Not long after our first child arrived I began to wonder what had happened to our marriage. Although I was totally absorbed and happy with our son, for whom we had waited ten years, I found myself reading those magazine articles at the checkout stand with titles like “How to put romance back in your marriage,” or “Is sex less fun?” Just less, I thought, a whole lot less.

One article by a very famous (and over 50 years old) sex therapist said, “...just set aside time for sex and make it a priority…If you are tired, you are ambivalent about sex.” When I first read this, I was standing in a checkout line, by now with two sons, each wrapped around one of my thighs. I thought, “Boy, has it been a while since this woman had small children! I am always tired.” I felt guilty, frustrated and sad. Sex wasn’t the only joy missing. I missed long talks with my husband over dinner and movie marathons. We had so looked forward to and rejoiced in our kids. The kids weren’t the problem. We were crazy about our kids. So what was the problem?
Looking back, I can see that we were so wrapped up in the kids, we had no relationship. We lived in the same house but we rarely spent any time alone with each other. We had high standards for what it meant to be good parents. Our kids had no problem letting us know when they needed parental attention. We just weren’t giving or getting attention from each other. Our marriage wasn’t even on the to-do list. Like most dedicated parents, we couldn’t see the problem. We thought we were good parents and that should be enough.

Sometimes I enjoyed our kids more when I was in charge alone or with my girlfriends and their kids, than when I took the kids out for the day with my husband, Neil. I knew Neil was great with kids. He was a former kindergarten teacher. So what was my problem? Gradually I started talking honestly to my friends. Sometimes I even asked their husbands questions: “Are you having fun?” “Why aren't we having fun?" “Do you have a life as a couple any more?” “Do you ever get to spend time just talking?” “What do you argue about?” One perceptive guy said there were times he felt like he and his wife, both with demanding careers, had become just two laborers in the baby business. He no longer felt a connection as a couple, no longer felt like best friends or like lovers. No kidding.

Other husbands often said it seemed their kids were more important to their wives than they were. These were solid marriages. My clients with young kids felt the same disconnection, although by the time they came to therapy they were often in serious trouble and ready to divorce. Couples in my practice who sought help with their marriage said their problems started when their children were under 5. The most together, apparently stress-free couples confided that they, too, had struggled and then had counseling after the children were born

I began to read about marriages and children in the psychology literature. My reading confirmed what I had been hearing from my clients and friends. I even found a book about ‘Supermom’ and ‘Stuporman’ by columnist Susan Maushart which made me feel that there were soul mate couples out there who felt like we did. Although many couples have a brief and blissful honeymoon period after the birth of a child, research studies show that the time when married couples are most likely to experience problems is when they have children under age five. People are more likely to seek counseling when their children are young. If their children were stepkids or disabled, the odds of marital discord and divorce climbed even higher.
In my own work with clients, I noticed that people who had strong marriages or even just adequate marriages usually ran into trouble shortly after the birth of their first child. Their second child typically intensified the problem or triggered the final meltdown. Some flared with anger; others drifted into divorce. Couples often linked the beginning of their emotional separation to the time their kids were small. Like us, they didn’t see that the children had anything to do with the problem. Many times they didn’t seek counseling until the kids were older. Then it was often too late. They chose divorce when the kids were small. They only acted on it later.
My experience convinced me Nora Ephron was right when she said that having an infant is like tossing a hand grenade into a marriage.

So kids kill marriages?

Children themselves are not the problem. The parents’ reaction to the children creates the problem. Adding one or two new little people to a relationship creates a normal crisis, but a crisis nonetheless. The Chinese symbol for crisis combines the symbols for danger and opportunity. This normal couple crisis of having children provides both danger and opportunity for the marriage. The danger is that the demand of raising children will lead to conflict and emotional distance in the marriage. The golden opportunity is that confronting the normal stress of raising children will create a happier, stronger, and more intimate marriage for the long term. Psychologist David Schnarch describes the conflict and demands of normal couples as a crucible that either melts down a marriage or forges a steel bond.
Absorbed in their children, partners miss the clues to this crisis. They may sense a problem but can’t pin it down. Many a new father has said, “You pay more attention to the kids than me!” His wife may respond with a gentle version of, “So what is your point? Kids need more attention.” He might be thinking, “Boy is she overinvolved.” She’s likely to be thinking: “Maybe if you’d help more I would have more time for you.” If he doesn’t start helping more, she begins to have thoughts like, “Oh great, now I have two children instead of one, and the big one whines.”
What they each missed was the red flag, the opportunity to notice and address the anger that signals a problem. The husband’s statement about attention to the kids could be a signal to look at the marriage together. But it is a disguised signal. Though he meant no harm, his first comment, which felt like an admission of vulnerability to him, probably sounded to her like he was criticizing or blaming her. Now the signal might have been easier to read if he had said, “I miss my time with you.” Similarly, if she had responded to his need for attention with “You’re right! I miss you, too. What can we do about it?” they would have started the process of working on the real problem together.

These niceties of communication tend to evaporate with sleep disruption and the new workload. Either partner can refocus the couple to “What are we going to do about our marriage?” Rather than opponents, they are then together, cooperating and struggling with the same issues. Both may be tired cranky and overloaded, with little left to share, but now they are on the same team struggling against the same problem rather than against each other. This understanding can bring them closer even if they just flop on the bed for ten minutes of cuddling and talking about how overwhelming it is. But stress tends to make people irritable rather than reasonable. That irritability is like a small flame that can get fanned into a huge fire.
Instead, the normal parental stress and lack of time causes a mom to wonder privately, “Who is this person who thinks he isn’t getting enough attention?” He thinks, “she loves the kids more than me,” or worse “she doesn’t love me anymore like she used to.” And the flame grows. Both begin to think, “Who is this person I married?” Many people decide somewhat grimly that they will focus on the marriage again “after I get this kid thing going smoothly.” Unfortunately it may be another 3 to 5 (or 18!) years before things start to feel a little bit smoother, enough to think clearly and discuss calmly. And that may be too late.

Parents often start out as though they are expecting to a Sunday afternoon row together on a calm little lake with a wicker picnic basket or maybe even a challenging rafting trip. Soon they discover that parenting is more like sailing around the world in the S.S. Minnow. Such a trip can be exhilarating and meaningful but someone must always be on duty at the helm. Advance planning, careful selection of your travel partner and a good support team help, but bad weather and unpleasant surprises will inevitably intrude. Worse it can be very hard to quit the trip in the middle of the ocean. After the adventure, you will recall some fabulous times along the way and feel very close to your traveling partner. But it is not just a short fun vacation.

Parents want the best schools, the best food, and the best of everything for their children, but they often don’t realize that one of the best things they can give their children is a good marriage. Not only does it protect children from the obvious financial and emotional disruptions of divorce, a good marriage provides a great model for happiness, kindness, maintaining a sense of yourself in a group and getting along with people in the world.

The good news

The good news, for me at least, was that the research showed that my marital discomfort after having kids was typical. I told myself a lot of marriages made it through many years and mine would too if I just figured out how to cope with the dual demands of marriage and parenting. I also learned that because Neil and I were older when we became parents (we were 40 and 39), we were at risk for a more intense crisis. I had assumed being older would make us calmer and wiser. Studies indicated just the reverse. The older you are when you start having kids, or the longer you have been married, the worse the discomfort. Apparently having a long time to settle comfortably into a marriage makes it harder to adjust to children.
At the other end of the continuum, those with almost no time to become a couple before babies arrive and very young, teen couples also have a very hard time. Couples in the middle who have plenty of good times together to remember BK (before kids) but are not yet settled into a rigid, yet comfortable pattern have a little easier time.
Another point discussed in the research was that women tend to feel upset first. Men feel it later. When I tried talking to Neil, my husband, about our marriage and these facts, he didn’t get it. From his point of view, if I would just be nicer everything would be fine. He wasn’t that unhappy he said. Neil was right on schedule. The timing of post-child malaise is different for women and men. Women become unhappy first and men follow. It is as though a man’s unhappiness mirrors his wife’s discomfort.
Studies of depression over a woman’s lifetime show that women experience the most depression when their children are under age 5. (See Baby Blues box, Chapter 5.) Menopause and the empty nest are nothing compared to what a woman experiences when her children are little. It appears to be a case of “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.“ If she doesn’t share her concerns and he doesn’t notice, both of them are often quite surprised when she either blows up or becomes depressed and critical. If they don’t attend to her unhappiness and both of them don’t deal with it together, he becomes unhappy living with someone who is so unhappy and/or grouchy. The questions still nagged at me: Why does marital satisfaction go down when you have a baby? Why doesn’t it bring you closer? Why isn’t it one more wonderful thing to share? Like our friends, we were thrilled with our children. So why weren’t we happier as couples? I was further intrigued to discover that while parenthood led some couples to divorce or put them on the rocks, 33% of couples experience intense happiness in their marriages after having a baby and headed for a lifetime of greater closeness. So why weren’t we one of the couples “chosen” for greater closeness? How do you get to be like them?