The impact of children in marriage

At the other extreme a young couple for various reasons may delay parenthood for an unduly long period, and become so well adapted to each other and to a childless marriage that they either give up the idea of parenthood altogether, or find the child or children a hindrance to their previously settled life. This delay or denial of motherhood, either by her own desire or still more by some kind of pressure from her husband, may have quite considerable effects on the wife’s emotional attitudes, in ways not obviously connected with the particular frustration. Many doctors have seen a nervous, irritable, restless wife come to a dramatic recovery with the arrival of her own or even an adopted child, even when she was not at all happy about an unexpected pregnancy.

Disagreements about the question of adoption when desires for children of their own have been unfulfilled sometimes appear to be quite a large element in a marital disorder, especially when the wife has a strong maternal instinct and the husband a rooted objection to adoption. The parents of each partner may well have their strong opinions and have no hesitation in expressing them. Counseling which seeks to find any deep underlying factors in such attitudes may help them to find a way through the situation which does no great violence to any of the personal feelings concerned. Many people have vague or distorted ideas about adoption and open discussion in the accepting atmosphere of counseling will often bring more sense of realism to the situation. Husbands don’t always realize the depth of the frustration of the maternal instinct in their wives in such cases. In any case of apparent infertility it is of course understood that the partners will have been referred for special medical investigation of the situation.

A common element in marital disorder is the effect on the husband of the arrival of the first or any other child with the consequent change in the balance of the family. There may be deep unconscious vulnerabilities in the husband which are suddenly brought to the surface when a child arrives, and their manifestations appear quite irrational until the deeper elements are realized. The well known situation of the husband who finds mothering in a “maternally minded” wife and feels rejected and jealous when she becomes involved with more natural objects for mothering was described at the beginning of this book. A deeper vulnerability which may occur in a husband is that which stems from his childhood jealousy of a little brother or sister which was punished or belittled by his parents and therefore repressed. In such cases he may have quite “unreasonable” hostility to his new baby, and deep jealousy of any attention his wife gives to perfectly natural mothering of the child. This will be helped greatly when it is brought out in the counseling.

Another kind of conflict affecting the mutual task of parenthood is in the general type of care and discipline of children. This of course is best worked out between the partners either during the engagement period or at least before the arrival of their children, but many couples fail to do this adequately and find themselves in quite serious quarrels about the handling of children. Here again many attitudes of husband and wife come less from “reason” than from deep habitual attitudes which have “carried over” from their own childhood. In counseling their differing rationalizations may well give place to more compatible realistic ideas when each of them is given the chance to relate present feelings to the background experience. Sometimes a referral to a child guidance clinic may be helpful.

Keywords: Marriage, Marriage Counseling, Marital Relationship, Marital Disorder, Marital Conflict