In this election cycle, for the first time in my adult life, family planning issues are front and center. I never expected contraception to be part of the political discourse, especially contraception practiced by a married couple. I can't think of a more personal--or more important--decision for couples to consider. Whether parents are in red states or blue states, this choice has social, ethnic and religious influences that are very, very strong. One of our NCFR members just wrote a book to help people think though this crucial decision.

Creating Your Perfect Family Size by Alan Singer, Ph.D. is a self-help book, but it's based on research on issues of family size. I'll be a spoiler straight off and say that Dr. Singer (pictured) will not tell you what your perfect family size should be. What he does is introduce all of the factors that couples have used in making this decision and present other factors that couples may not have thought about. As he says, "In my experience, the decision about how many children you and your partner should have ranks right up there with choices about career, religion and where you want to live."

What are the common issues prospective parents think about?

• Social pressures, such as providing grandchildren for one's parents
• Not being alone as an elder
• Having a second child so that the other child won't be alone
• Having a child to cement together a blended Brady Bunch kind of family
• How far apart to space their pregnancies

Probably the most useful aspect of the book is how he explodes the myths involved with this decision. A child-or another child-will not increase your marital satisfaction. "Only" children aren't doomed to being spoiled brats. And this is an obvious one, but one I've heard quite often, when the parents of a boy say they are going to "try for a girl" or vice versa. Your chances don't improve-each pregnancy is a new 50-50 roll of the dice.

Personally, I zeroed in on the section about "only" children. My husband and I have just one child, a son. He is in college and is the delight of our lives. However, his early childhood nearly finished us off. He wasn't a sleeper and didn't sleep through the night until he was two. He was extremely squirrelly and into everything from the moment he learned to crawl. He was a wanderer. For about three years, my husband had to sleep downstairs on the couch and I slept upstairs--this was to make sure we had a set of ears on each floor so we would be awakened if he started "cooking" or, my worst fear, letting himself out into a subzero Minnesota night. When he was three, my husband and I made the difficult decision that we were done with toddlers. We decided we would feel really accomplished if our son made it to adulthood successfully.

We went through all of the factors individually, and sometimes painfully. We were good parents, and if we could have a guarantee that Baby #2 would be of calm temperament, we could manage it. But life offers no guarantees. We had to make a decision based on known facts at the time. We were maxed-out. If we had a second child as squirrelly as our first, we would be quite overwhelmed. As it turns out, the same characteristics that made our son so active are the same that feed his incredibly quick wit, his critical thinking skills and his intellectual curiosity. But what were we to know back then?

The book is replete with self-tests that prospective parents can use to help themselves think through this important decision. I wish I had been able to read this book twenty years ago when I was facing this quandary. We still would have made the same decision, but we would have been more informed as to what we were doing and would have done less second-guessing ourselves.

Dr. Singer has some informative videos on YouTube, too. It's a helpful book!

The author welcomes your feedback. Contact him directly with questions and comments at dralansinger@aol.com or visit his website at www.FamilyThinking.com .