Looking Back at Your Previous Self Is Painful!
While preparing to deliver a webinar, I came across an article I wrote in 2009 when I was deep in throes of parenting. And just like with another retrospective I offered a few years ago about the parenting feedback loop, the scene in the rearview mirror is cringey.
Yet also somewhat affirming.
Sixteen years ago, several prominent mom bloggers (many now defunct) were ruminating over the question which is more difficult: being married or being a parent?
(This was before Facebook stole discourse on our own platforms and destroyed our quite robust comment sections, but I digress.)
Context to Translate 2009 to 2025
The landscape of writing on the internet was very different in those days. Let me explain what has happened to key “mommy bloggers” in the intervening years.
None of those cited in my original post are still writing in their spaces—which, in those days, were not named after ourselves but instead had clever monikers that were meaningful to the author (case in point, my own space). Sadly, Heather Armstrong of Dooce is no longer with us.
Even the host of the conversation, Momversation, is defunct, probably bought and discarded by a bigger media fish.
And only one of the 16 commenters on my original post is still writing in her space. Author Melissa Ford, aka Lollipop Goldstein, continues to write at Stirrup-Queens.com.
Fortunately, though, if you seek historical context, you can find it in the archives of this New York Times Motherlode column from the same era.
Anyone left from those heady days of blogging will enjoy this tour through our memories. If that’s not you, feel free to skip reading the January 2009 section farther down.
But if you are currently deep in the throes of parenting, you may wish to continue.
What Holds True in the Marriage vs Parenting Debate?
I concur with my original main point: parrenting is more difficult than marriage, for all the reasons I stated previously.
- Parenting was not super-duper-extra-special rewarding just because we had to work harder for it. If anything, adoptive parenting adds layers to regular parenting, which I didn’t know at the time because I’d bought into the idea that adoption was really no big deal.
- It is easier to navigate a peer relationship than a hierarchical relationship. This is why I am thoroughly enjoying my current stage of parenting—parenting young adults. My husband and I find it super-duper-extra-special rewarding rewarding.
- The frontal lobe is a beautiful thing. The conversations and disagreements we have these days with our adult children (we need a better term!) include mostly appropriate proportions of rationality and emotionality.
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This is not to say that marriage is always easy. Roger and I have been through rough times, but thanks to our peer relationship and the ability to be somewhat rational, these times have been less challenging compared with the hardest days of parenting.
And also? Roger cooks even more now than he did then.
So What is Cringeworthy?
"In theory, I should be the One In Control in my relationships with Tessa and Reed, right? I am Authority and they should, at all times, defer to my more seasoned judgment."
—Me, parenting a 7-year old and a 5-year old
So naïve, so wishful, so misguided. But some things you can’t really understand except through paying tuition many years at the School of Hard Parenting Knocks.
But I was spot on with this:
"Control is an illusion. Tessa and Reed just might have more of it than I do."
—Me, parenting a 7-year old and a 5-year old
Working Out the Illusion of Contol
Looking back, I can see these thoughts were sowing the seeds of the impetus for my podcast Adoption: The Long View. I have long been working out the illusion that once you become a grown up, and then a parent, you are now magically in control of yourself and even others. The little known secret is that you while have surely more complexity to manage once you become a parent, you must do wo without corresponding control over all that complexity.
To parent well, I have discovered, I had to be willing to face my own own control issues.
Following is the 2009 post and responses to it on marriage vs parenting. In the original comments, 56% said that parenting was more difficult, and only 13% said that marriage was. The rest called it a tie.
So what is your answer on the marriage vs parenting debate? I’d love to know your thoughts. I invite you to leave a comment after the original post (finally!).
January 2009 Post: Which is More Difficult?
This Momversation is a discussion about which is harder: being a mom or being a wife.
- Dooce, having experienced post-partum depression, says that marriage was much easier, and she shares many good reasons why. She votes for Motherhood as the more difficult.
- Finslippy says (among other things) that it’s easier to neglect marriage, making it the more difficult of the two.
- GirlsGoneChild, who experienced marriage and children in rapid fashion, also agrees that marriage is the more difficult.
