As with everything we do at Circle of Moms, the redesign of the site was undertaken in partnership with our members. We all felt that the site needed a makeover, a look that more accurately reflects the vibrance of a community that’s now almost 10 million strong. So we talked to some of our most active contributors and asked them what they’d like to see change. And we spent a lot of time analyzing usage patterns to figure out what was working and what needed some help. Then we went back to the drawing board to come up with a happier and more energized color palette, some brand new functionality for Child Space (coming later in the summer), and a slew of changes to the interface that are designed to make it much easier to use Circle of Moms.

Here’s the catch: it might not be easier at first. While we love the changes and think you will too, we’re pretty sure that some of you will be wishing for the old site–at first. We do appreciate that it can feel very frustrating to have something that you use frequently up and change on you.  So we’re hoping that you’ll allow yourself some time to get used to the new look, which we think is a breath of fresh air, and also allow us some time to work out the glitches.

In the meantime, please let us know what you think of the redesign and how else we can improve Circle of Moms for you; we’re all ears!

Last week we compared the developmental milestones of baby girls and boys, and concluded that among babies, popular sentiment (boys lag behind girls) holds little truth. This news was received with disbelief by many of the moms who read about it on our Facebook fan page. So it’s interesting to see that when we look beyond babyhood, there is clear evidence to back up their incredulity:  according to our data, girls do indeed take the lead — between the ages of 1 and 7.

Here’s the story:

Boys Lag Behind in Potty Training
If our community discussions on the topic of potty training are an accurate indicator, the transition from diapers is a struggle for many kids and parents. Pediatricians and experts often counsel parents that waiting and watching for specific signs of potty training readiness in a child will shorten the process, but there are many who say that a determined parent can still accelerate it.

With that framework in mind, we’re seeing that either boys are ready later or that parents of boys are less likely to succeed at accelerating the process. Girls are out of diapers, on average, a full two and a half months earlier than their brothers (a savings of roughly $120 in diapers!). The average age of potty training in girls is 2 years, 9.5 months, as compared to 3 years for boys.

By the age of 2, about a third (32%) of girls are potty trained as compared to only 20% of boys. A year later, 68% of girls have wiggled out of their nappies for good, compared to 52% of three year-old boys.

Boys Are Longer in the Tooth
While the age of successful potty training–and our stats on it–may be influenced by parenting styles, few would argue that mom and dad have much impact on when the tooth fairy will be called to duty. And so it is with milk teeth: on average girls lose them a full month and a half earlier than boys. By the age of 6, 66% of girls have a gap-toothed smile, compared to 57% of boys.

In light of our finding that boy babies teethe their way to first teeth earlier than girl babies. it’s interesting to note that they also hold on to them longer. We invite all evolutionary biologists who are reading this to speculate on the reasons.

Girls are Ready for School Earlier–and Parents Know It
Do the findings on physical development extend to the milestones of school readiness? The answer is yes–and no.

Parents of boys with birthdays that place them in the youngest cohort of a kindergarten class may be relieved to learn that they are on equal footing with same-age girls: according to our data, boys and girls learn to read on very similar timelines, with children of both genders achieving this horizon-widening milestone within the same span of time (4-7) and at the same average age (between 5 and 5 and a half).

But when we drill down into the pre-academic skills that kids tend to hone in preschool, the storied gender gap appears: girls are clear frontrunners at reciting the alphabet, counting, and writing their own names.

On average:

•    Girls learn their ABC’s at 2 years 6 months, which is almost two months earlier than boys. By the age of 2 1/2, half of girls know their ABC’s, compared to just 42% of boys.

•    Girls start counting at 2 years 7 months, which is almost two months before boys. By the age of 2, 30% of girls can enumerate in order, compared to just 21% of boys.

•    Girls write their own names at 4 years  2 months, which is about two months earlier than boys. By the age of 4, a girl is 35% more likely to have written her own name than a boy (38% of girls and 27% of boys).

Perhaps in recognition of their relative precociousness, parents tend to enroll their daughters in preschool slightly earlier than boys, at an average age of 2 years 9 months compared to 2 years 10 months for boys. And a few years later, when it’s time for kindergarten, this month can balloon into an entire year, as parents all over the country opt to hold their boys back from grammar school until they’re more mature (See Babble’s article on red shirting.)

Next week we’ll report on what happens to this gender gap as kids mature through their school years. In the meantime, let us know if our findings are reflected–or not–in your experiences.

A look at our data on U.S. births since 2005 sheds additional light on a recent New York Times article in which reporter Denise Grady flagged the increase in the U.S. rate of C sections (as high as 32% of all births in 2007). By tracing the relationship between the timing of a baby’s birth–specifically the day of the week–and the method of delivery, we offer some additional insights into this trend and its  drivers.

Is the Rate of C Sections Finally Slowing?
According to the statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics cited by Grady, Caesarean sections, which are considered major surgeries by the medical establishment, have been on a steady climb since the mid nineties.

Our data roughly mirror this trend but go two years beyond what the NCHS can so far offer the public. Our numbers, self-reported by Circle of Moms members who took a birth survey, suggest an even higher rate of Caesareans.

We’re seeing the peak a little earlier, in 2004, at 40%. On the other hand, while Grady suggests the upward trend may well continue, our data show the rate leveling off for three years at 40% before declining in 2009 to 39%, which was the 2003 level.

Our data also point to the discretionary nature of many C sections.

A New Kind of Family Planning

Before we can get there, we have to examine the idea that birth dates are random to begin with. On some level many of us harbor a belief that the exact moment we come into the world is significant in its randomness. In recent years it’s been anything but: the stats reveal that a significant number of U.S. birth dates have been engineered.

If birth dates were truly random, the odds of being born on a Saturday would be the same as any other day. In actuality, a baby born in the United States during the last five years was 59% more likely to arrive during the hustle and bustle of a weekday as on a quiet Saturday or Sunday. And drilling down into the details, we’re seeing a astoundingly neat bell curve: a baby was 75% more likely to have been born on a Tuesday than on a Sunday, with Tuesdays and Wednesdays the most popular birth days in the week.

An Inconvenient Birth
This heavy concentration of weekday births holds true whether we look at babies born vaginally or babies born by Caesarean section. And the upward trend in weekday births over time is paralleled by the upward trend in Caesarean births.

Where we start to see a divergence is in the rate of C sections performed on weekdays as compared to weekends. On weekends, one in three births (31%) is a C section; during the week this rate rises precipitously to one of every 2.3 births (42%-43%).

Grady says in the Times that while many C section’s are medically-mandated, most are driven by doctors’ fears of lawsuits, by the desire of the family or obstetrician to shorten pregnancy or labor, or by the wish for a particular birth date, in particular the ones that do not fall on a Saturday or Sunday. C sections are not the only tool for shortening labor, scheduling a predictable birth date, and avoiding a medical malpractice suit, but they are the best way to guarantee those outcomes. Do it often enough and pervasively enough, and you’ll have the strangely neat weekly bell curve of births that we’re seeing on Circle of Moms.

Unless the stars can explain it.

Still, conservatives maintain a strong place in their heart for President Reagan; liberals a strong admiration for President Kennedy (as well as his political family).

How do we know this?  Using Circle of Moms Child Space data, of course.  We looked at the names parents give to their children.  Notably, Reagan (usually a girl’s name), is the most conservative among the top 250 names Circle of Moms’ mothers have given to their kids: 89% of mothers of children named Reagan identify themselves as conservative or Republican.

On the other side of the coin, Kennedy — also usually a girl’s name — stands as the #11 most liberal name, with 67% of “moms of Kennedy” identifying themselves as liberal or Democratic.

Jalen — which has no political associations we’re aware of — is the most liberal boy’s name, weighing in at 94% liberal.  Colton is the most conservative boy’s name, at 81% conservative.

Fear not, Sarah Palin fans (and haters): Sarah is the second most conservative female name, after Reagan.  Numbers three and four are also Biblical names: Rachel and Rebecca.

After Colton, Scott and Matt are the most conservative names for boys.

The most liberal names for girls are Jada, Maya, and Jasmine; for boys, the most liberal names after Jaden are Xavier and Julian.

