Seven naslovi

helpless little creature, juggling mothering with a job, economic
stress, and lack of time to oneself, among other things.
The big mystery is not why 67 percent of new mothers feel so
miserable, but why the other 33 percent just seem to sail through the
transition to motherhood unscathed. (In fact, some of these mothers
say their marriage has never been better.) Thanks to the 130 couples
we've followed from their newlywed stage to as long as eight years
afterward, I now know the secret to keeping a marriage happy and
stable even after the "grenade" explodes. What separates these
blissful mothers from the rest has nothing to do with whether their
baby is colicky or a good sleeper, whether they are nursing or bottle-
feeding, working or staying home. Rather, it has everything to do
with whether the husband experiences the transformation to
parenthood along with his wife or gets left behind.
Having a baby almost inevitably causes a metamorphosis in the
new mother. She has never felt a love as deep and selfless as the one
she feels for her child. Almost always a new mother experiences
nothing less than a profound reorientation of meaning in her life. She
discovers she is willing to make enormous sacrifices for her child. She
feels awe and wonder at the intensity of her feelings for this fragile
little being. The experience is so life-altering that if her husband
doesn't go through it with her, it is understandable that distance
would develop between them. While the wife is embracing a new
sense “ofwe-ness" that includes their child, the husband may still be
pining for the old "us." So he can't help but resent how little time she
seems to have for him now, how tired she always is, how often she's
preoccupied with feeding the baby. He resents that they can't ride
their bikes to the beach anymore because the baby is too small to sit
up in a back carrier. He loves his child, but he wants his wife back.
What's a husband to do?
The answer to his dilemma is simple: He can't get his wife back-
-he has to follow her into the new realm she has entered. Only then
can their marriage continue to grow. In marriages where the husband
is able to do this, he doesn't resent his child. He no longer feels like
only a husband, but like a father, too. He feels pride, tenderness, and
protectiveness toward his offspring.