How can a couple ensure that the husband is transformed
along with his wife? First, the couple need to ignore some popular
bad advice. Many well-meaning experts recommend that you
consider marriage and family a balancing act, as if your lives are a
seesaw with the baby on one end and your marriage on the other.
Couples are counseled to spend some time away from the baby and
focus on their marriage and outside interests: talk about your
relationship, your job, her job, the weather, anything but the baby at
home. But marriage and family are not diametrically opposed.
Rather, they are of one cloth. Yes, the couple should spend time away
from the baby occasionally. But if they are making this transition well
together, they will find that they can't stop talking about the baby,
nor do they want to. They might not even get through that first meal
without calling home--at least twice. Too often, such couples are
made to feel as if they have done something wrong because they
have made their own relationship seemingly secondary to their new
roles as parents. The result is that they feel all the more stressed and
confused. But in fact, they have done something very right. The
important thing here is that they are in it together. To the extent that
both husband and wife make this philosophical shift, the parent-child
relationship and the marriage thrive.
Here are some more tips to help couples stay connected as they
evolve into parents.
Focus on your marital friendship. Before the baby comes,
make sure that you really know each other and your respective
worlds intimately. The more of a team you are now, the easier the
transition will be. If a husband knows his wife, he will be in better
tune with her as she begins her journey to motherhood.
Don't exclude Dad from baby care. Sometimes, in her
exuberance, a new mother comes off as a know-it-all to her husband.
While she pays lip service to the idea that they should share the
baby's care, she casts herself into a supervisory role, constantly
directing--if not ordering--the new father and even chastising him if
he doesn't do things exactly her way: "Don't hold her like that," "You