Interestingly, common names tend to be favored among conservative moms, while less common names are more common among liberal moms.  All of the top ten most common girls’ names (Sarah, Hannah, Emily, Jessica, Lauren, Madison, Emma, Samantha, Ashley, Taylor, Olivia) are more common among conservatives than among liberals.  And nine of the top ten boys’ names (Matthew, Andrew, Jacob, Noah, Joshua, Ryan, Tyler, Ethan, Michael, and Christopher) are more common among conservatives, while only one (Jordan) is more common among liberals.

Moms who have given their kids uncommon names — names held by less than one in 10,000 Americans — tend to be more liberal.  Nearly half of all children have uncommon names (names at least as rare as Ray, Camron, Sky, Isis, and Jarrod).  And a substantial majority — 58% — of those kids are the children of liberal mothers.

Data for the 1000+ most common names can be accessed using the links below.

Liberal and Conservative Baby Names by Ideology

Liberal and Conservative Baby Names by Name Frequency

Liberal and Conservative Baby Names Sorted Alphabetically

Every day, many thousands of parents in the U.S. use Circle of Moms’ Child Space to share their children’s milestones with friends and family. And since Child Space has been widely adopted (more than 10% of the children born in the US in the past three years have a Child Space on Circle of Moms) we can pull some significant inferences from the data all this activity generates.

Northeast babies get chewing early; West Coasters stay on the liquid diet as long as they can

So when do children first eat solid foods?  Turns out there are some large regional variations:

Average Age (in weeks) at which Children First Eat Solid Food

We found these results pretty amazing: moms in the Northeast give their children solid food nearly two weeks — or 10% of the baby’s life — earlier than their peers on the West Coast.  While around 55% of moms in the South, Northeast, and Midwest have given their children solid food by age 18.5 weeks, just 39% of mothers on the Pacific Coast have done the same.

Southern babies knock us out with the way they talk

Next we looked at when a child first uttered a word.  Here there are also large regional variations, though interestingly they seem unrelated to the numbers for solid foods:

Average Age (in weeks) of Child's First Words, by Region

Southern children seem to be early talkers, for reasons unknown to us.  40% of them utter their first word by 7 months, compared to only 25% of Mountain state children.

We wish they all could be Southern babies… and potty train early!

This trend holds — sort of — for potty training:

Average Age (in months) of Children Being Potty Trained

Here we again see Southern children developing most quickly, becoming potty trained more than a month before kids in any other part of the country, while children in Mountain states are later bloomers.  In between, though, we see the order has shifted quite a bit.  Midwesterners talk early and potty train late, while West Coasters talk late and potty train early.  There’s a clever joke there somewhere, but we’re going to resist the temptation and stick to the data!

As you can see, there are some interesting trends we can find by looking at how people are using Child Space.  If you have thoughts on why these trends exist, have seen other interesting research on the topic, or have other ideas for future posts, please let us know in the comments!

As I took it in one day, I couldn’t help wonder about the demographics of it all.  Why do I see so many babies in Noe Valley, but so few school-age children and teenagers?

Fortunately, Circle of Moms is an incredibly rich web site and can aid in answering questions like these.  Over 10% of moms of toddlers in the U.S. are using the Child Space to share updates and milestones with friends and family.  The data they provide allow us allows us to make some interesting inferences about where all the big kids have gone.

Little-kid-ville and Big-kid-ville

It starts with demographics.  Child Spaces on Circle of Moms are a little bit more common for very young children (under 3) than they are for, say, 10-year-olds.  Once we controlled for that, we were able to look at whether there are relatively more little kids or big kids in any US city.  In “Averageville” about two in seven (27.8%) children are under age five.  “Little-kid-villes” are cities with lots of small children and fewer older children, so this percentage is larger; “Big-kid-villes” have fewer small children and more big kids (a percentage under 27.8%).

San Francisco may be Baby Heaven, but You’re Better off Finding a (teenage) Babysitter in Stockton

Let’s take a look at some of the actual numbers and how a few American cities rank:

San Francisco, San Diego, New York (Manhattan), Minneapolis, and LA are all Little-kid-villes, with lots of young children (under age 5) and relatively few older kids.  Detroit, Amarillo, and Stockton are all Big-kid-villes with more older kids.  San Francisco in particular is an outlier, with far more young children per older child than the next highest on the list (San Diego).

