children only mean no romance if you let them, but even so.
I am glad for those of you who are loving your children and all, but I'm still going to stick with dogs and sheep, who can't eat chocolate because then they would die.
I Love Them, I Love Him Not
By JUDITH WARNER
Published: February 14, 2005
Washington - YOUR young child shows up at your bedside five minutes before the alarm clock is set to ring. She climbs in. She is warm, her hair is silken, and she nestles perfectly into the curve of your torso.
You experience something like plenitude - until the alarm clock rings and your spouse's arm stretches out to shut it off and comes to rest upon the two of you. That arm is bristly and heavy, and feels, somehow, laden with demand. What demand the poor thing carries is not clear, but whatever it is, it feels like too much on this particular school morning when, after the usual rites of teeth brushing and sneakers and mittens are through, you've got to plan how, on this day of all days, you will most adequately express to your little loved ones just how deeply - and how festively and chocolate-drenchedly - you love them.
Happy Valentine's Day
The holiday of lovers has been transformed into something very different for many parents these days. That's little wonder: for many couples, love itself has been transformed by the passage into parenthood.
If you flip through the magazines aimed at moms this month, you'd be hard pressed to find much talk of romance, unless you count all the articles on modern marriage's lack of romance, which are legion: Working Mother pleads, "Make Time for Your Valentine." Good Housekeeping insists, "Men can be romantic." Child magazine offers tips on "Staying Lovers While Raising Kids." And Parents, acknowledging that marriage with children often feels "about as romantic as changing a dirty diaper," offers advice for getting "back in the groove," like establishing "no-sex nights." (Absence makes the heart grow fonder?)
In many marriages, erotic love has been supplanted by what The New Yorker once called "the eros of parenthood." Up to 20 percent of couples now report having sex no more than 10 times a year, qualifying them for what the experts call "sexless marriages." Many mothers freely admit to preferring their children's touch to their husband's, without regret or shame.
Where did our love go? Look no further than the adorable little girl on the cover of this month's Parents, clutching a huge, red-sequined heart in her chubby little hands. According to a recent report by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, children are a "growing impediment" to a happy marriage.
That's a sobering thought. And it raises an important question: Is our national romance with our children sucking the emotional life out of our marriages?
It may well be. After all, in an era when Parents magazine can suggest, in its love issue, a "Second Honeymoon with Kids" under the rubric "Fun Time," it's clear that something is very much askew. In many households, the distinctions between married life and family life have all but disappeared.
With the widespread acceptance of "attachment parenting" - family beds, long-term breast feeding and all the rest - the physical boundaries between parents and children have worn away. Marital romance has dried up. Real intimacy has gone the way of bottle-feeding and playpens. In fact, the whole ideal of marriage as a union of soul mates, friends and lovers that's as essential to a happy family life as, say, unconditional love for the children, has taken a direct hit. And in its place has come the reality of a utilitarian relationship dedicated to staying afloat financially and child-rearing of a sort we tend to associate with frontier marriages, arranged marriages, marriages of convenience - marriages far removed, in time and place, from our lives, our parents' lives and even our grandparents' lives.
Some would say that's not a bad thing. After all, hard work and commitment are much better indicators of marital stability than are passion and that fickle thing, romantic love. The divorce rate is slightly down, to about 50 percent from a high of 52 percent in the early 1980's. Virtually no one believes anymore that the potential "self-fulfillment" that might come from leaving a less-than-satisfying marriage could in any way outweigh the harm that divorce does to children. Indeed, for many couples these days, staying married is not so much the definitive sign of their love for each other but the ultimate expression of their love for their children.
But does this virtuous child-centeredness equal family happiness? Apparently not. For although the divorce rate has gone down, the percentage of couples saying they're in less-than-happy marriages has gone up. According to the National Marriage Project, fewer children are growing up with happily married parents today than a generation ago. From 1973 to 1976, 51 percent of children under the age of 18 were living in a household in which the parents' marriage was rated as "very happy," the study found. From 1997 to 2002, only 37 percent were so fortunate.
Some of that, of course, reflects the declining number of children living in married households. But, according to the National Marriage Project's co-director, David Popenoe, a professor of sociology at Rutgers, there's another reason. Married couples today, he writes, report "significantly more work-related stress, more marital conflict and less marital interaction" than did those 20 or 30 years ago.
This gets to the crux of the problem: the culture of parenthood today is one in which marriages must fight to flourish. This is not because women naturally love their children more than their husbands. Nor is it because motherhood is naturally so exhausting and the world of work necessarily so draining that it's all but impossible for husbands and wives to find each other at the end of the day. It's because the roles we're playing - Supermom and Superdad - are love-killers.
So, this Valentine's Day, resist the temptation to download the directions for a cockscomb Valentine wreath. Throw out the glue gun and don't even think of trying to hand-stitch hearts on construction paper. Hire a sitter. Leave work early and go out on a date with your grown-up Valentine.
