Marriage or kids #1 priority?

[LDSmomma]

I was recently advised by two relatives that marriage should be the #1 priority and kids #2.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  I understand the thinking that the kids need a strong marriage, and it should be important.  I guess I don't understand what types of actions/activities keep marriage above the children in our priority list. And how does this fit in with attachment parenting?

[krisnic]

My husband and I feel very strongly that our child is our priority. Our marriage is important, but he is more so.

[LDSmomma]

How does a family who keeps their marriage #1 differ from mine?  I just don't understand, since it seems obvious to me that the needs of my living breathing children should outweigh the needs of my marriage, particularly since the needs of my children are very time sensitive, whereas if something comes up, and DH & I can't do something we planned to, we can just do it later, or the next day.

We work hard at getting DS to bed at a reasonable hour so we can have time together without him after he's in bed (though he usually wakes up only an hour later to come to our bed).  

What else is there that we're not doing?  Not that we'll necessarily do it, but I just don't understand what else there is.

[prone_to_wander]

Why does it have to be, one is more important than the other? Humans are complex beings with the ability to hold different priorities at different times. Love your husband, make sure you are showing it. Love your kid, make sure you're showing it. Love yourself, make sure you have time for this.
We all have the ability to love and care for multiple people at the same time.

[Peony]

Our children come first. I'm sure when we no longer have small children, our lives won't be so wrapped around children every single second but for now, their needs are more important then ours. 

I've known couples who were big on marriage being #1 and children #2. Most of them had a set weekly date night with a sitter always booked. One couple did that and then had a set time a day where children either were sent outside, to bed, or to the TV so the parents got their quality time in. I'm not talking about "adult" time, but they would chat about their day, give each other foot massages. Children were not to bother them. There was no, children need us tonight, we'll just catch up tomorrow night, they always got their time regardless of what was going on with kids. In every family I've known like this, sitters were always heavily used. Which I'm not bashing, I've got several sitters myself, I just never seem to use them to get away with Dh.

Eh, that is so not my life and I'm fine with it. DH gets limited time with kids as it is, I can't imagine taking one night a week and not being home with them every single week. Other couples/families, look at us and can't imagine not getting away frequently. It is just a different mind set then what I am in now. 

[transylvania_mom]

At this point in our life, kids are #1 priority. Dh and I work opposite shifts so we can stay at home with dd. This means we see each other 10 min/day when I get back from work and he leaves. Weekends are busy with ds's activities, and sometimes dh has to work. And co-sleeping means we don't have the bed for ourselves.

But this is a short time in our lives that we dedicate to our kids. We plan to move dd to her bedroom in a year or so. Now that she doesn't nurse that much we plan to take a trip just the two of us for our 10th anniversary. In a couple of years after dd weans we plan to send them spend their summer vacation with their grandparents.

[tinuviel_k]

What is more important, marriage or children...I can't separate our lives into compartments like that. There needs to be a balance: time for my husband and I to connect together alone, time for solo alone time (especially important for me), time for the whole family to be together, and time for one-on-one attention with my child. Sometimes the needs of one person come first.

When our child is ill or sad then time as a couple or as individuals needs to be put on hold to take care of her, no question. If our little one is up with a cough all night long we are never going to ignore her, even if we had special couple plans that night. If she had a horrible day at school and needs us we will cancel a long-awaited babysitter night. When our little girl was an infant both my husband and I had to make personal sacrifices to take care of her needs. We did our best to nurture our relationship as best we could. If our daughter acutely needs us then, as a dependent child, she comes first.
We parented in a way that could be considered darned inconvenient for us as a couple. We had a family bed until our daughter was six (her choice to have her own room), we practiced extended breastfeeding, we did a lot of baby-wearing, never ever practiced CIO. Quite a lot of people would claim that we were putting the baby before our relationship, but it never felt that way to us.
BUT...
We do not make our child the 100% focus of our relationship and of our lives. When my husband and I need time to connect then our daughter has a fun time with a sitter, a friend, or can watch a movie, and I have absolutely no guilty feelings over it. Sometimes our daughter might feel a little left out (very, very seldom). Other times she is overjoyed to spend an evening at the Children's Museum for Parents Night Out, watch a special movie, spend the night at her grandparent's house, or whatever. Regardless, my husband and I need that time together, and when the opportunity to take it comes we dive in without guilt.

If I feel like I am going out of my mind with exhaustion or stress then maybe I need to take time for myself. After all, if I don't practice good self-care and take care of my own needs then what kind of example am I setting for my children? There are times when I need to put my own needs ahead of my husband's or child's. It is temporary, and if the timing isn't right for me to do so then I put my needs aside and help my family. But there are times when I need to say "enough" and do what is right for my own health. That might mean saying "no" to intimacy time with my husband, or separating myself completely from my child for an afternoon. I try not to "put myself first" too often, but sometimes it needs to happen. I don't feel bad when I need that time, nor do I expect my husband to feel bad if he needs to take some time for himself.

