ExpectingWords.com - Helping expecting couples find the right words at the right times

My friend, Robin Saks Frankel, who is a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) and founder of Crib Notes, an e-newsletter for parents of kids ages zero to three, told me that she loves her husband, but she can’t stand him when he offers opinions on raising their young children.  “When my husband has parenting suggestions I get annoyed, even though he certainly has the right as the daddy to be a part of the decision-making process.”

Despite her admission of his fatherly rights, the emotional tug of “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” is too much of a draw and they get into unnecessary fights.  After all, she doesn’t tell her husband what to do at work, so why should he interfere with her job at home?  I can imagine her rolling her eyes at her partner’s naïve parenting suggestion like “just ignore him” when their toddler throws his vegetables on the floor.  Her response: Ignore him?  When I do that he just continues throwing the rest of the food on the floor and he eats nothing for dinner.

My advice for her and for any loving mother and wife is (more…)

In yesterday’s Sunday Styles section of the New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope wrote an article called “She Works.  They’re Happy.” about a new study from the Pew Research Center showing that divorce rates are lower and couples are happier when… get this… the wife is the primary breadwinner and the husband does a fair share of the child care and housework.  While it’s been traditionally thought that female economic independence is a leading cause of divorce, this research turns that idea on its head.

“Wives are now the primary breadwinner in 22 percent of couples, up from 7 percent in 1970.”

“Over all, the evidence shows that the shifts within marriages — men taking on more housework and women earning more outside the home — have had a positive effect, contributing to lower divorce rates and happier unions.”

And this increased happiness occurs even when the husband does less than 50% of the housework and childcare.  As long as it’s more than older generations of men did, she’s somewhat pleased.       (more…)

At first she thought her husband was the sweetest thing ever. Once they saw the pink line revealing her pregnancy he began offering to carry anything and everything in her hands (grocery bags, shopping bags and even her heavy purse!). He’d clean the dishes so she could rest at the table; repair the computer so she wouldn’t have to bend down to the floor to reach the hard drive.

What a wonderful husband, she thought. And then he started on her love of tuna fish sandwiches. “If the doctor says you shouldn’t eat tuna more than twice a week, there must be something wrong with it. I don’t want you to eat ANY tuna while pregnant.” They argued, he won. What if something happened to the baby? She couldn’t live with the guilt of the tuna.

Then he was drinking beer. She wanted a sip, just a sip. “Are you crazy????” No sip. She began to lie about her lunches to hide the fact that she ate bologna (a prepared lunch meat – also on his do-not-eat list). This pregnancy had turned her husband into a paranoid barrel of overprotective obnoxiousness.     (more…)

In the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times, Alex Williams recently wrote in his article, “Becoming the Alpha Dog in Your Own Home”, about how some parents have begun to apply the lessons from the television show The Dog Whisperer to disciplining their children. Cesar Millan, otherwise known as the Dog Whisperer teaches the “alpha dog” owner-in-charge theory: set clear boundaries and hierarchies in the home. No negotiating or persuading, just simple well-meaning rules strictly enforced is what’s needed to bring peace and discipline to your dog, or perhaps your child.

Without intending to, I gave this alpha dog trick a try, on my one and a half year old son Blake. He fell and injured his mouth last week. The cuts would heal fine, but the doctor indicated that Blake should not put anything other than soft food in his mouth for two days. A hard food or object would risk re-opening the wound.

My son loves to put things in his mouth. It’s practically his favorite habit. Pick up an object, feel it, taste it and on to the next one. In the past I had told him “take that toy out of your mouth,” “we don’t eat phones, we eat food,” “don’t put your mouth on the air conditioning unit,” “get away from the shoes!” Blake would smile and think we were playing a game. (more…)

It’s been called the man-cession, the he-cession and the manly recession. No matter what we call it, the truth is that men are losing more jobs than women. Of the 6.4 million jobs eliminated since December 2007, men have lost 74% of them. CBS News reported that in 40% of households, women say they are the primary breadwinners. The facts are daunting, and the consequences affect families tremendously.

Will more dads stay-at-home to care for the children?

Jeremy Adam Smith, author of The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family, argues that stay-at-home dads are an advance in American family life and that the growing number of such dads is a result of the last 50 years of change, though the trend may have been accelerated by the current economic climate. He points out that while moms may have a stronger initial connection to their newborns because of the pregnancy, Dads can build their connection by taking care of the child. And it seems that many fathers choose to do this.

At-home dads, and daddy blogs, are increasing in numbers every day. (more…)