Delivering the roles of parenting and marriage management side by side can be quite a health taxing task for young parents. While there are many components to a successful marriage, parenting and family dynamics can sometimes cause particular stress on marital happiness. And, this is why more Americans are opting out of parenting roles after marriage.
According to the U.S. Census, the percent of childless Americans has increased from 35% in 1976 to 47% in 2010, and presently, the figure stands between 78.6% to 54.2% across different age groups.
But, understanding what marriage is about will help you maintain a perfect balance between marriage and parenting. Indeed, nurturing your marriage when the rigors of child-rearing are involved can save your ruined marriage and prevent divorce.
Citing the example of healthy marriage tips, we can aptly say that both the spouses have to work hard towards their shared goal- build a stronger marriage after children. And, it is equally important to remember that in order to raise happy kids and solve the marriage problems after kids, put your marriage first, always!
How Does Having a Child Affect the Marriage?
Having a child means being caught in various aspects of life that a couple needs to juggle. After a child, a couple’s focus shifts from their marriage, and the child and family become the center of attention.
Although most marriages remain intact, happy, and fulfilling, there could be some instances of handling between marriage and children, the couple drifts apart, and the connection takes a downward slide.
This mainly happens due to mismatched expectations. Communication reduces, and there is increased stress, sleep deprivation, anxiety about the child’s future. Once the child comes, couples also lose the confidence in solving the marital problems together.
Also read: 15 People Tell Us Why Is Effective Communication Important In A Relationship
However, with the right approach and plan to stick through, the couple can take things under control.
How to Balance Marriage and Parenting?
The major question here is how do you handle the ups and downs of parenting, marriage, work, self-care, and the like, single-handedly?
In a word, both marriage and parenting require equal attention and complete dedication from both partners. So, start by taking lots of breaths and creating enough space for you and your partner to heal.
This important process requires insight, of course, a willingness to see what you may be unwilling to see or are not ready to see. So, here are some of the successful marriage tips for you.
Balancing marriage and parenting requires a radical shift of mindset of the couple to break the cycle of unhappiness and negativity between them.
As a solution to how to make the marriage work, the couple should stop the blame game and practice forgiveness.
However, they should also know the solutions to how to balance marriage and parenting. Let’s find out.
5 Tips for Balancing Marriage and Parenting
A couple should make serious attempts to keep the marriage intact without sacrificing their attention towards kids. So, how to have a better marriage with kids? Here are 5 tips:
1. Learn from your kids
The golden rule of marriage and parenting entails pairs defining their own goals and not blindly follow someone else’s pieces of advice.
Experienced and happy parents will always have a few pieces of advice to put across now and then. But, for healthy parent and children relationships, you cannot define your parenting and marriage rules based on what others have mastered during their early parenting years.
You can easily chalk out your private time with your partner by closely observing your little one. Careful observation of your child’s needs and temperaments, picking up cues, and planning accordingly, will help both of you steal some rare moments of togetherness.
2. Putting spouse before children
Always remember, happy wife, happy life!
But, husbands are equally important, and keeping them happy is primal to preserving marital harmony.
As mentioned earlier, marriage and parenting entail hard work and dedication from both partners, especially young mothers. They are suddenly over-burdened with endless hours of responsibilities, right from feeding the kid, cleaning their poop, to putting them off to sleep. Such delicate tasks drain the young mothers of their energy.
As a responsible and caring husband, you should learn how to make your wife happy again.
- Patiently listening to her complaints
- Attending to her whims and fancies
- Sharing the responsibility of raising kids
- Incentivize her efforts with little gifts, and
- Compliment her efforts
As wives, you must attend to your husband’s needs as well, along with tending to your child’s requirements. Pick up a few tips to look after your husband from experienced parents and tweak them to match his tastes. Quiet a tasking job, indeed! But, little effort towards marriage with kids from either side can preserve the peace and harmony in your marriage.
Of course, husbands are expected to try a little harder than their wives because the latter is fully occupied tending to her newborn. So, putting your spouse first is crucial to saving the marriage from a plausible divorce.
3. Plan a romantic date or weekend getaways
Giving birth to children doesn’t mean that romance between spouses will end. In fact, reviving the lost flame of passion between the sheets is all the more crucial to saving the marriage from falling apart.
So, for being happily married with kids or a healthy marriage after kids, make arrangements for your kids so that you can have a couple of days off from the day-to-day backbreaking parental duties and enjoy a romantic getaway with your partner.
4. Make time for yourself
Another important point that requires worth mentioning in the parenting and marriage realm is to make time for yourself.
As a young mother, it is crucial for you to bestow your time and energy in nurturing your little one. But, ignoring your health will only add to your worry list.
Every relationship, every child-parent relationship, and every human being needs to take breaths and make space in the midst of all the busyness to rest, read, regroup, and renew.
If you are trying to balance the often conflicting currents of marriage and parenting, this may necessitate reprioritizing some things. If you are not taking care of yourself spiritually, emotionally, and physically, how can you expect to contribute in a life-giving way to marriage and the health of the children?
Therefore, for balancing parenting and marriage, take a good look at your children. Are they acting out, faltering in school, or withdrawing from typical patterns and interests? These types of changes in your children serve as a mirror to your own health and potentially the health of the marital relationship.
Also, check out this video where Oprah Winfrey talks about the importance of taking care of yourself:
5. Engage in counseling
Further, recognize your partner may be dealing with the same malaise that continues to weigh upon you and your family.
For couples with kids, it is always a good idea to engage in hearty counseling before tattering situations deepen. Visit a counselor who understands the dynamics of parenting and nurturing the marital relationship.
For a strong husband and wife relationship, reinvest in the marriage through dating, conversation, and mutual engagement in shared interests. Be willing and honest about your emotional heaviness and your desire to regroup and retool before things really begin to deteriorate.
If there have been rough exchanges in the relationship, hard feelings, and wrongs, be willing to forgive, confess, atone, and accept forgiveness, whatever it takes to get your life and the lives of those around you back on track.
If incorporated wisely, these five ways to strengthen marriage will change the dynamics of marriage and parenting and boost your relationship after kids and also, help them in making their marriage work effortlessly.
