Introduction
The birth of a second child brings an additional responsibility to the parents, who should provide essentials for proper child growth. These responsibilities include allocation of time to take care of two children, noting that the degree of care for the two children is different due to their age differences.
The time constraint brought by the second childbirth leads to increased business in the family and in cases where parents do not plan adequately for child attention, the children will feel deprived of attention and interfere with parents’ normal routines. The interferences to personal schedules of parents, with the responsibility of taking care of children, affects personal concentration and productivity of the parent and may lead to cases of high stress that further complicate their ability to provide proper child care.
Negative Outcomes
A second childbirth presents a compulsory increment in family spending because the second child must be fed, clothed, and educated among other necessary provisions. Furthermore, the immediate months after childbirth present an uncertain learning period for the parent as they learn the sleeping and feeding patterns of their newly born.
Increased expenditures force the family breadwinner to earn more to maintain the living standards of the family. Parents in this case are forced to look for additional jobs in cases where their existing jobs barely support the family before the second child arrival. Other than immediate increased spending, the long term savings are also altered to accommodate the anticipated child needs as they grow up to adulthood (Spangler, 2010).
Parents have to reorganize their daily schedules, stretched with the baby’s requirements, in addition to personal matters and the firstborn’s needs. The attention direction to the second child in addition to that going to the first child ultimately reduces the time couples spend together for their own personal matters. The interpret bonding in the family reduces and personal conflicts in the family take longer to resolve (Spangler, 2010).
One parent may feel neglected and resort to substituting family time with other activities, further worsening the lack of bonding issue. As family tensions build with delayed conflict resolution, parents may be tempted to indulge in harmful habits such as alcohol drinking that may eventually develop into an addiction. Mothers are likely to suffer depression caused by increased exhaustion and an anxiety towards the baby, also known as baby blues.
Positive Outcomes and Solutions
Arrival of the second child also brings positive outcomes to the family. Parents become more confident of their parenting abilities, their knowledge of parenting and add up to their experiences of child upbringing. Spangler (2010) explains that families also find out that what seemed like an uphill task for raising the first child now becomes ordinary as they use their previous experience to bring up the second child. As mothers get used to caring for the second baby, they realize that their love and care for the first child does not diminish.
In some cases, the arrival of a second child bonds the family more strongly as parents settle for family goals for the long term and abandon tendencies to think of individual benefits only. To remedy the bonding challenge posed by the second childbirth, parents should set aside a special period every week to leave baby care, concentrate on their relationship, and iron out any issues that might arise because of the second childbirth.
Reference
Spangler, T. G. (2010). The challenges of a second child. Web.