A City-Wide Baby Boom

So why is this true?  We can think of a couple of reasons.  First, according to the California Department of Finance, there were 5-10% more births per year in San Francisco the past three years (2007-09) than there were during most of the 1990s and 2000s (incidentally, this is not true of Los Angeles).  That means that even without anyone moving, San Francisco would have relatively more children under age 4 than elementary school kids.

Yuppie No More

Second, it seems that parents leave the most expensive cities as their kids get older.  They may want to live in San Francisco in their 20s, get married there, and have kids.  But as the kids get older, the cramped apartment in the hip neighborhood becomes less appealing, and they move to suburbs and smaller cities like Stockton, CA.

An in-depth analysis of this topic is well beyond the scope of this blog, but we did take a quick glance at a list of the US’s most expensive cities. Sure enough, every single one of the top ten is a “Little-kid-ville”.  Meanwhile, the strongest “Big-kid-villes” — Detroit; Stockton; Amarillo, TX; Mobile, AL; Reading, PA; Flint, MI; Ft Wayne, IN; Buffalo, NY; Bakersfield, CA — are hardly trendy, but serve as areas where families can settle down and buy an affordable home.  Several of these areas have also suffered substantial decreases in property values in the past few years, but we don’t have good longitudinal data which might help us understand whether those drops are cause or effect.

New York’s Many “Villes”

The trendy and expensive vs. non-trendy and inexpensive relationship holds within New York City as well.  The expensive and dense Manhattan (36.3% of kids are under age five) and Brooklyn (32.2%) are strong “Little-kid-villes” while more the affordable Bronx (28.2%) and the less dense Staten Island (29.2%) are “Average-villes.”  Clearly, this is a strong trend affecting cities and families across the US.

Mike Greenfield is Circle of Moms’ co-founder and CTO.

Even before the idea of the “mommy wars” took hold in the public imagination, spawning a small universe of books, studies, and commentators, mothers have weighed the personal and financial trade-offs of working outside the home in an environment charged with public approbation. When mothers come together to discuss this subject, the results often reflect the public acrimony. But in a recent thread in one of Circle of Moms’ largest communities for working moms, almost 400 mothers from all walks of life weighed in on the topic of guilt among working mothers—without slinging arrows. What accounts for the peace? Has the flailing economy nudged us into an era of more tolerance?

Community moderator Terry Greenberg Starr sparked the discussion by asking ‘Does anyone out there besides me NOT feel guilty about working?” setting up a supportive backdrop for the discussion. Perhaps not surprisingly, more than 96% of the respondents agreed that mothers who work should not feel guilty about it.  Sabrina, mother of three, explained, “I work because I don’t want my kids growing up thinking that a woman’s role is only at home or that a female needs a man to work and provide for her… I [do] take time off and participate in school functions when I can…there has to be a balance.”  And Jamie, mother of three, added, “I find it irritating that women are trained to feel guilty for providing for their families. There is no reason that women cannot have wonderful jobs and wonderful families.”

Moms for whom working is a financial necessity, not an option, emphasized how good they feel about providing a better life for their children.  And almost everyone agreed that working helps them maintain the identities they had before having children.

As Kerry, mother of three, put it, “I do feel guilty for having to miss certain basketball games and talent shows, but not for working in general…I know I not only need to work for the money, but for my own sanity as well.”

Still, quite a few expressed misgivings about the emotional impact of agonizing choices. Heather, mother of one in Ohio, said she feels “extremely guilty most of the time because I am missing out on so much, I don’t feel like a mom.” Amanda, mother of one, added: “I feel TOTALLY guilty…I’m missing so much and would much rather stay with them. You don’t get these days back.”

If you’re a working mother or father, how do you feel about the issues raised here? Do you think the unprecedented financial pressures that so many families now face have shifted the terms of the debate?

Additional Information:

- “Not guilty” thread

- “Working Moms” Community

- Circle of Moms

- Sloan Work and Family Research Network – Boston College

- Mommy Wars – Washington Post

The “Moms’ Eye View” series highlights timely parenting themes and issues that emerge from the Circle of Moms community. The topics and questions that fascinate moms the most are the fodder for this space; for each Moms’ Eye post, we select one particularly lively thread and attempt to capture the consensus (or lack of consensus) that percolates through the thread.

