Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I had twins eight months ago, and because daycare is so expensive and scant in our area, we mutually decided that I would quit my job and switch to freelance remote work on evenings and weekends. I feel lucky that we had this option and would do it again, but being a stay-at-home mom has taken a steep toll on my mental health. I love my babies, but being the primary caretaker and working freelance on top of that has been extremely isolating.
I’ve been trying to take steps to improve my mood, and one thing I’ve done is make an effort to make more friends who have kids or else who don’t mind if my babies tag along when we get together. I get coffee, go to the park, have playdates, or take walks with friends at least two or three times a week, and it’s been huge for my mental health. Everything I do is during the day when my husband’s at work, so he’s not missing out on time with his daughters. But he hates these outings. He makes snide comments about them, and if something minor goes wrong (like forgetting a bottle at a friend’s house) it’s always because “you have to go out all the time.” I can’t get a straight answer about why this bothers him so much, other than statistics about car accidents and cold and flu season. I worry about those things too, but I don’t feel like our kids will be better off if they’re kept at home all the time. Do you have any suggestions for new ways to approach this conversation?
—Not a Homebody
Dear Not a Homebody,
The “new ways” to approach this conversation are to tell him calmly that 1) if he expects you to stay at home with two 8-month-olds all day every day, he is sorely mistaken, 2) you will lose your mind if you’re not allowed to venture out and see friends, and 3) he doesn’t get to decide or even have an opinion about how you spend your time. The statistics about car accidents and flu season raise some alarm bells for me, though, on whether he might have untreated anxiety that has resulted in his conviction that leaving the house will result in illness, accidents, or death. Some new parenting anxiety is inevitable, but if he insists that the right way to take good care of babies is to keep them indoors and isolate them, avoiding contact with anyone and anything, then you might encourage him to seek out professional mental health help.
Meanwhile: Good for you, finding ways to balance stay-at-home parenting, paid work whenever you’re not taking care of two kids, and tending to your own needs. This isn’t easy! And if he thinks he would be healthy and happy staying at home and never seeing anyone but his two children for months (and eventually years?) on end, I would tell him he’s bluffing. He has no idea.
Or maybe he doesn’t think this. Maybe he assumes that it’s fine for you because you’re the mother—that no one would expect this of him. In which case you have unearthed—or your twins’ births have unearthed—the ugly misogynistic heart that had disguised itself as a mutual decision about your staying home with them while he left home every day for work.
I can only hope for your sake—and for your daughters’ sakes—that this is a temporary aberration, that he’s struggling with something that has nothing to do with you, and that he soon figures out a way to resolve this or ask for help. Because if this is a matter of his showing his true colors—and he really believes he is the boss of you, and that he is within his rights to make snide remarks and do what he can to undermine, belittle, and try to shame you (not to mention dismissing what you need)—then this marriage will not, and should not, be long for the world.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
Estrangement flows through my family like it’s inherited. My late mom was a single parent who cut off her parents. Her parents weren’t on speaking terms with their families either. Mental illness and abuse were involved, yes, but the family for generations has also included a lot of antisocial people, the kind of people who just hated everyone. I was in touch with my mom when she died, but it wasn’t easy. She was a difficult person, to put it mildly.
I’ve been in therapy and I’ll keep going to therapy. I make an effort to build long-term friendships. My husband’s family is close—and wonderful—and even when they annoy me, I’m grateful to have them in my life. But although my husband and I have both always wanted to have kids of our own, now that we’re trying, I’m struggling. I can’t stop thinking about how, if I have a child, either the kid or I will eventually do something that leads to an estrangement. As if that’s fated.
I’ve read the parenting books and done the therapy. I’ve spent lots of solo time babysitting my nieces and nephews. I spend plenty of time around family and friends who are parenting, and I try to watch and learn. My husband says we’ll be good parents and what I fear is bound to happen won’t happen. But I can’t shake this fear.
—Scared
Dear Scared,
I think that any prospective parent who doesn’t think about repeating the mistakes and patterns of their parents, who doesn’t worry that things may go awry even if they try their hardest to do everything “right,” is not taking seriously the gravity, responsibility, and hard work of parenting. It’s necessary to be aware of what happened in the past, to do what you can to understand it, and to be conscious of not repeating destructive patterns. This awareness doesn’t mean you won’t make any mistakes—or overcorrect your parents’ and grandparents’ mistakes in an effort to get it right. But your knowledge of the generational trauma in your family, and your conscious wish to do better—much better—than others have, is to me a sign that your husband is right: You will be good parents. Or good enough parents, a term coined by the pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (my all-time favorite parenting expert) 60+ years ago. “Good enough” doesn’t mean “not that great”; it means accepting imperfection, being aware that children benefit from certain, manageable kinds of “failure.”