Do it for the kids.
Judith Warner is the author, most recently, of "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety."
I Love Them, I Love Him Not
By JUDITH WARNER
Published: February 14, 2005
Washington - YOUR young child shows up at your bedside five minutes before the alarm clock is set to ring. She climbs in. She is warm, her hair is silken, and she nestles perfectly into the curve of your torso.
You experience something like plenitude - until the alarm clock rings and your spouse's arm stretches out to shut it off and comes to rest upon the two of you. That arm is bristly and heavy, and feels, somehow, laden with demand. What demand the poor thing carries is not clear, but whatever it is, it feels like too much on this particular school morning when, after the usual rites of teeth brushing and sneakers and mittens are through, you've got to plan how, on this day of all days, you will most adequately express to your little loved ones just how deeply - and how festively and chocolate-drenchedly - you love them.
Happy Valentine's Day
The holiday of lovers has been transformed into something very different for many parents these days. That's little wonder: for many couples, love itself has been transformed by the passage into parenthood.
If you flip through the magazines aimed at moms this month, you'd be hard pressed to find much talk of romance, unless you count all the articles on modern marriage's lack of romance, which are legion: Working Mother pleads, "Make Time for Your Valentine." Good Housekeeping insists, "Men can be romantic." Child magazine offers tips on "Staying Lovers While Raising Kids." And Parents, acknowledging that marriage with children often feels "about as romantic as changing a dirty diaper," offers advice for getting "back in the groove," like establishing "no-sex nights." (Absence makes the heart grow fonder?)
In many marriages, erotic love has been supplanted by what The New Yorker once called "the eros of parenthood." Up to 20 percent of couples now report having sex no more than 10 times a year, qualifying them for what the experts call "sexless marriages." Many mothers freely admit to preferring their children's touch to their husband's, without regret or shame.
Where did our love go? Look no further than the adorable little girl on the cover of this month's Parents, clutching a huge, red-sequined heart in her chubby little hands. According to a recent report by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, children are a "growing impediment" to a happy marriage.
That's a sobering thought. And it raises an important question: Is our national romance with our children sucking the emotional life out of our marriages?
It may well be. After all, in an era when Parents magazine can suggest, in its love issue, a "Second Honeymoon with Kids" under the rubric "Fun Time," it's clear that something is very much askew. In many households, the distinctions between married life and family life have all but disappeared.
With the widespread acceptance of "attachment parenting" - family beds, long-term breast feeding and all the rest - the physical boundaries between parents and children have worn away. Marital romance has dried up. Real intimacy has gone the way of bottle-feeding and playpens. In fact, the whole ideal of marriage as a union of soul mates, friends and lovers that's as essential to a happy family life as, say, unconditional love for the children, has taken a direct hit. And in its place has come the reality of a utilitarian relationship dedicated to staying afloat financially and child-rearing of a sort we tend to associate with frontier marriages, arranged marriages, marriages of convenience - marriages far removed, in time and place, from our lives, our parents' lives and even our grandparents' lives.
Some would say that's not a bad thing. After all, hard work and commitment are much better indicators of marital stability than are passion and that fickle thing, romantic love. The divorce rate is slightly down, to about 50 percent from a high of 52 percent in the early 1980's. Virtually no one believes anymore that the potential "self-fulfillment" that might come from leaving a less-than-satisfying marriage could in any way outweigh the harm that divorce does to children. Indeed, for many couples these days, staying married is not so much the definitive sign of their love for each other but the ultimate expression of their love for their children.
But does this virtuous child-centeredness equal family happiness? Apparently not. For although the divorce rate has gone down, the percentage of couples saying they're in less-than-happy marriages has gone up. According to the National Marriage Project, fewer children are growing up with happily married parents today than a generation ago. From 1973 to 1976, 51 percent of children under the age of 18 were living in a household in which the parents' marriage was rated as "very happy," the study found. From 1997 to 2002, only 37 percent were so fortunate.
Some of that, of course, reflects the declining number of children living in married households. But, according to the National Marriage Project's co-director, David Popenoe, a professor of sociology at Rutgers, there's another reason. Married couples today, he writes, report "significantly more work-related stress, more marital conflict and less marital interaction" than did those 20 or 30 years ago.
This gets to the crux of the problem: the culture of parenthood today is one in which marriages must fight to flourish. This is not because women naturally love their children more than their husbands. Nor is it because motherhood is naturally so exhausting and the world of work necessarily so draining that it's all but impossible for husbands and wives to find each other at the end of the day. It's because the roles we're playing - Supermom and Superdad - are love-killers.
So, this Valentine's Day, resist the temptation to download the directions for a cockscomb Valentine wreath. Throw out the glue gun and don't even think of trying to hand-stitch hearts on construction paper. Hire a sitter. Leave work early and go out on a date with your grown-up Valentine.
Do it for the kids.
Judith Warner is the author, most recently, of "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety."