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I found this truly depressing.  Adolescents who have half-siblings with a different father are more likely to have used drugs and had sex by age 15 than those who have only full siblings. Researchers examined a phenomenon known as “multi-partnered fertility” or MPF, according to newswise.com. "This happens when parents who are not romantically involved with each other form new relationships and have another child with a new partner," the Web site reports.  (Hmm.  Wonder if they know Kody Brown.) What the researchers focused on were the connections between this re-partnering and additional childbearing on adolescent drug use and early sex. They focused on mothers and first-born children who lived with their mothers most of their lives. “For children, MPF means having a half-sibling, but it also means, for first-born children, that they usually experienced their biological parents splitting up — if they were together at all, lived in a single mother household fo...

Uh oh.  Having more siblings protects you from divorce later in life as an adult.  That's according to a new study . Now, my son, Phillip, is an only child but I'm hoping he's in the  50% who stays married, anyway.  But I have a while to wait.  He's only 12. The new study found that "growing up with siblings may definitely provide some protection against divorce as an adult."  And the more siblings, the better. Each additional sibling a person has (up to about seven) reduces the chance he'll divorce by 2 percent. More siblings didn’t provide additional protection, although they did not hurt, either. “But when you compare children from large families to those with only one child, there is a meaningful gap in the probability of divorce,” newswise.com quotes Doug Downey, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. Why? One of the biggest surprises of the study was that it wasn’t the difference between being an...

Phew.  I just found out I don't have to worry that my son will turn out to be a loser. That's what people have pretty much always said about kids who have no siblings .  For many reasons including age, financial considerations and a slight case of breast cancer when he was 3, Phillip has wound up with no brother or sister (I have one of each, neither of whom I speak to). I remember a friend, when our boys were toddlers, worrying that her son would be damaged for life without a sibling (she and her husband planned to stop at one).  She even bought books about only children and the harm life held out for them. Then she got pregnant again, and all her worries went away.  Except, now they were mine. I've felt guilty for not being able to gift Phillip with siblings.  Growing up, yes, we fought in my house, but it was fun (most of the time) having a brother, and sometimes, even a sister (she was seven years younger so we didn't spend much time together). Sad...