Married to the kids
subtlecynic comments on how these days parents have exalted their kids above all other things, including their spouses, borthers, sisters, etc., and points us to a column by John Rosemond that explains the impact this is having on kids’ ability to understand what a relationship is supposed to look like. He says, in part:
Today’s all-too-typical child is prevented from learning what marriage is all about by well-intentioned parents who rarely act from within the roles of husband and wife; rather, they act almost exclusively from within the roles of mother and father. This is, after all, the new American ideal, based in large part on the nefarious modern notion that the more attention you pay to, the more involved you are with, and the more you do for your child, the better a parent you are.
If you read Howe and Strauss’ books on Xers (13th Gen) and Millennials (Millennials Rising) and you’ll get a sense for why this is happening. Millennials are, unline the last gen or two, precious in the eyes of their parents, whereas X was the least wanted (most aborted, for instance) gen in history. Very different set of circumstances, and it all meshes nicely with what subtlecynic and Rosemond are talking about here.
I’ve seen it, too. There’s a two-stage thing that has happened to some of my friendships through the years. First, my bud gets married. Obviously he has less time for me now, but something more than that happens – it’s not just that there’s less time. If I’m not married, I no longer have the status required to maintain that friendship because the dynamics of his life have changed in ways I can’t relate to. Also, sociability needs symmetry, so a couple can’t really be proper friends with a single. Even if I bring a date it doesn’t quite work, because since we aren’t married there isn’t a sense of long-term trust that the other couple can invest in. She might be gone tomorrow. That’s step one.
Step two: they have kids. Now not only am I not a big part of their lives, they have each dropped down a notch in their own marriage. I have learned much from observing through the years, and one thing I have observed is that once a woman has a child, her husband becomes the second-most important person to her (at best), and to some degree the same thing happens for the man.
I think this plays a role in my own decision not to have children (a decision much lamented by my sisters, my friends, complete strangers who happen to be around when the subject comes up, etc.). I have always been worried, and I think for good reason, that I’m not cut out to be a good parent. Parenting requires an insane amount of commitment, and I imagine that I’d implode trying to devote my all to the task (some days it’s all I think I can do to be a good daddy for my dog).
But even more importantly, I have to be honest with you. I’m kinda selfish. The idea that once the baby arrives I’m less important to my wife is one I can’t quite manage. I don’t want to be second. I don’t want to be the least important person in my own house. I don’t want to share, I guess. Maybe this makes me a bad person, but it’s better than I’m honest about it now, before I become a bad father.
So I can understand how my friends are thinking – as an Xer, I have seen more parental malpractice in my life than I care to think about, and a part of me rejoices that parents of my generation are willing to take their responsibilities seriously. If you can’t do it right, don’t have a kid, period. The downside for me as the unmarried bud is that, for all intents and purposes, I no longer have anything more than a minimal place in my friend’s life. He’s been adding to the love in his sphere, but I’ve been getting lonelier by the day as those other commitments push me further and further into the periphery.
This, I suppose, is a big reason why people get married and have children, huh?
The question that subtlecynic and Rosemond raise for me this rainy WNY morning is one I hadn’t contemplated before. Since what I describe here was the only direct experience I had to draw on, I always assumed that this is how it had always been – the kids arrive and the spouse drops down a notch in the priority order. But now I’m not so sure – what I’m seeing may not be a natural function of human relationships, it may be a generational function. That is, this kind of behavior erupts every few generational cycles (the GI/Millennial cycle), then begins deteriorating with subsequent generations. Based on what I know, I seriously doubt that my parents’ generation behaved the way subtlecynic’s sister (and so many of my own friends and relations) do. My parents and the parents of the kids I knew, they sure didn’t situate us at the center of their universes.
I have to think on this some more…
lullaby pit 
That’s a maternal instinct more than anything else. That was always my biggest concern with having children as well, because yeah, I’m selfish too, and damnit, I don’t want to be less important. I honestly kept my wife much more important than I did the son. Now, some will say that it’s because he wasn’t my biological son. That’s crap. It has nothing to do with that. It was just that I loved her more than I was going to love a kid, regardless of whether it was my spawn or not. That, ultimately, was what caused a lot of issues, because she wanted someone that would fawn all over the children, and therefore apparently wanted to be a notch down in the importance level. I thought I was actually a pretty good parent quite honestly, despite my huge reservations about being in a relationship with a kid. *shrug* Whatever. Makes absolutely no sense to me at all. While I think I could, and many people said I did, make a good parent, it’s not something I am willing to do anymore. Call it selfish, call it whatever.
verily
The hardest thing about this subject is that, if you’re like me, it’s almost impossible not to feel a bit bad about yourself over this, you know?
Re: verily
I don’t though, because I really did try to be a good parent with her son. I think I could be a good father again if I *wanted* to be. But, I have to say that it could only be with someone that was mature, and had already found themselves. Does it sound like I am speaking from some rather annoying experience? ;D Even then though…it’s not really something I want. I prefer to spend my time and money on myself and my gal. Kids take up an exobitant amount of time and money. But I don’t feel bad about feeling this way because I’ve never wanted kids, even when I was a kid myself, I knew I didn’t want kids. So, yeah, I tried it, and it’s not really for me thankyouverymuch.
You shouldn’t feel bad either. I mean, I’m not that fond of baking things. I can do it, and it’s edible when I decide to do so, but it’s not something I want to do typically, so I don’t. It’s the same thing with parenting I think, but you’re smart enough to know better beforehand and don’t do something stupid like having kids anyway just because it’s the thing to do.
