This part of the book is not on parenting, though I will share some tips for parents. This is not a treatise on marriage, though I will give some marriage pointers. Rather, it addresses the question “How do we keep our marriage alive now that the children have arrived?”

“Now What?” was born out of a conversation I recently had with a frustrated young father. He said, in a pained voice, “I’ve lost my wife.”

“What do you mean by that?” I inquired.

“I’ve lost my wife to the baby.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“We’ve been married for three years and started out with a really good relationship. We both wanted to have a baby and agreed it was time. But if I had known that the baby was going to destroy our marriage, I never would have agreed.”

“What do you mean by ‘destroy our marriage’?” I asked.

“We just don’t have a marriage anymore,” he said. “Her life is focused on the baby; my life is focused on the baby. It’s like the two of us do not exist anymore. It’s like we became parents and lost our marriage.”

“How about your sexual relationship?” I asked.

“It’s nonexistent. Maybe two or three times since the baby came.”

“How old is the baby?” I inquired.

“He turned two last week.”

“Have you talked to your wife about your feelings?” I asked.

“I’ve tried,” he said, “but it’s hard to talk with her. She says that I don’t understand how hard it is to rear a child and work. I told her she could quit work, but she says we can’t live on just my salary. I think we could . . . but there’s no need to argue with her. I know it sounds selfish, but I just wish I could have my wife back and it could be like it was before the baby came.”

I came away from that conversation knowing I had to write this section. I knew this problem was not an isolated phenomenon. I’ve heard similar stories many times during the last thirty years as I have counseled couples about their marriages. I knew also that this young man’s wife was as frustrated as he, that she too struggled with the pressures of being both a parent and a spouse. I believe that thousands of couples can identify with this young couple’s pain.

In another recent encounter, a young woman approached me with her Bible open. I could tell that she was serious. “When are you going to talk about how children affect a marriage?” she asked.

I had the idea that her question was simply a bridge to something far more personal, so I responded, “Why do you ask?”

“I’m confused,” she replied. “It says in the Bible—” she pointed to Psalm 127 “—that ‘Sons are a heritage from the LORD. . . . Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.’ It may be happy for the man,” she said, “but not for the woman. I thought having a baby would pull us together and we would both be happy. The exact opposite is true for us. Since the baby came, our marriage has fallen apart.”

I assured her that she was not alone in her frustration, that many couples acknowledge that the first eighteen months after the birth of a child is the most trying time they have ever experienced in their marriage. Mothers of small children often feel isolated and overwhelmed. They feel unwanted or unappreciated by their husbands. They often feel unattractive. “My husband doesn’t understand why I am so tired. He complains that I don’t bake cherry pies anymore. I’m up to my ears in diapers and vomit, and he’s complaining about cherry pies.”

Many fathers of young children feel taken for granted by their spouses, unappreciated, and unimportant. They feel that they are no longer number one; the baby has taken their place. They become resentful—not necessarily of the baby, but of the wife’s attention to the baby. “She never has time for me. It’s always the baby. Even when I ask her to go out, she’s afraid to leave the baby. When I want to rent a video, she says she doesn’t have the energy to watch it. I don’t know what else to do.”

Why is this marital pressure such a common experience? Because a whole new world of potential conflicts arise when a child enters a marriage.

A child means more work. Who does the work? Mom or Dad?

More work means more time. Whose time? Mom’s or Dad’s?

More work means more energy. Whose energy?

A child means more money. What money—the money that we previously set aside for restaurants and entertainment?

Research has shown that a mother feels the impact of a child upon the marriage most acutely in the first six months of a child’s life, when she is trying to adjust to the expanded demands on her time and energy, whereas the father recognizes the impact of the child upon the marriage most acutely during the time the child is six to eighteen months of age. During this time, the husband perceives his wife to be more critical, less supportive, and withdrawing from him sexually.48

And unfortunately, the impact of children upon a marriage does not end when the baby is eighteen months old. Jim and Evelyn were in my office seeking help for their fourteen-year-old daughter. After briefly discussing the problems they were having with her at school, they admitted that the main reason they had come to see me was that their marriage was in trouble. “It seems that when it comes to Julie, we disagree on almost everything. Our disagreements on how to rear her have brought us to the point of fighting all the time. Neither of us likes it, but we don’t know what to do. It seems we disagree every day on something related to Julie.”

I sometimes ask couples, “What was your marriage like before the children came?” I will receive answers like “Well, we were struggling, but we thought a baby would draw us together.” Don’t expect a baby to create a good marriage; that is not the responsibility of a child. Children do not create a good marriage, nor do they create problems in a marriage; they only reveal problems that were already there. A ten-year study by Carolyn and Philip Cowan revealed that “the most important piece of information to forecast how men and women will fare as parents is how they are doing before they begin their journey to parenthood.”49

The fact is, rearing children is a joint venture that requires communication, understanding, love, and willingness to compromise. Couples who have not developed these attitudes and skills before a baby arrives will not find them automatically emerging upon the arrival of the child.

Some couples have good marriages before the children come but five years later realize they have spent so much time being “good parents” that they have let their own relationship grow stale. This kind of staleness does not happen overnight, nor is it the result of open conflict. Rather, it is a slow erosion of intimacy caused by the lack of quality time, expressions of love, and communication. In these marriages, the road to restoration is fairly short because these couples basically have a good relationship that has diminished by default. When one spouse shares a concern with the other, the two of them will likely make a course correction, and their marriage will get back on track.

On the other hand, for couples who have developed unhealthy patterns of relating before the children came, the road to restoration will be much longer. The changes needed—effective conflict resolution, meaningful communication, tolerance of differences, looking for compromises rather than conquests, and expressions of love in a language one’s spouse will feel—require skills that take time to develop. I must add, however, it is never too late to begin. Any couple can learn these skills if they are motivated to do so.

You, too, may be seeking answers to the question, “How do we keep our marriage alive now that the children have arrived?” I believe there are answers to that question, and in part four I will seek to share them.

You can probably read this part, “Now What?” in less than two hours. And if you do, you will discover how to make time to read books and make time for your marriage. You will also learn how to take control of your finances so that you can accomplish what is of value to you in life. Most important, you will learn how to rekindle marital intimacy and keep it alive while at the same time being good parents. You will find that you are not the only couple who have walked this road. Others have learned how to maintain a healthy marriage while successfully rearing children. You can profit from their discoveries. At the end of each of the five chapters in this part, you will find practical suggestions on how to weave these ideas into the fabric of your own marriage.

I assure you that you can be happily married and be successful parents at the same time.