ExpectingWords.com » Roles & Responsibilities

Are We Mismatched?

Laurie — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:22:16 +0000

I’ve noticed in my mediation practice that it’s quite common for a spouse to tell me that the relationship was fine until they had kids, and then….”my husband’s flaws blew up in my face!” I usually tell people that those flaws existed before you had children, but you didn’t notice them because forgetting to buy a tape measure doesn’t compare to the impending disaster of forgetting to buy diapers, and being tired and uninterested in cooking dinner is much less harmful than being too tired to bother giving your kid a bath or being too lazy to buy babyproof covers for the outlets. The flaws always existed, but the consequences are much worse when children are affected.

Where does this insight lead us? Since I’m in the same boat as everyone else when it comes to having discovered these new, but old flaws in my mate and myself, I’ll tell you how I handle the dilemma. First, I am a lot more forgiving than I used to be. Both my husband and I have been thrown into a new situation with a baby and until now we hadn’t felt the pressure to fix our flaws. Before baby, my lack of organization might mean I’d pay a bill late, but now that same flaw means I can’t find my son’s immunization record 5 minutes before we head to the pediatrician. It takes time to see how our own flaws affect our kids. That’s why I’m headed to Staples later today to buy a file cabinet. Recognizing my own flaws humbles me so that I’m a lot less annoyed at my husband’s flaws (which he is also trying to fix).

Not only am I more forgiving of flaws, I’m also a lot more aware of how we communicate with each other about the flaws and other mishaps that are the natural part of couple-hood and parenting. Since there are more opportunities to bicker, it’s become incredibly important that we handle those disagreements with tact and skill. This means taking stock of our natural communication styles. On this blog, we just launched a tremendously important quiz that helps you find out your own style. Are you a pushover, a diplomat or a director? Each communication style has its strengths and weaknesses. If both you and your mate take the quiz, then you can find out how your styles interact, for better or worse, and what to do about it. You can get started on the 10-question quiz now.

We can improve, reduce and fix some of our flaws, but there will always be those glitches that linger on for decades. How we handle and talk about those glitches can be the difference between a happily married couple and a divorced couple.

How do you and your mate talk about flaws? Are you more or less forgiving since pregnancy and/or parenthood? If you took the quiz, were the results on target?

Moms, You Deserve to Be Heard!

Laurie — Wed, 12 May 2010 17:30:38 +0000

Mother’s Day 2010 has come and gone, but as usual, on that day many people sent around quotes via email to memorialize the day.

Here’s a quote that someone forwarded to me:

“A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie”. ~Tenneva Jordan

Those words seemed sweet and endearing, at first. But then I decided that this quote was dead wrong.

In the past, a good mother and wife may have been defined as a woman who sacrifices for others, putting her families’ needs before her own. But nowadays, a woman can speak up for herself and be caring and loving wife and mother. While I think sacrifice is a noble endeavor, some of the time, it is silly, passive and harmful to a family if that is one’s attitude all of the time.

Taking the quote literally, I must point out that the woman who pretends not to want pie (for reasons other than dieting) is behaving like a doormat. Why not at least ask for half of a piece? Am I alone in thinking this? Is it so wrong to be a little selfish?

Amy Oztan writes an entire blog about finding the selfish balance. It’s called Selfish Mom. She writes, “I have no interest in spending all day on the playground, and I don’t believe that my children should be the center of my life. We’re all in this together, but I was here first. That’s not to say that I don’t love them to death, but honestly, I wish being a mom was a five-day-a-week job. With mandatory spa breaks and six weeks of vacation a year. When they have kids they’ll understand.”

Do you think a good mom should ask for a piece of the pie? How is your mom’s attitude toward motherhood different from yours? Do you ever feel guilty for making your needs count?

How to Wreck a Marriage

Laurie — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:43:33 +0000

A recent article entitled “Honey, Do You Have To…?” in the Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Bernstein explains that a marriage can break up over a pat of butter. She writes:

When Jim Caudill’s first wife sat him down and explained that she wanted a divorce, she had a long list of complaints: He didn’t help enough with the kids. He didn’t do his share of the housework. They were more devoted to work than to each other.

