Picket Fence Post

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has the opportunity to inject some sanity into Massachusetts school systems when it comes to the classroom placement of twins, triplets or what’s called ”higher order multiples” (meaning quads, quintuplets, etc.). A bill to allow parents to choose whether they want their twin or triplet children in the same or different classrooms has made it through the state House and Senate and has landed in Patrick’s hands.

As a mother of twins, I heartily cheer on this empowering move for parents who know the children better than anyone else. In August 2002, I wrote a piece for Parents and Kids Magazine about classroom placement for twin kindergartners and found that a vast number of education specialists believe that the decision should be left up to the parents. However in Massachusetts, many school principals continued to cling to policies mandating separating multiples, treating their unique status as if it were a virus that needed to be stamped out.

As I researched the piece, I spoke with folks who’d been involved in a local mothers of twins organization,  many of whom opted to separate their children in kindergarten because they felt it would be the best move. When my boy-girl twins were entering kindergarten, The Spouse and I wanted them together (had to buck the “we always separate twins” mantra), but by first grade, we wanted them separated. A one-size-fits-all-just-separate them policy is outdated and doesn’t reflect contemporary research in the field of multiples, nor does it recognize that parents of multiples have a variety of opinions on the subject.

The authors of The Art of Parenting Twins wrote, “It is the single most important event in the expansion of their children’s social environment (after preschool and day care), and signals a major separation from parents and home.” A Boston University professor told the Boston Globe that stripping a twin of his or her lifelong partner at a time of major change was an unnecessary move, if the children weren’t ready for it: “If a 5-year-old child would feel more happy with their twin with them, why would we not do that?”

The National Organization of Mothers of Twins, which has a produced a booklet on the issue, says no studies support the age-old contention that twins are better off separated and advocates a “flexible placement policy through the early elementary school years.”

The Bay State is teeming — teeming I tell you — with twins, according to a page one story in the Boston Globe:

“The combination of an unusually large number of pregnancies in older women, who are more likely to have multiples, and a heavy reliance on readily available infertility treatments, which also increases the odds, has propelled Massachusetts to the top: The state has a twin birth rate of 4.5 for every 100 live births, compared with a national rate of 3.2, according to the most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

What does this mean? Well, sometimes, bad, bad things, according to the article which included quotes from physicians about the dangers of pre-term births (most twins are born early) and the drain multiple births are putting on Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs). Typical stuff. No article on multiples is quite complete without the not-so-subtle bashing of parents of multiples for selfishly pursuing infertility treatments (usually uttered by people with no fertility challenges) and blaming them for hogging hospital resources when they forge ahead with a multiple pregnancy in which babies which could be born early.

As a mother of nearly 10-year-old twins, I have a special loathing for these kinds of articles which start out fine and then go downhill quickly. I’m the first one to acknowledge that twin pregnancies are difficult (though I had a harder time with my singleton pregnancy), that babies born early do sometimes require time in the NICU (as mine did), that twins born very early can suffer from health problems (mine, thankfully, did not). Attempts have been made by physicians administering infertility treatments, as noted in the article, to reduce the number of multiples. All of that is fair game . . . to a point.

But then I read quotes like this one from the chief of newborn medicine at a Boston hospital: “The usual condition is one baby per uterus. That’s the way the system is designed. Mother nature does not take kindly to anything being unusual — even if she created it.”

I’m glad I didn’t give birth to my twins in his hospital where I could benefit from his warm understanding and compassion.