Dooce got more than 700 comments on this and has shut them down. There are conversations going on at GirlsGoneChild and at Momversation, but I was wondering what my readers think about motherhood vs wifehood, either in the concrete (you are a parent) or in the abstract (you will one day be a parent, and you give your best guess as to which will be more difficult for you).
Motherhood vs Spousehood
Conventional wisdom might say that for Infertyls, motherhood will be incredibly rewarding after the long and tortuous route to get there. And that, consequently, achieving that hard-won dream would make parenting less difficult than marriage (especially a marriage that has been tested by infertility).
But my own experience did not fit into that mold. Regarding marriage, I know how to navigate a peer relationship, a (mostly) rational relationship of (mostly) equals.
I struggled then, and I still sometimes do, with the irrational relationship I have with purely emotional beings. As they become more rational, parenting them becomes easier for me.
And in theory, I should be the One In Control in my relationships with Tessa and Reed, right? I am Authority and they should, at all times, defer to my more seasoned judgment. (Don’t laugh. My parents expected this of me, and I have forgotten that I rarely gave it to them.)
Smack!
That’s reality hitting me upside the head on an almost-hourly basis. My kids DON’T stop fighting when I tell ask them to. They DON’T keep their dirty and clean clothes in different places. They DON’T accept my wisdom about not eating boogers as gospel.
Control is an illusion. Tessa and Reed just might have more of it than I do. It certainly seems like it at times.
These are some of the reasons why motherhood is, for me, more difficult than spousehood.
(Well, that and the fact that Roger cooks.)
So, for you, which is or will be harder — being a parent or being a spouse? Please share why you think so.
24 Responses
I find that, in retrospect, everything that came before motherhood was a breeze. If only I’d known that then.
Now, I don’t see how I could separate the two. The state of my marriage is inextricably linked to my experience as a mother, and his as a father. Also, the ease or difficulty of motherhood is tied to the support or non-support I get from my spouse. How’s that for a non-answer? Maybe I should read the post you linked to.
But, if you are asking if marriage with a child is easier or harder than marriage pre-child, I’d have to say it’s harder by far. But in ways, of course, it’s better, too.
Still, a non-answer. And my child is still very young.
Parenting is harder. But, like you, I have an awesome husband. Not that my child is not awesome. She’s just two (and all that entails.
I’ll say what I said in Dooce’s comments, because the odds of you seeing me there at #451 are slim. 😉
“My hubby and I lived together for four years before getting married, and we were married for five years before our daughter was born. (And she just turned three.) So, we’ve been together for almost 12 years. We’ve been fortunate in that things have always clicked along smoothly for us. [Together, as a couple…I had a miscarriage prior to getting pregnant with Claire, so I’m not talking about that, and, compared to others’ stories, my battles were few…but even dealing with that issue, things went as smoothly as they could between us.]
We were pretty much experts at our relationship before diving headfirst into parenthood, so I think that made parenthood easier than it could have been, and it also made it easier for our relationship to withstand the hurricane force winds produced by the introduction of a baby to the household.
Personally, one hasn’t really been harder than the other. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but it’s true! I’ve been trying to weigh them against each other, but they seem pretty equal. We found our groove pretty quickly with both. How lucky is that??”
So, that’s my answer. For me, it’s 6 of one and half-dozen of the other. 😉
I don’t find marriage difficult in the least (and my husband agrees), but we have an uncommonly good relationship and we each have an unusually easy partner. We are a poor illustration of the hard work of marriage.
But then I think back to the first year of marriage, and that was less easy. So if I’d become a parent soon after becoming a wife, as GirlsGoneChild did, instead of more than a decade later (and counting), it would have been entirely different. This is why I think that people should spend time being spouses before becoming parents, but I realize that not everyone meets their spouse as a teen and then has time to wait like I did.
I find it hard to imagine that motherhood will be harder than infertility has been. So I will rank them in order of decreasing difficulty:
1. infertility/getting to motherhood
2. motherhood
3. marriage
I guess my feeling is that marriage remains semi-constant. If it’s working it usually remains working if energy is put into it and if it is wobbly, it can either be fixed or get wobblier based on how much energy is given to sustain the relationship.
