A reader wrote to ask if I knew of any books for young children that discussed getting a new sibling—but which did not feature a mom and a dad for parents. Great question.
The answer is that (to the best of my knowledge) there is one, And Baby Makes 4 by Judith Benjamin. (Don’t confuse it with the several other books of the same title, or with And Baby Makes More, a great book of essays about queer families and known donors.) It’s self-published book that Benjamin wrote when she, too, could not find an appropriate book for her first child about the pending arrival of a second via pregnancy.
It is very much a story about their family’s own experience, told from the perspective of the older daughter, with photos of their family as the illustrations. One mom is pregnant, and the book takes us from her pregnancy to the birth of the child and their initial time as a family of four. There is no discussion of how she got pregnant; the focus is on the feelings around growing the family, not the mechanics.
It may not fit all families—families adopting a second child, multiracial families, or families with a son, for example—but I think some of the first child’s feelings may be similar. And that’s less a criticism of this specific book than a reason we need more books featuring LGBT families of all types.
Have any of you found books about a new sibling’s arrival that is either inclusive of same-sex or single-parent families, or that focuses on the siblings and puts the parents enough into the background that it might work for more than just mom-dad families? Any good books for children about adopting a sibling?
We used a few of the more conventional books (Joanna Cole, Fred Rogers, Mercer Mayer) to prepare our son, then 2, for the birth of his sister, but we took a leaf from Brett Berk and sometimes read “Mama” in place of “Daddy”.
We tried, as always, to avoid books with gender stereotyping, but the bigger challenge was finding something suitable for his stage in development that reflected a reasonable mix of positive and negative aspects of having a baby sibling.
I think the better books on this subject will naturally put the parents in the background, so that helps when you are looking for something that works with a less conventional family structure. Nevertheless, it’s delightful to see a new book that explicitly reflects many of our families.
Kudos to Judith for writing this book! It’s delightful and badly needed. She is a pioneer. As I understand it, she’s the grandmother, not the mother. This is only the beginning! I’m sure other books will come along in the same vein, but Judith was the first! The book is really charming, not at all pedantic or ‘message-y’ – it really normalizes the experience of this particular family configuration for any child.
Good books for children about adopting a sibling:
“Jin Woo” by Eve Bunting
“My Mei Mei” by Ed Young
“Ten Days and Nine Nights” by Yumi Heo
“The Boat in the Tree” by Tim Wynne-Jones
“Bringing Asha Home” by Uma Krishnaswami
“A New Barker in The House” by Tomie dePaola
All feature heterosexual couples, but most of the families are multiracial.
Great suggestions–thanks!