Getting Along with Your Co-Parent: Agree to Disagree?

Family Friday

"Wow, I'm having much more fun with your stepmom than I ever did with your mother!"  gushed a friend's dad recently.  Understandably, my friend bristled at this comment, especially given that her mom passed away about fifteen years ago.  When she'd cooled off, however, she admitted that his comment, though insensitive to her feelings, was likely true - but not due to any character defect of her late mother's.  Rather, the two marriages evolved in different situational contexts. 

After all, she wondered, what would her dad and stepmom ever fight about?  They didn't raise children together, and their respective offspring flew the coop long ago.  They're financially secure, and they have plenty of free time to spend pursuing their common interests and hobbies.  When differences arise, they can easily agree to disagree. 

And that's the key right there: "agreeing to disagree" becomes exponentially more difficult when you're raising children together.  Remember the Snow Queen's broken mirror (from the Hans Christian Andersen story)?  If a speck fell in your eye, other people's flaws got magnified so that they were not only larger, but uglier.  Similarly, when couples transition to parenthood, preexisting differences that seemed trivial before often appear much less benign. 

Is your spouse a slob?  Does he use poor grammar?  Does she have quirky political views?  Before Kids: no big deal, perhaps even kind of cute.  After Kids: verging on intolerable.  Why this change?  Because the stakes are so much higher. 

Because we care so deeply for our children, it's natural that we parents want to do things right.   Nothing wrong with that in the abstract, but who can define "doing things right"?  With uncertainty comes anxiety, which in turn leads to increasing affinity for the familiar.   Customs and habits from your family of origin may appear much more attractive than they ever did before.  For instance, earlier in your relationship, you may have told your spouse that religion wasn't very important to you - and meant this wholeheartedly.  But after having kids, you may suddenly feel they should attend Hebrew school, just as you did.  Your spouse may feel, equally strongly, that they should not - and may even feel misled.  

I'm a huge fan of premarital counseling (with or without a religious bent - your choice).  Years ago, my now-husband and I attended a weekend retreat for engaged couples.  We were given pointed questions to ask each other about all manner of topics, including division of household duties, career aspirations, parenting preferences, role of our parents and in-laws, and many more.  We wrote down our own answers, then we switched notebooks, read the other person's answers, and discussed.  In short, this process successfully digs up any possible skeletons lurking in your closet. 

We both remember overhearing such statements as "What?!?  You don't want to have children?!?" and "You've got to be kidding!  You don't want to stay home full-time with the kids?  Are you crazy?" Honestly, it seemed like some of these couples hardly knew each other.  More than one individual escaped the retreat in the dead of night, never to return. 

Premarital counseling, obviously, addresses the front end of the process, weeding out people who really shouldn't marry (or co-parent) in the first place.  However, assuming you are far past those early phases of your relationship, it will help to accept that feelings about parenting can and do change, and these changes do not necessarily indicate earlier deception.

My advice for the here-and-now: work hard on how you frame differences with your co-parent.  "Framing" is therapist-jargon for setting an appropriate context for interpreting behavior.  Just as a photo's aesthetic appeal interacts with the frame you select (the width, the color), people's behavior may seem positive, negative, or neutral depending on the context you choose.  For instance, one observer may interpret a given behavior from a child as "bossy" while another may view the exact same behavior as "showing leadership potential."  Much depends on the perceiver's notions about how children "should" act.   (Note: framing is not "spinning," in which you distort and twist the facts so much that they no longer resemble reality).   

So, if you automatically frame any of your co-parent's actions, beliefs or habits that differ from yours as "bad," you're headed for trouble.  In contrast, if you try to frame differences as beneficial and balancing to your children (your yin to his or her yang), your relationship will reap the benefits. 

When considering your child's overall safety, growth, and adjustment, most differences with your co-parent will indeed be trivial.  (Exception: let's say that your spouse loves hard drugs and counts some serious dealers among his or her best friends, and you do not.  This is a difference that matters, and framing it otherwise would be spin).  If you and your co-parent are struggling over which differences truly matter to you and which don't, a good therapist can help the two of you sort it out by lending some objectivity. 

Comments

[Lyn]

"More than one individual escaped the retreat in the dead of night, never to return."

Seriously???

[Jenny Vidas]

Yes, seriously. People disappeared, some individually and some in couples.