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Becoming
Parents
It's been said that you
can't really understand the change in your life that having children
will mean until after you've actually become parents-that the magnitude
of the change cannot be adequately conveyed through description.
Even good changes can be very challenging. For most people, this
is the biggest transition of their adult life. There are rewards
commensurate with the challenges.
Most people, though,
are blindsided by the magnitude of the challenge. Naturally, they
think mainly of the many positive aspects of being a parent. They
plan some approaches to parenting, but they quickly find that their
preparations are overwhelmed by the new realities of their lives.
They don't understand the toll that exhaustion and sleep deprivation
can take on their resiliency, emotional state and relationship.
The most important preparation you can make is to have realistic
expectations. But to survive and thrive, your preparations will
have to go far beyond this.
The transition to becoming
parents is one of the greatest risks your marriage will encounter.
For women especially, marital satisfaction plummets when children
enter the picture. Current social norms tend to put women in a barely
tenable or untenable position. Research shows that regardless of
what advance plans and promises couples make or what their past
task-sharing arrangements have been, the burdens of childcare and
housework fall primarily on mothers once children are born. And
women find that the many social supports for these roles that may
have existed in previous generations have disappeared. Couples find
themselves backsliding toward 'traditional' marriage roles, whether
they desire such roles or not.
Ironically, many men
who have become excited by childbirth and parenting classes and
want to be active fathers, feel excluded from the mother-baby dyad.
Many women, especially during the period when children are babies,
have a tendency to push their partner to a more peripheral role.
They embrace the maternal role with all its rewards. This tendency
can set the pattern for more highly differentiated parenting roles
than might be desired.
So what can you do about
this somewhat discouraging picture? Here's what has worked for other
parents, according to research on children and marriage:
The number one factor
in a successful transition to parenting (as with so much else about
marriage) is that everything to do with your kids must be a team
effort. Regardless of how you decide to divide tasks, team decision-making
and commitment to your joint efforts is the key. No off-loading
responsibility for this project--even if you've decided that a particular
area or task will be handled by one partner.
The initial period of
your marriage - after your wedding and before you begin actively
trying to become pregnant - is a special time to enhance and fortify
your relationship for the challenges of parenthood. This is the
time to build up the couple bond and emotional reserves that you
will draw upon for years to come. Be sure to allow adequate time
(at least a year) for this bonding phase of your marriage. Consider
taking some extra time before trying to begin having children unless
there are critical age-related or other considerations.
After this bonding period,
advance careful planning of detailed strategic and tactical approaches
to the tasks, roles, issues and problems of parenting is critical.
Not that most things will go according to plan-regardless of how
comprehensive and careful your plan, it will soon be obsolete. But
you'll have a foundation. (Attempting to merge the bonding and planning
periods can disrupt bonding.) An ideal plan will have the following
characteristics and include:
The plan must be deep
and detailed, not superficial and global.
Don't leave anything
until the last minute. There will always be unanticipated distractions,
problems, sleep deprivation, etc., to interfere with late plans
and preparations.
Be clear and detailed
about role responsibilities. Not just who will earn what portion
of income and who will do what portion of childcare and chores.
Who specifically will do the dishes, change the diapers, take kids
to the doctor, deal with the childcare person, buy groceries, etc.,
in as much detail as you can stomach.
Build support networks
for parenting. Use relatives, friends, professionals, hired help.
Seek out ways to connect with people you don't know yet through
childbirth and parenting classes, support groups, etc. The female
partner needs special, extra supports.
Mobilize your creativity.
Think outside the box. Go beyond your previous expectations and
modes of operation.
Seek out both inspiration
and practical ideas. Do research. Read about parenting strategies
and tactics, but also talk to friends and acquaintances that are
parents of young children.
Discuss how you plan
to approach the impact of pregnancy and childbearing on your sex
life. Talk about how you will accommodate times when intercourse
becomes difficult or uncomfortable. This is a problem issue for
many couples.
Unless you select a traditional
parenting style, plan to become and stay a joint parenting team.
This doesn't mean doing everything together, but it means resisting
the pressures to divide responsibilities to an extent that one of
you no longer feels very involved in some of the areas for which
your partner has become responsible. Don't blame your partner when
disruptions occur in 'their' area of responsibility. Even if you
choose traditional, differentiated roles, it's very important to
maintain a strong sense of mutuality with respect to your overall
relationship, including having children. Maintain ultimate shared
responsibility. Stay together on planning and decision-making.