But with kids, it changes literally day to day. We’re in a great valley right now, but I also know that the next step is always the hills. Right now, they’re master of their skills, so they’re happy. Soon they’ll try new things but they won’t be masters yet and they’ll be frustrated and I’ll be frustrated and we’ll all have some hard weeks. So, I’m voting for motherhood just because when I ask Josh to get the clothes from the dryer, he does it with only a few reminders. And if I ask the kids to clean up their toys, they are still on the floor if they’re not in the mood.
Another insightful and thought provoking post. Hmm, it made me laugh too, “the wisdom of not eating boogers as gospel”.
At any given moment, on any given day, at any given time, it could be more difficult to be a mom, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a lover, a nurse, a waiter in line, whatever. I am just learning these are just titles for roles that really show “Control is an Illusion”. So true, thank you.
Re.the ghost story, the commenter, Anne Did Not experience it with me, she is a medium/pyschic who I guess got a reading from my post. Cool stuff.
Good topic!
For me, I’d have to say that it depends on the day.
I have an amazing husband, who works so hard to allow me to stay at home with our 2 little ones (2 1/2 and 1).
We were together for 2 years before we married, with me having been married once before. I think that helps my marriage because we both knew going into to it that our friendship had to be the foundation, and what we would/wouldn’t tolerate.
We knew what we wanted, have great communication, and then, we had to wait 3 long and difficult years with lots of visits to lots of specialists to have our precious children.
I think that some days, life pre-kids was SO easy, and I miss those days of coming home and just being. Then, I see the kids, hold them, smell them, feel their little arms around my neck, their sticky fingers on my cheeks as they snuggle in for kisses, and I know that no matter the struggles, I wouldn’t trade it for those days of just BB and myself.
Parenting is tough, especially when you have to follow through on something you hollered out at the kids, and I know it will get tougher as they grow older, but oh, how sweet the reward!
So my answer is : they are each as difficult as the other, just at different times, and in different ways.
How’s that for long-winded and not really concrete? Oy!
Parenting is harder for me. My husband and I have a very easy relationship (although we work hard at keeping it that easy…LOL). There are so many more ups and downs with kids.
I don’t feel qualified to answer quite yet. My son is only 6 months old.
So, when he leaves his socks on the floor I can’t really expect him to put them in the hamper. But my husband? I really wish he would.
But I think this is a very interesting topic for a great discussion and I expect my own answer will change back and forth a few times over the years!
I’m obviously very new to the motherhood thing, but I really think parenting must be harder than navigating a marriage. At least with respect to my marriage. We spend our whole teenage and adult lives preparing for marriage, building peer relationships and dating. But I don’t think anything can really prepare us for parenting.
Hey, did you see Dooce is going to be in Highlands Ranch in April for a book signing? Maybe we should make a ColoBlogger event out of it.
Hmnn.
I wonder if stepparenthood is a whole other ballgame — because it made everything hard…the early years with G were difficult in the sense that — we had this amazing love, this wonderful ability to communicate — this bond — but the difficulties of negotiating the finalization of the divorce (his), all of the space required on his part — learning to co-parent on all of our parts when W was three…oy. It’s a whole different deal.
Parenthood, at times, has evoked anger in me that no other relationship in my life ever has — and it has also required of me to find a way to express it in a healthy way…it’s really been transformative — but by far more challenging than the marriage…and again, this is all part and parcel — marriage/stepparenthood/coparenting…
time has made things so much easier.
Ask me again in a few years 🙂
Parenthood is harder, make that STEP-parenthood. If being a parent is hard, being a step-parent is harder. But sometimes when my hubby acts like a child, I feel like I have another kid in the house (grrr). But, there are always rewards, so maybe the question should be which is more rewarding – marriage or parenthood. Ohhh, that’s a sticky subject! I mean it’s kinda like asking which is harder, having a left arm or a left leg?
Before I read how everyone else has responded, I have to say this is an unanswerable question for me. It changes daily around here.
I cannot bend my husband to my will (as much as I try). I cannot reason with my children all the time. My husband is by far the more rational of the five. My children are by far more emotional than their father. Somedays I need the emotion, other days I need stability & rationality.