Then she brought up the English muffins. “She said, ‘You never butter them to the edges, you just pat it in the middle,’” says Mr. Caudill, a 59-year-old winery marketing representative in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Mr. Caudill was stunned. But gradually, the message sunk in. “The weight of a small thing can be onerous,” he says. “It’s a symptom of a larger need.”

Don’t sweat the small stuff? Don’t kid yourself.

After reading that excerpt I thought, if you don’t like the way your mate butters the muffin, butter it yourself! But perhaps Jim Caudill’s wife would rather let him butter it, so she can have a reason to be mad at him. I think relationships break down, not from the small stuff, but from our attitude toward it.

I once heard Wayne Dyer talk about his book “The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way” and he shared a story I will remember forever. He was staying at a hotel in the winter. He likes to jog every day, but this hotel didn’t have a gym. Since the hotel was a circle shape with an atrium in the middle, he decided to use the hallway as a jogging track. He had gone around the track a few times when another guest exited her room and saw him coming toward her from down the hall. With an irritated look on her face and condescending attitude she said something like, “What do you think you’re doing?” He answered, “I’m jogging.” Wayne used this anecdote to show an example of a woman looking to be offended. Why should his jogging bother her? He theorized that this woman gets up in the morning and subconsciously intends to find something to bother her, and on that day she placed her irritation on him.

I remember when I was pregnant and an acquaintance and I went to a Big City Moms event for expecting women. We shared a taxi home and on the way we each called our husbands to check-in. My husband was having drinks with a friend. So was hers, but she was annoyed. “You’re STILL out? I’m coming home now, can’t you come home now? They only had appetizers at the event. Can you pick up dinner for me?” I know that social schedules have to change when we are expecting, but to be annoyed simply because your mate is out a little longer than you are? It seemed petty. We live in Manhattan, it’s not hard to order dinner from one of the five take-out restaurants on one’s block.

I believe that being offended is a choice. Sometimes we have good reason to be offended (like if your mate was supposed to pick you up from an event but forgot because he was out drinking with a friend), and other times, we have to use our wisdom to know that our partner’s actions are not about us at all. How your husband butters a muffin or tells you the same story for the third time, or how your wife leaves the cap off of the toothpaste, can either be an annoyance, or something you smile at because it’s just part of who your mate is. Therefore, it’s not about you. So just butter the muffin yourself, nod to the story you already heard and don’t share toothpaste.

What small stuff bothers you? How do you get past it? Do you think the small stuff should matter?

How Take-Out Saved My Marriage

Laurie — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:11:38 +0000

In the last year, while writing this blog, I’ve also been penning the manuscript for my next relationship advice book, “Fight Less, Love More: 5-Minute Conversations to Change Your Relationship without Blowing Up or Giving In,” which will be published by Rodale on October 12, 2010. Not surprisingly, while writing the manuscript, I had my own relationship ups and downs and I share some of them in the book. One of our funny-in-retrospect-only stories is about take-out and I thought I’d share it with you today.

To be fair, my marriage was in pretty good shape when we had the “take-out” incident. My husband and I are a great team, but at times (like all couples) we are no match for the demands of our toddler son. Stress from a little one can wear down anyone’s patience and test any marriage’s mettle.

Several months ago, I had a tiring day of work, and my husband had his usual high-pressure day as an equities trader. The evening arrived and we fell into our typical routine. Our son was on the verge of walking and he was trying to climb everything in sight. One of us, therefore, needed to pay very close attention to him at all times to make sure he was safe. As usual, it was me who ended up being on surveillance duty. My husband was nearby, but somehow I was the one “in charge.” We had never verbally agreed to this division of power. It just happened. When I would use the bathroom or make a phone call, I had a nagging guilty feeling that I had to rush back to my duties.

On this seemingly uneventful night, we ordered take-out Chinese food and my husband announced that he would go pick it up. As I was left stranded at home, again, I became angry. “Dammit, I want to get out of the house for 15 minutes to get the take-out! I want to do the errands!” But I didn’t say this to my husband because it felt wrong. And so I slept on it.

By the next morning I was prepared for a difficult conversation. I couldn’t blame my husband for the situation; I had tacitly agreed to it. And the truth is, how could he know what I wanted if I never said it. Now was the time to re-negotiate our evening parenting responsibilities. I took my own advice as a family mediator and I revealed my feelings without blaming him. I told him that I wasn’t asking for him to be in charge all of the time, or even half of the time. I just needed him to spend a portion of each night as the truly responsible party, so I could have a chance to truly relax, knowing our son was well taken care of.

I’m not kidding when I tell you this: From that day forward, my husband stepped up to the plate. He’s created fun little games with our son that they play every night. They have their own sayings and jokes. When our son needs his diaper changed during the “Daddy play period,” my husband does it, without yelling for my help. Our evenings as a family are more rewarding for everyone.

This story reminds me that sometimes you get what you ask for. I wonder whether other couples have faced the same problem with de facto division of labor.

Before you had a child did you think you and your mate would divide things 50/50? How did it work out? Did you have to negotiate for what you wanted?

A portion of this blog post was originally published as a guest post on The Laughing Stork with Candy Kirby.

How Take-Out Saved My Marriage

Laurie — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:41:02 +0000

Sound interesting? I received a wonderful invitation to guest post at the TheLaughingStork.com, a blog by the amazingly funny Candy Kirby. My post is live TODAY!

Please, click to this link to read about how take-out saved my marriage and take a moment to check-out the other goodies on this clever patchwork of stories about pregnancy and parenthood. Thank you Candy!

Can stay-at-home moms and their working husbands really get along?

Laurie — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:58:10 +0000

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 to ask herself, what kind of boss do I want to be? A dictator or a diplomat?

Imagine that you are a corporate executive (which some SAHMs used to be, and some working moms still are). How would you make decisions without alienating your colleagues? Would you ask for input before making a decision that could affect them? Would you let your colleagues know that your door is always open to their ideas? When they approach you with a suggestion would you ask questions, take their input into consideration, and then discuss your reasoning when it’s decision-making time? If you’d do those things then you are choosing to be a diplomat- a respectful, attentive listener. It doesn’t matter whether 80% of your colleagues’ suggestions are entirely impractical. What matters is that 20% of those ideas are valuable. (Honestly, how many of your own ideas end up being impractical?)

But, even with the logic of diplomacy, it may still be hard to stay on course. Why is that? I think the answer is that some women expect their husbands to have levels of knowledge that they couldn’t possibly have. When my husband suggested that perhaps our son would eat the chicken if I grilled it instead of baking it, I was annoyed because I already tried that and it DIDN’T WORK! But here’s the catch: He didn’t know this because he wasn’t home, and it was ridiculous for me to expect him to know it. The diplomat in me has to remind myself that parenting involves a lot of trial and error. So if I’m the one making the majority of the trials and handling the majority of errors, then I have to be patient when my husband’s idea is one I tried last week. It’s not a dumb suggestion; it’s just one I tried already.

And every now and then, my husband, acting without my preconceived notions about our son, comes up with a good idea that would have never occurred to me. Encouraging him to share all ideas is what enables us to find the good ones.

Are you a SAHM or working mom who handles the majority of child-rearing responsibilities? Do you get annoyed with your husband’s suggestions? Do you find yourselves in a power struggle? Are you a stay-at-home dad who deals with the same issues?

Other Posts You Might Like:

Are You a Bossy Mom?

Failing at Post-Baby Romance?

Oversharing: What’s Public? What’s Private?

Working Woman = Stronger Marriage?

Laurie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:17:08 +0000

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.

“Even among dual-earning couples, women still do about two-thirds of the housework, on average, according to the University of Wisconsin National Survey of Families and Households. But men do contribute far more than they used to. Studies show that since the 1960s, men’s contributions to housework have doubled, while the amount of time spent caring for children has tripled.”

Who is the primary breadwinner in your house? Do you split housework and/or childcare? Who does more? Does it surprise you that couples are less likely to divorce when the woman works or does this make perfect sense?

Other Posts You Might Like:

How to Train Daddy to MAN UP!!!

The New Normal: Mom’s at Work, Dad’s at Home

Breastfeeding is a Man’s Job Too

Pregnancy and the Overprotective Husband

Laurie — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:41:32 +0000

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.