I can’t wave a magic wand and get you to stop ruminating on your fear. But I can tell you with conviction that nothing about parenting is fated. That good enough parents make decisions every day and course-correct when they get one wrong. Good parents are loving, supportive, sensitive, responsive, engaged, empathetic, and available to their children—and aware that they may not be able to be all of these things all at once at all times. But because their love is unconditional, the times they “fail” in minor ways don’t matter. You may not have a model in your own family for unconditional love; that doesn’t mean you can’t be the model for your own children.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I’ve been married to my husband for a year. I have a 5-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. She doesn’t like my husband. She did when we first got married, but he’s become very controlling of her behavior. She’s sucked on her fingers her whole life (despite the efforts I’ve made in the past to stop her, and I’ve come to accept that she will not stop) and this bothers him so much, he nags her constantly about it, though it’s clear she hates it. If she slouches at the dinner table, he’ll pick her up and show her how to/make her sit up straight. If she spills something, he’s immediately on her about what she’s done wrong. I’ve told him to lay off her, and that she’ll like him more if he’s nicer to her. I’ve encouraged him to spend one-on-one time with her, and they do—but when they do, he gets frustrated that she doesn’t listen to him or won’t do exactly what he wants her to do.
She is generally a well-behaved child, and everyone who encounters her mentions that. That’s why I feel I can be more relaxed about all this—and if she does something naughty, I make sure she understands what she did was wrong, then explain to her why she should not do that in the future. She listens to me; she rarely repeats those same mistakes. But he’s not having it. Nothing changes in his behavior toward her. I know he’s new at being a dad, but how can I bring them closer to each other?
—Frustrated in Utah
Dear Frustrated,
You can’t (and I think you shouldn’t) bring them closer. His behavior toward her is unacceptable. You need to stop skirting around the subject by telling him to “lay off” her and framing his niceness as a way to buy her affection. Lay it out for him in clear terms: You don’t parent that way, and you will not accept him doing so either. You say he’s a new parent, so tell him how you’d respond in all of the scenarios mentioned in your letter (though I’m sure you’ve already modeled this for him plenty of times). Explain to him just how serious you are about him ceasing to treat your daughter this way—suggest therapy, parenting courses, or what have you, but he needs to know that continuing to behave way toward her is not an option.
If he will not stop it (or feels unable to stop it, because of his own past trauma—and he is unwilling to get help so that he can stop), your only recourse is to leave this marriage. You have a responsibility to protect your daughter, and his lifting her out of her chair and making her sit up straight—or berating her for spilling something—is very concerning. If you stay in this marriage and he continues to tyrannize her in these and other ways, you are sending her a couple of clear messages: 1) that she cannot rely on you to keep her safe, and 2) that her well-being is not your priority. His mistreatment could worsen as the years pass (I shudder to think of how he’ll respond to garden-variety teenage rebelliousness, her wearing clothes he doesn’t approve of, or having opinions that differ from his). Your daughter will suffer; it will affect her for the rest of her life.
She “doesn’t like him” because she is afraid of him. Right now, he wants her to be afraid of him. That’s why your pleas that he “be nicer” so that she’ll like him more are getting you nowhere. Will he and can he change? That’s what you need to find out. If he won’t, pack your bags.
Dear Care and Feeding,
Recently, my mother, who’s in her mid 60s, had a nasty fall, and is in the midst of an extended hospital stay. She’s normally an active, independent woman, and has definitely taken it hard. Whilst it will be a while before she’s home, she’s been offered multiple (free) community services to get the house tidied up and safe for her to come home to with the mobility equipment she’s going to need for her recovery. At this point, she’s refusing, saying that I, my brother, and our father can simply do it because she’d be “too embarrassed” to have someone in. Between visiting her, keeping things ticking over at home, work, etc., I’m already on the verge of a full-blown burnout. Any suggestions?
—Drowning in Grand Rapids
Dear Drowning,
As both an active, independent woman in her 60s who would also definitely take it hard if she were laid up, hospitalized, and contemplating a long recovery, and the daughter of an active, independent woman in her 90s who has recently been ill and unable to go about her business in the usual way, I feel I can speak with confidence.
Overrule her. Avail yourselves of that help—and tell her or don’t tell her. (I’d tell her. I’m not only a staunch believer in honesty at all times, but also a terrible liar because lying—or even keeping secrets—makes me anxious.) Just get done what has to be done, and do not take on anything else—you’ve got enough on your plate. I recently hired an aide for my mother over her objections. It wasn’t easy. But it was absolutely necessary.
If you decide to tell her, tell it to her straight. What she’s asking of you is unreasonable. Getting her home ready for her homecoming is a necessary step, and she’ll simply have to live with (or better yet get over) her embarrassment. Don’t ask her again. Just do it. (And I will keep this answer in mind when someday my own daughter has to overrule me.)
—Michelle
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