So maybe it’s me that’s the issue. Maybe being me is harder than being a mother or being married.
If I get to be a mother, I think that’ll be much much harder. I’m very lucky to have a husband who finds my craziness cute and charming and even goes so far as to laugh at how crazy I am. He helps out without me asking. He communicates what his issues are easily. I don’t think my kids would find my craziness cute – just insane. I’m pretty sure they won’t help out even when I DO ask. And I’m pretty sure the communication will be an issue cuz they’re kids, and how we vs they communicate will be totally different.
If that makes any sense at all.
I think marriage is harder than motherhood. That’s my opinion at the moment at least. My daughter is a very easygoing and loving 8 year old so that’s easy.
My marriage however has been through alot of stress with trying to conceive #2. We are working on trying to make it better but defiantly more work at the moment then motherhood.
Marriage pre-kids was a piece of cake. Neither of us are high-strung people.
Marriage post-child is harder, but still not as difficult as mothering.
When I’m 70, and he’s 80, and very sick, I might have a different opinion. It’s all about what other major stress you have in your life. My best friend who has a husband with a malignant brain tumor might think my c-section/BF-failure/up all night for 8 months/constantly sick/24-hour job is a breeze. Because it is more likely to end well.
I can’t make a true comparison here, since I never got to be a parent, but as a witness to parents (both friends and students’ parents, and then plus my experiences with my own parents), I could totally see how parenting is harder than marriage. At least, parenting well is harder than marriage.
That also depends on the quality of the marriage you have — I think back on my ex-husband and am so glad that I never parented with him. Being married to him was a special kind of hell.
It’s easier (but not always easy) to “do marriage” with my final husband (I like that so much better than second husband, although it sounds ominous now that I’ve typed it out). We chose each other. We choose each other again, and again, and again. We had the trial periods of dating and living together before we were married.
You don’t get that with kids. You don’t know what the personalities will be, or the challenges, or the specific joys. Each age group has its wonders and its horrors, from what I’ve seen from the outside. But it’s always changing and evolving (although marriage can do that, too).
Lori, I feel your message about control — I was always told “I’m the parent and you’re the child, and so you have to listen to what I say.” Needless to say, it didn’t work out of respect. I so wanted to try to have a redo and parent my child the way I wished I was parented. But, that has its pitfalls as well, I bet!
This is a great discourse. Thank you so much for putting it out there! I hope you don’t mind the long and winding comment…
I love your very thoughtful comment, Jess!
That’s a really good distinction you make: parenting well is harder than marriage. And so true about the quality of marriage prior to parenting. I also appreciate that when mutually choosing a partner, your are kinda fully formed and kinda know what the basics of each other along the way. Not so with children, as you point out.
Thank you for understanding what I was saying about control! I bet you have lots to advise about that from being that special person to so many of your students, one who can often guide them with soft power, if not direct control.
For me, it was always marriage. But I think it was more a matter of personalities than anything else.
I can see that, A.
Which is harder? Sometimes, it depends on how “normal” your spouse and kids are. For decades, no one correctly diagnosed us. We finally learned that everyone in the family is on the autism spectrum. My spouse and my kids struggle with behaviors and personal and professional relationships. I thought I was normal, but I’ve also struggled with fitting in. Marriage is tough when your partner’s brain doesn’t function well socially. Parenting is tough when your kids struggle, sometimes severely, and even professions don’t help much. All that said, my kids are adults now, and one has done remarkably well. The other is a work in progress. We’ve been married for nearly 40 years. It’s a ton of concern and work, but it can be done!
Such an important aspect of this, the degree of synch-ness of how people function compared to what is considered “normal.” A 40-year marriage is inspiring, as is kids who find their way their way.
For me, marriage was monumentally more challenging. Being a mom has been the most profound privilege in my life. Every moment a treasure even if difficult, as I was keenly aware it was fleeting and she’d be adulting one day, and I’d miss her completely.
It’s quite the paradox, isn’t it? That the goal of parenting is to work yourself out of the job. Takes effort to both hold tight and let loose.