The extra finances and time required to raise twins is one thing (they’re worth it, of course, but it doesn’t change the extra stress that parents face). Another major challenge is helping your twins find the line between their close relationship with their sibling and their own uniqueness.
Twins constantly have to navigate between an inner desire to be with their sibling and be just like them while at the same time being their own person. Nobody likes being treated like just a copy or a clone of somebody else after all.
‘Today’s Parent’ has some spot-on advice on the more practical aspects of raising twins. One of their tips is to “master simultaneous feedings” in order to simplify mealtime and take some of the stress off the parents. Multitasking is a must when you have twins, there’s no way around it.
The same goes for giving your twins a bath. It’s far easier to wash them both because of the logistics: you don’t want to be giving one a bath while constantly switching your attention to what the other one’s doing. Of course, it would be easier if both parents could take care of their kids full-time, however, we all know that this isn’t always possible.
In an earlier interview, Eddy Ng, the James and Elizabeth Freeman Professor of Management at Bucknell University, told me that the pandemic has unfairly affected working women. The lockdowns weren’t the great gender equalizer that many thought they would be.
“Women, even those in professional and managerial jobs, continue to take on a second shift (caring for family) after the first shift at the office. We continue to subscribe to gender roles, even in many egalitarian societies,” Professor Ng earlier told Bored Panda.
