NEW!
Will You And Your Partner Get Along After The Baby Arrives?
How will things go after the baby comes? Will your child’s
other parent do things the way you think they should be done? Or will your new
parenting roles divide your family, as you and your partner argue over the
right way to raise your child?
A new
study set out to get an advance look at how parents will work together - or not – following the birth of a
baby. Researchers got that look by
videotaping parents as they interacted with a doll a few weeks ahead of their
real baby’s birth.
You read that right: a doll.
Researchers visited 182 couples at home during the third
trimester of pregnancy with a first child. They brought with them a doll made
from a newborn-sized footed sleeper stuffed with 7 to 8 pounds of uncooked rice
and topped by a head made of green fabric. As you can imagine, this doll was as
heavy and as floppy as a real newborn but looked nothing at all like the expectant
parents themselves!
Researchers then videotaped the parents-to-be as they interacted
with this pretend baby, first individually, then together, and then as the
parents discussed the interaction experience. Nine months later, after the real
babies were born, the researchers again visited the families and videotaped
parents as they interacted with their children.
Parents differed in their levels of support of each other
during the pretend-baby interactions, including how well parents cooperated
with each other, how playful parents were, the levels of warmth each parent
expressed, and how much each parent seemed to use intuitive parenting
behaviors. But the key finding was that the ways parents behaved with the
pretend baby pretty much predicted how they would behave nine months later,
after their real baby was born. Things don’t change after the baby is born.
Parents continue to be the people they were before and to interact with their
partners in the same ways.Lead author
Lauren Altenburger said,"Some of the couples were
very positive, saying nice things to each other about their parenting. With the
doll they might say 'You're going to be such a great dad.' After the birth of
the baby, their talk would be very similar: 'You're such a natural.'" But
others, with both the doll and the baby, were not so kind to their partner. They said
things like "You're not going to hold the real baby like that, are
you?" They were critical of each other, she said.
So this is pretty interesting. I, for one, can’t wait to
stuff a sleeper with rice and see how much it seems like an infant. But - without getting out the baby dolls - what
does this study mean for you?
- Your partner is who he or she is and will continue to be the same person even after your children are born. While becoming a parent is certainly a life-changing experience, parents’ personalities don’t change and you shouldn’t expect that to happen, for you or for your partner.
- If you tend to be critical of others or overly perfectionistic – if you like everything to be done exactly your way – then now is the time to work on lightening up. Now, before the baby arrives. A new baby brings out the protective streak in most adults but you don’t want to alienate your child’s other parent by insisting that your way is always the best.
- Notice the excellent qualities in your baby’s other parent and celebrate those. What is your partner bringing to the parenting experience and how do you complement each other? Parenting isn’t a competition and goodness knows every parent needs someone else to collaborate with. Creating a happy family really requires partnership.
It’s a commonplace thought that we parent our children the
same way our parents raised us. This might be true, and if it is, it supports
the idea that how we might pretend to
be parents carries over into our real life actions as moms and dads. It means
our parenting instincts run deeper than the latest parenting advice books. But
what really matters – what has always mattered – is that parents get along and
respect and support each other.
Now, before your baby arrives or now even after your
children are around, is the time to do just that.
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