A new baby can make a huge difference to a marriage but it doesn’t have to. Much depends on the new mother and her attitudes and those of her husband.
One of the things that struck me over Christmas was watching parents, who had their tiny babies at the huge carols services in the Domain in Sydney and the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne. Those little babies were about among the crowd and the noise and color, yet so many of them were asleep in their parents’ arms.
Contrast this with the new mother who is so obsessed she will hardly leave the house. The baby does not go to anyone else because she will not let go of the child. Her husband is like a poor relation that barely gets the time of day because she is obsessed with the child.
The situation is so drastic that the few people she does have contact with, like a close friend and a family member have tried to talk other about it and make her see that what she is doing is not good for her marriage. The whole thing is destroying her marriage and she doesn’t seem to care. The only thing that matters is the baby. She doesn’t recognize that it’s not good for the baby to be so much the focus of attention or so reliant on only Mom.
We spent time with our son and his family over Christmas and how different that was to the woman mentioned above. Their baby is part of the family, not the focus of it. She happily goes to others and when it was time for her to sleep she went off to her room to sleep regardless of the laughter and noise happening from the rest of the family.
There was no tiptoeing round the house and trying to keep people quiet, mainly because she is used to people and used to existing among noise and family activities. To my mind that is the way it should be and the way we raised our children and the way our son and his wife have raised their other children.
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A Baby Will Affect Your Marriage