Finally, but most importantly,
plan to protect your marital relationship as a couple. Plan time
without the children, without parenting responsibilities, and without
discussing these, to have fun and romance together.
A couple of additional
points:
The most significant
trap for couples is the danger of allowing their parent role to
supercede the primacy of their spouse role. Although you will always
have children, you should get your emotional support from and live
out your life beyond your child rearing years with your partner.
So, plan to plan carefully.
You can't do it all at once. You'll need to have repeated planning
sessions to make even partially adequate preparations for parenthood.
Your first task is to
choose a basic approach to your parenting roles. There are three
basic models for sharing parenting roles:
•
Egalitarian - Both parents share equally (50-50) in childcare
and domestic tasks. Both parents may or may not reduce work schedules
to accommodate their parent roles.
•
Traditional or reverse traditional (Mr. Mom) - One partner
is the primary stay-at-home parent (either mother or father). The
secondary parent helps the primary parent in agreed upon ways with
childcare and domestic tasks.
•
Modified traditional - One partner has primary responsibility
for childcare and domestic tasks and reduces work schedule to accommodate
their parent role. The secondary parent helps the primary parent
in agreed upon ways with childcare and domestic tasks to a greater
degree than in the traditional model.
Finally, sometimes for
a variety of reasons it can be difficult or impossible for couples
to have biological children. This problem can be very stressful
for marriages. Consider what strategies you expect to employ in
these circumstances.
References and Further
Reading
Bradley G. Richardson,
Daddy Smarts: A Guide for Rookie Fathers.
Click
here to learn more about or buy this book through our bookstore
link.
Nina Barrett, I Wish
Someone Had Told Me: Comfort, Support and Advice for New Moms from
More than 60 Real-Life Mothers.
Click
here to learn more about or buy this book through our bookstore
link.
Daniel Stern, MD, and
Nadia Brushweiler-Stern, MD, The Birth of a Mother: How the Motherhood
Experience Changes You Forever.
Click
here to learn more about or buy this book through our bookstore
link.
Anne Seamans and Cathy
Winks, The Mother's Guide to Sex: Enjoying Your Sexuality Through
All Stages of Motherhood.
Sorry,
out of print - Try your library.
Betty Carter, M.S.W.
and Joan Peters, Love, Honor & Negotiate: Building Partnerships
that Last a Lifetime (Carter, a family therapist who founded the
Family Institute of Westchester, NY, exposes issues of power and
equality in marital relationships and the detrimental effect of
imbalance. Her solutions may be more radical than many couples will
choose, but her description of unhappy couples who start out with
egalitarian ideals and "backslide" into traditional marriage
roles after children is particularly noteworthy.)
Click
here to learn more about or buy this book through our bookstore
link.
Arlie Russell Hochschild,
Ph.D. The Second Shift (A landmark book about the dynamics of dual
career households based on research by a sociologist. She concludes
that, despite great societal changes in the United States allowing
women more choices in life, women are still responsible for the
majority of household chores and child care and that this has profound
implications for marital happiness for both men & women.)
Click
here to learn more about or buy this book through our bookstore
link.
Carolyn Pape Cowan, Ph.D.
and Philip Cowan, Ph.D., When Parents Become Partners: The Big Life
Change for Couples (Results of a landmark ten year study by researchers
at the University of California - Berkeley. It describes the gap
between expectations and reality about parenthood in illuminating
detail and a call for couples to prepare realistically for the challenges.)
Click
here to learn more about or buy this book through our bookstore
link.
MST pre-marriage preparation
seminars are designed to help couples build the skills and understanding
that they will need to succeed in marriage, including help to overcome
all of the issues that challenge couples in modern marriage. MST
is religion-neutral and based on the latest marriage research.
Don't wait for problems
to emerge, take preventive action to promote the happiness and success
of your marriage.
Click
here to learn more about the benefits of marriage preparation.
Click
here to learn about Marriage Success Training.
Copyright
2003, Patricia S. & Gregory A. Kuhlman. You may copy this article
for non-commercial use provided that no changes are made and this
copyright notice, author credit and stayhitched.com source citation
are included.
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