Reflection Blog 8

In reading the article “Is there Love After Baby?”, I thought it was interesting that before the baby was born, both parents saw themselves as having a larger portion of themselves being the partner/lover. After the baby was born, this was the piece of the pie that shrunk or order to make room for the parent piece of the pie to get bigger.  This study showed that parents who maintained and kept the partner/lover portions of the pie larger had less parenting stress. This finding actually makes sense though. In order to be successful parents, or at least have less parenting stress, you need to have a good foundation. That foundation is built off of the parent’s relationship. If the parents forget about each other, or care less for each other then it makes sense that working together as a team to rear their child would be harder. I cannot speak from experience because I don’t have kids yet, but I can imagine that it would be hard. I have seen our friends relationships change, how the mother stays home with the kids while the father goes out because he doesn’t want to give up any of his social life, but it seems to work for them because they have established a date night once a week and that way they get time together without their kids.

                If I could do a separate study, I would want to know if the length of marriage before having children has any affect on what happens to most couples after having children, meaning if the couple has a more established relationship, is it easier for them to get the hang of balancing being the parent and being a partner/lover. I would also want to know if any of the disagreements mentioned in the article, (the mother doing more of the house work and child work than expected) change if the father is the stay at home parent and the mother is the one who has a full time job, or if there is not a difference.