And by marriage, I mean common-law relationship. Minor technicalities aside, we have what many paper marriages have. A partnership built on love, trust, respect, kindness, commitment, and family.
Don't be all shocked and surprised by my little revelation either! A staggering amount of parents with newborns, babies and toddlers, especially when they duplicate one right after other, go through hard times during the first years. Those complex, tender, wild, sleepless, greedy, draining, magnificent 1st years of parenting and being a couple as parents.
Modern parenthood and the roles of mothers and fathers both at home and in the workplace have changed drastically in the last half-century. While roles may be increasingly "reversed," a report from the Pew Research Center recently revealed that,
56% of working moms and 50% of working dads say they find it very or somewhat difficult to balance the responsibilities of juggling work, family and all of the responsibilities that fall in between. Parents are stressed out, which I suppose isn't a big newsflash or all that unique to this generation of parents.
To know that there are in fact other parents, other lovers, other marriages out there that flail and struggle should always be a part of what we're selling to each other about marriage during the early years of parenting.
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