple soon after birth.

"I'm doing menopause and motherhood at the same time," said Wilkins. "It's been wonderful and overwhelming." In Sunnyvale, Mindy Schanz, who turns 47 in three months, gazes at her chubby-cheeked 7-month-old son and jokingly calls herself "an old lady."

She and her husband, Ed, 59, thought it was menopause when her period stopped 16 months ago. Instead, "it" turned out to be Edward William Masada Schanz, their "last-chance baby."

"I worry about lots of things how do I teach him everything?" she said. "But then I think it's OK. He's a good baby."

Some people might wonder why any woman would take on parenthood with menopause staring her in the face. But some women, like Wilkins and Schanz, are wondering: "Why not?"

Women are pushing the traditional limits of child rearing by becoming new mothers either through childbirth or adoption long after their 20s and 30s.

From 1990 to 1999, births in the United States to women ages 40 to 44 soared 71%, while births to women ages 45 to 49 rose 15%, reported the National Center for Health Statistics in Washington, D.C.

Although more uncommon, births to women age 50 and older are also rising. In 1999, there were 174 births nationwide to women ages 50 to 54, largely because of fertility treatments.

The trend is particularly striking in California, where births to mothers ages 40 to 44 rose 46%, from 9,758 to 14,272 between 1990 and 1999, while births to women 45 and older jumped 102%, from 447 to 904.

In the Bay Area, births to women 45 and older also have steadily risen.

"This area is ripe for it," said Rita Kennen, 51, of Burlingame, mother of an 8-year-old girl and creator of Midlife Mommies, an Internet Web site for older moms.

To be sure, most women still bear their children young.

Yet older mothers often get extraordinary attention, judging by the recent media flurry when a 61-year-old San Francisco woman had a baby at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center or when Southern Californian Arceli Keh gave birth at age 63 in 1996, becoming the world's oldest mother.

Advances in human reproductive therapies that have made such births possible have provoked controversy about older parents: Will they have enough energy to raise a toddler or a teenager? Are they are likely to die before their youngsters grow to adulthood?

Part of the debate centers on whether women are waiting too long to have children. Infertility experts think so, and they are mounting a public campaign about the negative effects of aging on women's fertility.

If women feel pressured to have babies as a result, they also need to make life choices with accurate information, said Nancy London, a Santa Fe therapist and author of a new book published by Ten-Speed Press in Berkeley, "Hot Flashes, Warm Bottles, First-Time Mothers Over Forty."

"To begin with, it's biological," she said.

A woman in her mid- to late 40s is entering "perimenopause" the transition into menopause, London said. At this age, women slow down and turn inward. The urge for solitude often runs counter to the needs of a child.

"I call this the clash of the titans," London said. "The discrepancy between these two needs grows so big as the years progress. That's why I think 40-somethng is the absolute maximum limit in having a child."

London's book recounts scenes of menopausal motherhood: moms who are "lactating and incontinent" or watching Sesame Street with bifocals."

The book grew out of an older moms' support group that London formed after having a baby just shy of her 44th birthday.

A co-author of the 1970s feminist health bible, "Our Bodies, Ourselves," London reveled in raising daughter Sasha. But she also felt guilty for being exhausted and irritable. "

All of the books on 40-something women assumed my children were gone," said London. "And all the books on parenting assumed I was much younger."

When she ran an ad to find other older moms, she was deluged with calls. "There was that relief of being able to say, 'Are you as tired as I am?'" London said. "We could ask that question because everyone in the rook knew that we were ecstatic to be mothers."

Lynne Wilkins knows the feeling.

"We're energetic and healthy," she said. "But for sure, we used to have lots more energy."

Married four years, the couple were comfortable; she teaches English as a second language and he works as a respiratory therapist at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland.

John Wilkins had two grown children. But they wanted a family of their own.

The couple waited three years to adopt. Then with only one day's notice, Elena was placed with them.

