What’s Harder, Marriage or Parenting?

January 9, 2009

By Lisa Belkin

What’s more challenging — parenting or marriage?

That’s the question on the table this week over at Momversation.com. The site is filled with videos of conversations among changing combinations of some of the Web’s most trafficked “Mommy bloggers.”

What caught my attention was a question posed by Heather Armstrong, whose Web site is the popular Dooce.com.

“I’ve read some research recently that shows our mothers spent more of their time working on being better wives as opposed to better mothers,” she says. “Whereas, for our generation it seems like it’s kind of the opposite, that we concentrate more on being better mothers than better wives.”

She concludes, ”For me marriage is much easier than parenthood.”

The two other bloggers in the video disagree.

“Motherhood is so easy compared to marriage,” says Rebecca Woolf, of GirlsGoneChild.net and author of “Rockabye: From Wild to Child,” the story of her unexpected pregnancy at 23, and her marriage to the boyfriend she hardly knew. “The first two years of my marriage, both of us were trying to co-exist with each other without killing each other.”

Alice Bradley, from Finslippy.com, agrees: “What does it mean to be a good wife? I don’t know what that means. I know what it means to be a good mother. When you have a baby, its very clear what you have to do — you have to keep the baby alive and love it … It’s hard to neglect a baby, if you’re not crazy and evil. It’s easy to neglect a marriage; you have to work at it and it’s easier to forget that you have to work at it.” (If you find yourself on her site, read her description of giving birth to her son, Henry. One of the funniest birth stories ever…)

You don’t realize you see the world through a fixed lens until someone else sees things differently. For me, being a new spouse was easy, being a new parent was hard. Getting married meant rearranging the metaphorical furniture of my life. Becoming a mother meant knocking down the house and rebuilding it from scratch. Marriage required skill sets I’d had practice using. Parenting required skill sets I wasn’t sure I had.

Armstrong, too, was surprised that everyone didn’t see things they way she had. She’d been so debilitated by postpartum depression when her daughter Leta was born nearly five years ago that she’d needed in-patient psychiatric treatment. (Her book about all that, piercingly titled “It Sucked, and Then I Cried,” will be out in March.) So she’d never really imagined that someone could find marriage the tougher adjustment than parenting.

As she explained on her blog:

It was pretty clear cut for me. I mean, six months into parenthood I checked myself into a mental hospital. That’s a pretty good indication that the software was not compatible with my operating system. Whereas my marriage has caused its fair share of wrinkles, but it hasn’t ever made me consider checking out of life.

Armstong is expecting her second child in June, and says that her feelings about motherhood are worlds removed from where they began:

The instincts I thought would kick in immediately took their damn sweet time and I had no idea what I was doing for about a year. Those instincts finally did settle in, and when I look back at those first few months the memories have the same tone and color as the memory of being dropped into a pool not knowing how to swim.

Which was easier for you, becoming a parent or becoming a partner? (To quote Armstrong, “Since some of us aren’t allowed to marry the ones we love, let’s extend the discussion to relationships in general.”)

Does Couples Counseling Work?

By Molly Triffin

Are you skeptical about the benefits of couples counseling? Our checklist may be able to help you determine if counseling would work for you.

Rumor has it that after seeing a couples counselor two years ago, Madonna and Guy Ritchie posted a list of relationship guidelines on the wall of their Manhattan apartment. A few of the reported rules: Guy must work to "enrich his wife's emotional and spiritual well-being" Guy must set aside time to read Kabbalah texts with his wife; both parties must "not use sex as a stick to beat one another."

Despite these meticulous measures, Madge and Guy still decided to split. And that begs the question: Does couples counseling really help? "Ultimately, if you really love the person, it's worth it to pull out all the stops," says Debbie Magids, Ph.D., author of All the Good Ones Aren't Taken. "But at some point, if things aren't getting better, you have to reassess."

If you're in a long-term relationship and having serious issues with your guy, you may want to consider going to therapy together (it costs about $150 to $200 a session, on average). Take a look at the checklist on the next page. The more questions you answer yes to, the greater the possibility that counseling could work for you.

Do the good times outweigh the bad?
If you enjoy being with your man the majority of the time, don't call it quits just yet.

Can you forgive him?
When trouble stems from a betrayal, such as cheating, it can be tough to move past that. But in order to have a strong relationship, you must be able to let go of the resentment.

Is the root of your conflict caused by an external force?
If an outside factor (for instance, he lost his job or there's an illness in your family) is putting stress on your relationship, the tough time is likely conditional and temporary.

Do you agree on the fundamentals of life?
You can find a happy medium when it comes certain disagreements, like how tidy you want to keep your pad. But others, such as whether or not you want to have kids in the future, are so fundamental that you need to be on the same page.

Is the relationship worth the work you'll have to put in?
Some couples are naturally more compatible than others, so their bonds are relatively easy to keep strong. Those who aren't as closely matched have to work harder to resolve differences of opinion and lifestyle. That doesn't mean your connection is any less wonderful, it just takes more effort to get to that point, so you need to be up for the challenge.

Source: Joanne Magdoff, Ph.D., psychologist in New York; Debbie Magids, Ph.D.
Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc.