Remember back in the good old days when you thought Christmas with your in-laws was hard? Or when your biggest challenge came the day before finals? Or when your character, intelligence, wit and survival skills were put to the test by planning an eco-friendly wedding or getting through two hours with all your mother's coworkers and poop-inspired games at your baby shower? And then along came the baby and the hard stuff really set in.
Of course, part of the reason early day parenting is so wiggy is that it is both hard and more astounding than you could have ever dreamed. It is exhilarating and exhausting, limit-pushing and heart-expanding. Having a baby both makes you swell with love for your partner and want to murder them, usually within seconds of each other. It will make you simultaneously feel like you are goddess and a complete wacked-out sure-to-be failure.
Yeah yeah yeah, you say. We've got all that. What's the news?
Now the half that is hard is confirmed and not just by your online BFF from the birth club boards. Real live scientific research shows that Gen Xers are 42% more likely to report a drop in marital satisfaction following the birth of a first child. And because you're already exhausted and completely depleted of energy to resolve arguments about putting the diapers into the bin and not just next to it, couples also see a slight but still present dip in marital satisfaction with each birth that follows.
We all know the whys. The question of one parent transitioning from office to home, the unspeakable and ever-present stress of how much it costs to raise someone so small, childcare, in-laws, sharing duties...the list is so long and so familiar that we don't need to go on further, do we? The point is, it takes its toll.
But those 31,000 couples aren't us!, you're tempted to comment. Then, great. But
if it is (just in case), know that your partnership is in the shitter (even temporarily) with a lot of
other parents you see sitting in silence together on "date night." And some parents have even told me in confidence that it does get better. Of course, that usually comes once you've paid off enough medical bills to afford a housekeeper, nanny and grocery delivery, but it does get better.
I wonder: Would it be helpful to know this before you make the baby? Or is it better to only have a vague idea of the radical emotional dips and soars before you climb aboard the parenting roller coaster?