"It was a good way to start. I didn't have any chance to worry whether I could really do it," said Lynne Wilkins.

Once menopause made sleep difficult. Now Wilkins falls asleep in a snap, the problem is she can never get enough of it.

Keeping fit has "gone out the window," and she's still trying to cobble together a part-time work schedule.

But Lynne Wilkins says she doesn't "regret a thing."

"Sure, I'd rather be 27 or 34, but on the other hand, I'm a better mother now than I would have been at 27 or 34," she said. "I have self-knowledge."

Trade-offs are part of older parenthood: Older parents are in better financial shape and are often emotionally mature and patient. They also bring "a delight, a kind of joy because (motherhood) has been long sought," said London.

But older parents are also past their physical peak.

"I clean houses five days a week, and I take him with me," said Mindy Schanz. "It's OK because he mostly sleeps, and I can feed him. But when I get home, I get tired. I make dinner, and then I go to bed."

Children of older parents also may miss the company of grandparents, who are either too aged to play with them or have passed away.

When old enough, these children also start to notice their parents are different.

"Oh, there were tines when other people's parents were out there, playing ball," said Kevin branch, 35 of San Mateo, who was a year old when adopted by his 50-something parents. "I never really wanted to ask them to do that because, you know, they were older. But my dad was active in Cub Scouts. And they were the greatest parents. So it wasn't that big of a deal. But I was aware of it."

So is London's preteen daughter, who admitted lying to her friends about her mother's age by saying she was 40, when she is actually 55.

But acting one's age is exactly what an older mom needs to do.

"Here we are as 40-something mothers who are supposed to be perky, sexually available all the time, on top of the game, fulfilling our careers and making gourmet sushi for dinner," London said. "If we can get over trying to act and feel like 20-year-old moms, we have an enormous amount to bring to the experience."

- Annie Nakao

Debunking the myths of only kids

By Jessica Yadegaran

Contra Costa Times

6/9/10

When she was a little girl, Kathy Engel would lie in bed at night and talk to the imaginary friends that lurked in the corners of her bedroom.

The Pleasanton mother of three was an only child, but she wasn't particularly lonely, she says. She had a happy upbringing, full of love and toys and a close friend with whom she went on vacations. Perhaps because she was the only child at home, Engel's parents were strict and expected the best from her, especially when it came to school. She still remembers her father's disappointment when she came home from college with her first B.

"People are surprised to hear that I'm an only child because I did not grow up spoiled," says Engel, now 65.

Those without siblings hear these stereotypes all the time: That they are spoiled, bratty, and can't function because their parents did everything for them. Wonder what onlies Steve Jobs, Betty White and Shaquille O'Neal would say about that? Today, 20 percent of children under 18 are onlies, according to the U.S. Census. And, due to varied reasons including delays in marriage and having children, families with one child now outnumber those with two children, says social psychologist Susan Newman.

So if this is the new traditional family (not just in America but also in Japan, Italy, China and Britian, according to Newman), we should take a closer look and see what makes only children tick.

For starters, the notion that onlies are maladjusted is a myth, says Newman, a New Jersey parenting expert and author of "Parenting an Only Child" (Broadway; 2001). Newman, who covers onlies on Singletons, her Psychology Today blog, says the bias dates back to the late-1890s child psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who called being an only child "a disease unto itself." But that was a different era. Families were isolated, and a lot has changed.

"Today children are socialized very early," Newman says. "They learn all they need to know about empathy and sharing from friends. But, no matter how much parenting changes, social attitudes toward only children are stuck in the past. It's a long, slow climb to change those views."

Despite her happy childhood, Engel says she was glad to marry a man who came from a big family, so her kids, now grown with kids of their own, would have aunts, uncles, and cousins. "Family is very important to me," she says.