Nowadays we like to say “we are pregnant,” as if the father-to-be has a 50% role in the pregnancy (in my opinion he had a 50% role in the impregnation and will hopefully have a 50% role in parenthood, but maybe only a 5 or 10% role in pregnancy). He attends the doctor appointments, searches for do’s and don’ts of pregnancy online, reads the baby books and gives the mom-to-be advice and support. Sometimes that advice is going to conflict with the mom-to-be’s opinion. How should this be handled?

Answer: Get the Facts: If you and your partner start discussing the effects of mercury on a fetus, don’t try to remember what you read, instead go and read it together. Do the math, figure out the amount in a can of tuna. Does the research on mercury apply to that amount of tuna or to a five times that amount?

Then Get Approval: Tentatively agree to a reasonable limit and then ask your doctor to approve this agreement at the next appointment. Do this for each and every point of disagreement.

It’s not fun to negotiate your food intake and exercise regimen, but at least it’s temporary and it’s better than the alternative: Telling your partner that he has no say in what you eat is only going to increase the fighting and stress in your household. The goal is to use the fact-finding mission to reach compromises that you can both live with.

Do you or did you have an overprotective husband during pregnancy? Are you an overprotective husband? How do you and your partner find a compromise?

Other Posts You Might Like:

Can Fathers Get Postpartum Depression?

Do We Have a Right To Complain During Pregnancy?

Pregnancy Insanity?

My Parenting Experiment with The Dog Whisperer

Laurie — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:04:58 +0000

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. He would run away with the object or put it down, only to happily put something else in his mouth. I hoped he would grow out of the habit on his own since my disciplining didn’t make much difference.

But now that the doctor commanded that I extinguish the mouth habit for two days or risk another injury to my son’s mouth, I had a new confidence in the “not in the mouth” rule, born out of the necessity of protecting my child from himself. And this outlook subconsciously affected how I disciplined.

My husband or I were within two feet of my son for two days (except when he was in his crib). As soon as one of us saw an object approach his mouth, we’d impulsively exclaim “No!” and grab it away from him. I did this at least a dozen times and so did my husband. My son did not think it was a game. By the end of the second day he barely put anything in his mouth.

The unintended experiment worked. When I behaved like an alpha dog, with complete authority and confidence, I succeeded in enforcing the “no mouth” rule.

A few days later I had an epiphany: before the mouth injury, I had wanted to believe that I was doing all I could to prevent my son from putting things in his mouth. But now I realize that was a cop-out. It was easy to yell orders from across the room and a lot harder to get on the floor next to my son, be on alert and remove objects every single time he put one to his lips. Like many other aspects of parenting, discipline requires hard work. Perhaps that’s the underlying lesson from The Dog Whisperer.

Are you the alpha dog in your home? Are you afraid to be a strong disciplinarian? Is it wrong to apply dog training to child discipline? Do you and your partner agree on how to discipline your child?

The New Normal: Mom’s at Work, Dad’s at Home

Laurie — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:03:02 +0000

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. The Rebel Dad puts the stay-at-home dad trend under the microscope, offering a list of new daddy blogs every week. The NYC dads group is an example of how stay-at-home dads are using the internet to find each other and gather support and advice from one another. They even give tips on how to achieve a successful at-home dads group in your own neighborhood.

But I wonder, what about the dad who didn’t choose to stay-at-home?

What if he is forced into it through temporary unemployment? Is that dad going to want to do the tasks that are not always considered “fun”? At Good Times Dad, the father presents his blog as, “A look into the thoughts of a (currently, though hopefully not for long) stay-at-home dad to two of the coolest kids in the world…” Just skimming through his posts shows that yes, he is in fact taking care of the mundane tasks of supermarket shopping, making breakfast, dressing the kids and more.

This gives me hope. If both parents can achieve flexibility with their roles as breadwinner and parent, then families have more reasonable options when it comes to weathering the storm of a recession. Nowadays a married expecting mom can ask herself: should I go back to work after I have the baby, should I stay-at-home, or should I go back to work while my husband stays at home?

What do you think about stay-at-home dads? Are you a stay-at-home dad? Is your family considering this option? How do you think it affects the kids? And just as importantly, is the role reversal good or bad for the marriage?