Overall I think our family has a wonderful balance where all of us get what we need to have happy, fulfilled lives. Yes, I'd like to dance three days a week, my husband would love to mountain bike a lot more, and Denali would adore going out to eat as a family four times a week. It doesn't happen, of course. We don't all of us get everything we might want or need, but we do a darn good job taking care of each other and loving one another.

[meemee]

for me a blanket statement that children are no. 1 priority is also not a healthy situation. 

it all depends on situations. esp. in my case since marriage was on the rocks when dd was born. 

its a moment by moment thing. sometimes it was important then dh be no. 1, sometimes dd. depends on the need of the hour and yes i have put then dh before dd when i assessed his needs were greater than dd's at that moment.

as others said - balance is key. 

[LynnS6]

Relationships take tending. That's true whether it's your relationship with your children or your relationship with your spouse. When your kids are little, they need a lot of time. So you need to be very mindful about your relationship with your spouse/partner.

I also think it's important to model for your children what a healthy relationship looks like -- how do you foster your relationship with your partner? How do you teach your child that while they are important, but not the center of the universe?

I know that for me, if my relationship with my husband were to fall apart, I would not be as good a parent. Dh and I have a partnership -- it's never 'equal' -- at different times each of us need to take on more/less depending on a lot of factors. But we work together. It's important that we have a good relationship so that we can do that for our children.

[milkybean]

I have a hard time separating it out, but then, DH and I got married *in order to have children*.  And we got a wedding-night baby.  We had a week after the wedding but before our cruise, and by the time we got on that ship DH could tell that I was not "alone"...and about 3 days into the cruise, so could I. 

At my baby shower, a friend got "the baby" a little romper with cruise ships on it, and addressed the package to "the stowaway".  :)  He's been with us from the very beginning, almost as soon as we got married, there is NO separating our marriage from our being parents. 

We had our first date last week, the day DH got home from an overseas work trip, which was also DS's birthday and was also his first BIG rehearsal for his dance recital...I wasn't volunteering, and it was a closed rehearsal, so DH and I went off to have a Guinness.  It was lovely!  And then when we went to pick up DS again, that was lovely too.

The people that I know, in person, in real life, who talk about the marriage first stuff, just seem to want excuses to go pretend like they don't have kids on a regular basis.  Those are the people I know, and I can't generalize it out to other people, but those are the ones that say it in MY life...

[choli]

Originally Posted by milkybean 

The people that I know, in person, in real life, who talk about the marriage first stuff, just seem to want excuses to go pretend like they don't have kids on a regular basis.  Those are the people I know, and I can't generalize it out to other people, but those are the ones that say it in MY life...

The people I know who talk about marriage first want a firm family foundation for their kids and themselves, not to pretend they don't have kids on a regular basis. Finding time to interact with your partner as an person tends to strengthen a marriage, and a strong marriage is better for the kids than two burned out bitter parents.

[katelove]

I find it really hard to put those two things in order. Both seem equally important. And it's really hard to separate them because I feel so strongly that the best situation for J to be in involves her father and I being happy together.

. 

I think though, that if some aspect of our parenting was putting a big strain on the relationship then we would need to evaluate that very carefully. For example, if it came down to a choice, I would put our marriage before co-sleeping. Now I love co-sleeping and I think J benefits enormously from it. But, if I had to choose between us staying together and co-sleeping then I think her parents staying married would benefit her more. But then, I guess that is still putting her first because she will benefit from happy, together parents.

[cappuccinosmom]

I don't really agree with making a hierarchy of importance with family relationships like that.

Neither marriage or children are "#1".  They are two different relationships, with two different sets of needs to be met.  Our marriage is very, very important to us.  We behave in ways that built that up, rather than tearing it down.  We care for and love each other.  We work out differences.

Our children are very, very important to us.  We care for them and love them.  We usually meet their needs first, as their needs are more immediate and they can't always meet their own needs.

Sometimes, I will have to ask dh to "Hold that thought, B needs potty help."  Other times, I will tell the children "You need to go find something to do and stop interrupting, Baba and I are having a conversation."

We co-slept and I breastfed, but I never allowed that to come dh and me physically.  I didn't feel the need to force the kids to wean or sttn just so dh could "have his wife back". He has his wife all the time--I didn't stop being his wife when the kids came.

Generally when I hear "put the marriage first" it's in the context of having lots of date nights and going away regularly without the children, stuff like that.  It just isn't us.  We don't do that stuff, but that doesn't mean we don't prioritize our marriage.

[aparent]

   Perhaps it's like what happens when you're travelling

by plane. When the oxygen bags drop, say the attendants,

put your's in place first over your mouth before placing one

over your child's face. I used to plan to ignore that advice

and tend to the children first but now see it as putting the

thing on me is taking care of the children first. They cannot

manage to place the oxygen masks without me being in good

shape.

   There's another thread about research that found that

divorce during a child's young life predicts the children will

die 5 years earlier that children in intact families. Perhaps

attending to the marriage is, like other posters mentioned, 

intimately interwoven with taking care of the children.