That sense of community drives a lot of traffic at Onlychild.com, a website Los Angeles educator Carolyn White started 12 years ago when her one and only turned 18. As editor, White receives thousands of e-mails from onlies as young as 9 to seniors from around the world. They write to her about everything, from the stereotypes they live under to the issues that arise with age, like caring for ailing parents alone.

Elizabeth Topete of Richmond cares for both of her parents when they fall ill. Her mother and father, 72 and 76 respectively, suffer from diabetes and heart issues. Topete, 37, balances their care with motherhood — she has a 2-month-old baby girl — and her job as a medical records technician. "If I had a sibling, we could share the responsibility," Topete says. "All the burden falls on me." But, being an only child also taught Topete self-reliance.

"I was taught at an early age to be able to do things for myself and take initiative for a task or challenge," says Topete, who would cure childhood boredom by making animal shapes out of clouds or sling shots with the leaves and rocks she collected from the garden. She also spent a lot of time staring out the window, wondering what it would be like to fight with a sibling over a hairbrush.

"People need to understand that only children are strong, independent, successful, creative and have incredible coping skills," White says. "One of the important things to them is that they feel integral to their families."

Balancing that integration with sound parenting skills can be tricky. When there's only one around, the tendency is to hover, smother, or "Bubble Wrap" the child with protection, says White, author of "The Seven Common Sins of Parenting an Only Child" (Jossey-Bass; 2004). "One of the struggles is to remember they're still a kid," White says.

Still, onlies greatly benefit from having their parents' full attention and income. Studies show no difference with onlies when it comes to brattiness, but they do have higher intelligence and greater levels of achievement, White says. "When the kids sit down at dinner, they're not talking to another child, they're having adult conversations with their parents," Newman adds.

Jordan Tennenbaum of Oakland knows he has it good. Jordan is 17 and attends a small private school in Lafayette. He drives a 2006 Honda Accord and has traveled to Tanzania and the Galápagos Islands. "I wouldn't say I'm spoiled," says Jordan, who is considering a career in dermatology. "I'd say I'm treated well."

But the good life doesn't come without rules and responsibilities. Every night, Jordan washes the dinner dishes. He does laundry. He is in charge of garbage and recycling and cleans up after his German shepherd. For pocket money, he tutors and baby-sits. And he maintains a high grade point average. "My parents raised me right," he says. "They don't let me talk back or act bratty."

Jordan's mother, Lee Eisman, founder of East Bay Moms, says her son is outgoing and always had an easy time interacting with adults. She says there is still a stigma against families who choose to have one child, even though having a sibling doesn't come with any guarantees. "You hear people say, 'Oh, my sister? She's my best friend,'" Eisman says. "But that isn't always the case."

Like most of the dozen onlies interviewed for this story, Jordan remembers a brief time when he was little and asked his parents for a sibling. He'd wanted an older brother. But right now, he doesn't. He has plenty of friends. He likes having his own room. And he likes that he doesn't have to share a TV with someone. In fact, he says the best thing about being an only child is also the worst thing.

"I get all the attention," he says. "I can never blame anything on someone else."

Follow these tips for parenting an only child from social psychologist Susan Newman, author of "Parenting an Only Child: The Joys and Challenges of Raising Your One and Only" (Broadway, 2001). Newman blogs on the subject at www.psychologytoday.com/blog/singletons.

Socialize the child early. Preschool, play dates, mommy groups and baby-sitting coops make it easier than ever for onlies to interact with other kids.

Remember who is in charge. When you have one child, it's easy to do what he wants to do. Don't get stuck in that cycle.

Don't focus on the child's singleness. Even if you're not happy because you wanted another child but couldn't or had a boy but wanted a girl, don't let your child think that he or she is not enough.

Lower your expectations. Because there is one child in the house that means one report card, one football game, and one piano recital. Don't intensify the pressure.

Find outside interests. Parents with jobs, friends, and interests outside of their child are less likely to scrutinize or hover over their only child. You don't wantthe child to define your sense of self.