Immunizations are a consistently hot topic in our most popular and diverse community on Circle of Moms, and a consensus–that they are a matter of personal choice rather than public health–seems to be emerging in these conversations.

While most of the 200+ moms who responded to a recent question on the subject had opted to have their children immunized, they tended to prefer alternative schedules, such as waiting until their children were older, over the standard schedule recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Gina, a mother of one, said , “I am not opposed to the immunizations. I know they have been created for a reason…However, I am opposed to giving so many shots at one time.”

Charlene, mother of one, agrees with Gina saying, “For me, the pros outweighed the cons, and if I hadn’t vaccinated and my daughter had gotten one of the preventable diseases, I would feel extremely guilty for that.”

Eight moms cited the phenomenon of “herd immunity” or community immunity as an important reason to immunize. As Alzena, mother of two, explained, it’s “a type of immunity that occurs when the vaccination of a portion of the population provides protection to unprotected individuals,” and Roxy, mother of one, added, “That seems to be something no one considers in the whole immunization debate; the overall community health.”

On the other hand, about 10% of respondents were completely against immunizations, some of them insisting on the efficacy of more natural methods to boost their children’s immune systems. Several of these moms cited a possible connection to autism, although this connection has recently been disproven.

As Monica, mother of four, explained, “I’m personally against it just because it’s unnatural and I believe in natural living and healing.”

Maj-Britt, mother of two, added, “If you decide not to vaccinate I would suggest also looking into some natural ways to boost your natural defenses to infections.”

In the end, most moms seemed to agree that it is your personal choice to vaccinate or not vaccinate your child. As Faye, mother of three, said, “Do your research and make a decision when you are fully informed and when you are secure and comfortable with your choice. It is YOUR choice.”

For more information:

-“Immunizations: For or Against” Thread

-“Welcome to Circle of Moms” Community

-Circle of Moms

-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Vaccines

-National Institute of Health/U.S. National Library of Medicine

-National Vaccine Information Center (Anti-Immunization)

-Recommended childhood vaccination schedule as of Jan. 1, 2010 according to American Academy of Pediatrics

-Connection between Autism and immunizations

-Herd Immunity (Community Immunity)

What is child abuse? There are many different ways of looking at it: are swats on the bottom considered abuse? How about spanking? Yelling? Name calling? And where do the moms of Circle of Moms – some 8 million strong – draw the line?

Almost a hundred responded to a recent thread posted in one of Circle of Moms’ largest and most diverse communities asking for a definition of child abuse. The vast majority agreed that spanking seems to lie in a grey area between abuse and punishment. Here’s what they said:

Krista, mother of one, says, “Some tactics and approaches are very obviously abusive to a child. But when looking at the gray area of things like spanking and yelling, I would say that it becomes abusive when it negatively affects the child’s health, or their sense of security, safety and comfort with his or her parents.”

Melissa, mother of one, agrees with Krista saying, “I feel that spanking is appropriate when used in the right manner, like if [he] is about do something to hurt [himself] or someone else. I feel that when a child becomes afraid of you that’s when it has turned abusive.”

Sara, mother of one in Louisiana, was spanked as a child by parents she considers loving and demonstrative. As she explains, “I think it is the manner in which a child is spanked that makes the child afraid or not afraid. I knew that if I disobeyed, fought with my sister, etc. I would get a spanking. The point is don’t spank out of anger. If you have a tendency to “lose it” then spanking shouldn’t be something that you do.”

And Kylie, mother of one in Australia, believes that the word abuse stretches over other parental actions as well, “abuse is any action verbal or physical that is used to harm or break down a child. You don’t have to leave a mark to be abusive. Words can be just as abusive as a belt.” Jackie, mother of one, adds “also remember there is another form of ‘abuse’ which is child neglect; the lack of appropriate care, which in my experience, can be just as harmful to a child.”

Interestingly, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends against spanking, which they’ve found to be no more effective than any other approach in managing undesired behavior, and moms generally agree. If spanking is done out of anger and without proper explanation, they say, it renders the message of the spanking pointless while creating an aura of abuse. And as Sandi, mother of one in England, points out, “if it’s pointless you may as well not do it in the first place.”

What do you think?

For more information:

- “So what IS child abuse” thread

- Welcome to Circle of Moms Community

- Circle of Moms

- The American Academy of Pediatrics