[Tigerchild]

Depends on the stages of the kids.  My kids are 9, 8, and 8.  As you might be able to discern, that meant the early years of parenting were INTENSE.  A few years ago, once they were all "school age" I started weaning myself off of being more kid focused, and became more marriage (well, and ME) focused.  It was not an easy transition.  Your partner, most of the time, is not going to absolutely adore you like a kid, figuring out what makes them happy/pleases them is more complicated and can be more hard than a kid too.  So I'm glad I started early.  Now I'd say home life is pretty balanced--but it took time to get there.  At least for me.

From this point on, I am parenting to launch confident, competetant young adults from my home into the world.  While I am marriaging in order to stay connected and interdependent with my life partner.  It doesn't really work much as a hierarchy;  but it is nice to have the space to devote to each other finally, and not have to solely focus on young children.  Most of the people I've heard state the priorities in the OP are old(er) people--makes sense as that was the last stage they entered into/the stage they're in.  And sadly there ARE many families that break up because partners lose touch with each other and/or don't make the effort to stay connected.  It can be so easy to use that an excuse in the early years (when it's valid) but if you get stuck in that rut then I don't think that's a good thing for anyone.

[Smithie]

The kids, while they are growing up, are our first priority. 

... and for us, that translates into a lot of work on having a solid relationship, because keeping our marriage strong and our household intact and happy is a commitment that we made TO THE KIDS. I don't think we would break up if we were childless, and I don't think we WILL break up after the kids are grown, but right now, dissolving the marriage isn't even on the table as an option. We married a coupIe of years before having kids and made all the standard vows, but once I was pregnant with my first, we both felt that things had been kicked up a notch in the Unbreakable Oath department. It's not that our commitment wasn't real before - but making a commitment to a little tiny helpless person to give them a happy childhood in a home with a happy Mom and Dad is, IMHO, taking marriage to the next level. 

[les_oiseau]

I see the point they made although when I first heard that opinion I was shocked. And honestly when I heard it my marriage was going through a hard time too, so even more so did I think it was off base. But put a lot of thought and practice into it, and I still don't know what the technical details of what it entails are... but my understanding is that it's more like I am a wife #1 and a parent #2. It's not so much about prioritizing the people in my life, but prioritizing my role.

Like when my dh and I were having trouble my natural instinct was to throw all my energies into the kids, since my dh was going down this path of wondering how much he needed to do for himself vs how much he needed to be there for the family, really questioning his role and how much he should put into it. And the short answer is that he wasn't putting enough into the family, and it was hurting us all (not physically or anything) but we were really feeling the need for him to be there. So when I took my extra energies away from the kids and put it into my marriage it turned the situation around. Took a few months but it did.

Likewise when dad is meeting mom's needs, she is happier, more confident about herself, and it's easier to do the same things at home over and over and over. It makes a better environment for the kids. When mom meets dad's needs he is more patient, more affectionate toward mom and kids, stress of work gets to him less. Makes a better environment for the kids.

My dh also grew up with divorced parents, and so his dad was aaallll about everything my dh wanted, gave him all his attention, etc. And in the earlier years of our dating (I can say this because we've both grown and matured) my dh's attitude changed when we were around his dad. He acted like a spoiled brat who didn't have to take responsibility for anything. Not to say that is what happens when parents make kids #1, but it is definitely an example of one of the more extreme cases.

How this affects how someone AP's.... I think that's up to the way the parents choose to go about it. I think it the will is there, there will also be a way found to pull it off. But for us, when my ds was a year and I was pregnant, we had to move him to his own bed. Not in a mean way, and he still sneaks into our bed sometimes.... but overall having him in our bed all the time did not work for us. Other than that though, I can't think of anything elseAP that would be made difficult.

hth

Also just want to say that ultimately it's what makes the parent's comfortable with their choices and what they are able to do/what they feel they should do that makes the family run the best. You are doing the best thing right now for your family. If you get the conviction to change anything, then that will be the best thing, but don't let anyone make you feel inadequate in filling your role, or like you're doing anything wrong.

[les_oiseau]

and also agree that with the perspective of wife #1 and mom #2, it's still a matter of what is the need of the moment/ day/ week/ etc. When my kids were babies there were a lot of things we gave up as marriage partners to meet the needs of our kids

[Hannah32]

I agree with this post. 

Originally Posted by LynnS6 

Relationships take tending. That's true whether it's your relationship with your children or your relationship with your spouse. When your kids are little, they need a lot of time. So you need to be very mindful about your relationship with your spouse/partner.

I also think it's important to model for your children what a healthy relationship looks like -- how do you foster your relationship with your partner? How do you teach your child that while they are important, but not the center of the universe?

I know that for me, if my relationship with my husband were to fall apart, I would not be as good a parent. Dh and I have a partnership -- it's never 'equal' -- at different times each of us need to take on more/less depending on a lot of factors. But we work together. It's important that we have a good relationship so that we can do that for our children.

[A&A]

I don't think it has to be either/or.  I think it can be both.