![You fall in love, life is perfect, you're a lucky bastard, and you know it but then you decide to have a baby (or three).](/web/20151218131354im_/http://www.watoday.com.au/content/dam/images/g/k/6/3/d/g/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.glq9n1.png/1450345890639.jpg)
You fall in love, life is perfect, you're a lucky bastard, and you know it but then you decide to have a baby (or three). Photo: Christopher Futcher
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You meet, you fall in love, and it's marvellous. Suddenly, your world has been turned upside down, and finally feels the right way up. You feel more alive than you ever have, and happier than you ever knew you could be. Your heart beats bigger, better and stronger than ever before. You didn't believe this sort of thing was possible, so you pinch yourself, and you're met with the incredible realisation that this really is real. They write songs and poems and plays about this, and here you are, in the middle of your own epic love story. Life is perfect, you're a lucky bastard, and you know it.
But then you decide to have a baby. And it works, and you're left wondering; What now?
"As soon as our first kid came along, my wife put me second," once said a father my husband knew. "I slipped further down the pecking order when number two arrived. Now I think I'm somewhere equal with the dog, though that often depends on who's been a better boy." He said it jokingly, but it left an impression me that lingered beyond the laughter. Love can be a life raft in stormy seas. I pictured him and his wife, huddled together, happy and safe, sharing their little boat. But as their children came along, I saw him pushed from the sanctuary, into the seething seas. A sacrifice many make for their children, but how do you prevent yourself being washed away? How can you keep your marriage afloat when others arrive, depending on you for survival? Can't you just get a bigger boat?
There's no question, in my view, that love is an abundant thing. Just because there are more people to love, doesn't mean you should love someone less. In that sense, yes, the boat can get bigger. But I'm also interested in the idea that your co-captain should remain exactly that, regardless of who else comes aboard. You don't have to look far to find articles from psychologists and relationships experts advocating the idea people put their progeny before their partner at their peril. According to Linda and Charlie Bloom; "Making your children's happiness your highest priority can result in an unanticipated and undesired consequence: the promotion of the idea that marriage requires the sacrifice of one's personal needs and desires in order to fulfil the higher moral imperative of responsible child rearing."
It's a similar theme to the theory forwarded by David Code, therapist and Wall Street Journal contributor, in his book To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First. "We parents today are too quick to sacrifice our lives and our marriage for our kids," he writes. "But as we break our backs for our kids, our marriage and self-fulfilment go out of the window." I find it hard to ignore this message. I look around me, at couples that have broken under the weight of the "moral imperative" of parenting, I look back at my own parents' divorce, and I can see reason in the recommendation romance remain a top-order priority.
But not everyone agrees with this point of view. In response to Code's book, British columnist Lucy Cavendish wrote she would always put her children before her husband, "even though it's already destroyed one relationship." In this article for the Daily Mail she says, "I'm not the only woman who does this. Every woman I know puts her children before her husband. She may not tell him that, but she does ... But all this means I have little energy left for the other areas of my life. I am generally exhausted by the time my husband comes home. I forget to cook for him. I forget to buy bottles of wine for us to share. Most of the time I can barely speak to him I am so tired."
I wonder, how would she feel if it was her husband writing the piece? How would readers respond? Cavendish makes some excellent points about the need to commit to raising well-rounded children, who feel loved and supported and special. But she also speaks to the idea that it's somehow more important for women to prioritise this responsibility than men. An idea that still, appallingly, permeates our culture. It's an idea that makes motherhood somehow more important than fatherhood, and one I find difficult to swallow, not least of all because it shuts dads out of an incredibly significant equation. But I'm also not convinced it's an entirely functional model.
Take this from therapists Gary and Joy Lundberg; "There is a natural order in marriage. It begins with two people falling in love, believing that they are the most important person in the world to each other. As children come along they need to be cherished and loved but never more than your spouse. Then when they're grown and gone, it's back to just two people again. When these two remain in love, it provides a stability and a legacy for the children, no matter their age."
We are about to welcome our daughter into the world. I'm nervous and excited, so is my husband. We are also more deeply in love than we've ever been before, and I can't wait to feel the love grow once our girl arrives. But even as I know I will love her in a way I can't fully comprehend right now, I also know that I want to make sure she understands what it means for mum and dad to love each other, and I want my husband to know that I still want to love him forever. We'll just build that a bigger boat.
Katherine Feeney is a journalist with the Nine Network Australia
E: Katherine.f.feeney@gmail.com