I love my husband more than I love my children (2004) | Hacker News Reader

I love my husband more than I love my children (2004)

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14 pointslighttower8 comments

Apparently this essay, published in 2005, "led to extensive and vitriolic debate" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayelet_Waldman#Motherlove). You can kind of see why, though I think probably mostly from the perspective that an awful lot of women perhaps don't feel the same way as she does - but I wonder how many divorces the fact of this simple statement has resulted in: "the wife's passion has been refocused".

Yeah, there was a time that this was not a controversial assertion at all.

The marriage must always be number one. That's not such a distinct thing from the welfare of the children, though; the lives of all family members are inextricable. Neither the husband nor the wife are going to be pleased and say the marriage is going fine when the prosperity of one or more of the children is in jeopardy.

"The children" and "the marriage" are not really separable. They are two fully blended parts of the same thing, "the family". Spouses and children are not competitors; they're collaborators. Any action on one part is going to spread out over the others.

There are many who say maintaining the marriage is more important than the kids. The kids are born into the marriage and then 20 years later (hopefully) are gone but the marriage must endure.

Having said this, my brother married a seemingly perfect partner. They played squash/tennis, went out on a Friday night date each week, played bridge with others, loved crosswords together, and still ended up divorced 10 years and 3 kids later. Sigh.

Did your brother and his ex-wife continue those things after having the kids? Or did it stop with the kids?

Yes, they were adamant that they needed their own time.

Wow and it still didn't work out, eh? I currently have a two year old and my wife and I have 0 time with just the two of us. I think we went on one "date" in the last two years so things have been real tough (and only one child).

Did any of them have a good explanation on what went wrong?

I mean, her husband is Michael Chabon. It's hard to to better than that.

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