Interesting post. I don’t think I’d have anything of value to say because everything in my life has been atypical; I’d skew your observations.
Re: verily
I’ll send my sisters over to your house. When they’re done you’ll feel bad… 🙂
heh
I don’t know – some would tell you *I* skew things just by walking past… 🙂
Re: verily
Haha! Great. I’ll send you over to Heather’s web page and you can see her post on the grand master of guilt trips. It’s pretty impressive. After reading that, I don’t think a team of sisters could affect me too much. 😀 Poor Heather.
Re: verily
You know, hanging with a rock star is enough for some women.
Re: verily
Haha! One would think. 😀
Re: heh
Yah, some people rather enjoy skewing things
This was really interesting to read… mainly because L and I have talked a LOT about having kids and we absolutely plan to have them.. actually 2 is what we’re planning, but we’ll have to see how the first pans out 😉
But I’d have to say that yes.. I probably would make the child #1 priority, and I guess I’m struggling with trying to resolve whether I think that’s a bad thing or not. I’ve had friends whose parents always put each other first and it really created quite an issue with her.. she left with the feeling of “well, why the hell did you have kids, you’d have been much happier without us” and truth be told, she was probably right.
hrm.. anyhow, lost my train of thought. I do have to say that I’m not really sure if agree with the article above. I think it has a lot to consider and definately can be an issue, but at the same time I don’t beleive that putting more focus on the child neccessarily negates the importance of the marriage, nor do I beleive the generation of children raised that way will be worse off for this focus, but I do beleive that conscious efforts need to be made to ensure that the importance of the child and the marriage are equally focused on. So I guess I do and don’t agree with the article. I’m SO indecisive 😉
Food for thought
I had to smile when I read the part about the ‘two-stage thing’ that happens once your friends get married. It sucks being the single one. They all say, oh it doesn’t matter, but it does. Then after those two phases are done, maybe even during the phases, your married friends decide that you too, should join in the fun. So they go about trying to help you do that. It’s a blast…ok… not so much.
I think of growing up. I think my parents spent more time developing a relationship with me then developing a relationship with each other. This could have happened for a bunch of different reasons. It could seem like a good thing. I was given more responsibility, they each confided in me about everything, we had open communication and I felt like I was able to help them. But where has that left me today, single and feeling bad. I feel bad because I’m not with them now to ‘help’ them with all of their troubles, both inside and outside of their marriage. I’m single because of my fear of jumping into a marriage when all I know it to be is draining and dream-breaking. What are my parent’s left with, a relationship that has been sustained not on love or respect, but on the idea of the children coming first.
Having said that, and being my idealistic and optimistic self, I still want to have both a good marriage and a good relationship with my children. I would hope that as a better informed generation, this will be a choice not a predetermined fact. Who knows, time will tell.
I agree that parents nowadays put too much emphasis on giving a lot of attention to children. I think my parents did a good job balancing their relationship with each other and with my siblings and me. Parents now are overly concerned with their children and focus too much energy on them, and I think it creates spoiled brats who are ungrateful and overly needy sometimes even before they can talk. There is a big difference between being responsible and being overbearing.
I think that it may cause some children to be over-needy, but not all. Overgeneralizations scare me! When we stop looking at individuality we can lose sight of all of the wonderful ideas and traits those individuals have to offer.
I agree with Rosemond in that these children will have a harder time developing true and productive relationships. This doesn’t mean that they will be incapable of it; some will just have a harder time with it.
Reply from Don Dixon
hey SAM
this is indeed an interesting can of worms…
since i’ve had kids my entire adult life (assuming adulthood begins at 25), i can speak from the experience of often being the only person in my group of friends that had a kid…
not to denigrate what some of the other fellows have observed & written, i believe they are basically full of shit…they’re thinking too much…the biological responsibility of parenthood is to keep your offspring alive until they’re old enough to take care of themselves…
now granted, most humans feel a greater responsibility to their kids (& society) to take that statement literally, but to lay a generalized template across entire generations of parents is academic beyond my wildest imagining…
in my experience,i’ve never felt preempted by a child nor have i allowed a child to preempt my spouse…but those kids that i created are people…actual people, not extensions of “me”…yes, i share genetic material with them, pass family traits down to them, but humanity is phenomenally homogenous…the similarity between all humans is the amazing part of all this…if there are generalizations about parenthood to be made, i think they are bound by status, wealth, education, age, number of kids in the family (a key point), all the normal social considerations that cut across generations…
what’s a good example: we think of the VICTORIANS as outstanding examples of cold, distant parenting, but we’re just talking about the upper class boarding school crowd, not the hoi polloi…when you look around at your friends, they’re going to make great decisions one day & crummy ones the next…some will seem to suck at raising kids in general, some will seem to excel, but the truth is we don’t have much effect in the end…the kids come out of the womb, personality pretty much in tact…the same set of environmental conditions can produce significantly different results in each child…a parent is better off reacting than shoving their feet into cement, i think…
plus, people think their life is supposed to unfold like a movie…endings, tidy or messy, are expected…my experience tells me there are no endings (perhaps with the exception of death)…life is a long chain of events & my children, all unplanned but wanted & loved, have been enriching beyond thought…
now i will admit they take time that you might spend on other pursuits but i don’t care what anybody says, life is long if you don’t fuck off…
Don