When a husband and wife disagree on when to stop growing their family

[bjames1728]

Take caution around when and how you broach the issue of unexpected death. For someone with an anxiety disorder, this runs the risk of becoming yet another focal point for anxiety.

That said, it might naturally arise out of fiscal and estate planning discussions. At some point you likely have had or will have talks about budgets, emergency cash, disability insurance, life insurance, education savings, wills, etc. All of these are impacted by family size and the contingency of one or both spouses passing away. Having these discussions in an objective way could help confront both your concerns without generating unneeded anxiety for your husband.

Of course, you may want to ease into those conversations, too. These topics make everyone a little anxious. You know your husband best, so trust your instincts if they conflict with random internet advice.

 

[Anglewannabe]

Yes, we’ve talked quite a lot about what I struggle with, what he struggles with… somehow, the conversation always ends up as a discussion about how my mother doesn’t help enough (I think she helps as much as to be expected of someone who said during my first pregnancy, “I will NOT be a daycare”) and I need to be making friends with the old ladies in the neighborhood so they can come over to help me.

How irresponsible of your husband to expect other people to take care of HIS kids. He is totally out of line here. He doesn’t even spend enough time with his kids, I doubt he would want somebody else’s kids dumped on him.

I really think the issue is your husband needs to realize how he is not taking his responsibilities and doing his fair share.

By the way, how come HIS mother doesn’t help more? How come HE is not ‘making friends’ with the women who will take care of his kids. Notice the qotes around ‘making friends’ because if he wants you to get to know these women so that they will help out, that is not friendship, it is using

Angie

 

[AnnArbor]

Well…no. The point is this needs to be discerned by the couple. That’s the underlying principle of NFP, and that’s what any decent secular counselor would tell her too. One member of a functional couple does not get to dictate when the couple will have kids, when they’re “done”, etc. These are family decisions.

This is of course barring medical issues that preclude another pregnancy. But that’s really not what we’re dealing with here.

Regardless, rather than declare that they’re “done”, why not spend the coming years taking it month by month? If his longing doesn’t subside, they can consider ways to make another child work for the family. This isn’t a dichotomous choice between no more kids and more kids in this situation; they also have the choice of finding and/or creating better circumstances under which to have more kids.

My point wasn’t that the couple shouldn’t discern this together, but rather that the issues she described would certainly warrant serious discussion. Some of the other posts seemed to have an undercurrent of assuming her reasons/concerns didn’t meet the criteria for this discussion.

 

[UbiCaritas]

This. I have a very large age gap between myself and my only sibling and my mother took entirely too much advantage of me. I referred to myself as “the built-in babysitter,” not as a proud sister title, but out of resentment. I would be left with a toddler with serious behavioral problems and zero respect for me as an authority figure (because why should he? I was NOT his mother or an adult at all) for up to 10 hours a day over the summer. I’d had to spend those years in a daycare, but he got to stay at home under my care. It was terribly damaging to our relationship.

I would not ever decide to have more children on the assumption that I will have the help of their older siblings. Here and there, “please watch the baby while I do this” or “would you like to earn a little money babysitting the little ones?” is fine. But, the kind of help I need in order to feel comfortable adding another person to the family is absolutely unreasonable to put upon the shoulders of a child who needs their mother, too. Been there, done that, therapy was necessary.

This is a really good point, and something I wanted to mention, too.

I grew up in an admittedly very dysfunctional family, and as the oldest of three. Mom was a raging alcoholic. There was a seven-year gap between me and the youngest. I was the person who kept myself awake at night to go get baby sis after mom passed out drunk while nursing and put the baby to bed so mom wouldn’t smother her. I was the one who changed her diapers and did a lot of potty training. I was the one who made dinner–initially once a week at 8 years old or thereabouts, but later on, almost every night. I was responsible for keeping the house clean, and while I was given no authority over my younger sisters, I was also expected to make them behave–and if they wouldn’t do their chores, I would have to do them for them.

The result is that now we’re all adults, the youngest and I in particular have a very strained relationship. It’s not really either of our faults; we don’t know how to relate except in a sort of dysfunctional parent/child sort of way, so we’re very cautious and polite all the time to avoid stepping on toes. The middle sister has almost no communication with the youngest, and while middle sis and I get on very well from afar, we can’t spend much time together because doing so also leads to the stress that I experience with the youngest for both of us–just being around the other person is triggering.

I have no issue at all with older siblings having limited responsibilities with younger ones, but there is no way I will EVER expect them to, as you say, help out so much as to make the difference between another baby and not.

 

[bitterhope]

For the record what you all are describing is not the type of thing I was talking about. My neighbors kids help but they aren’t forced to and they don’t raise the younger kids. It’s easier for mom mostly because she has older kids to entertain them when they were younger instead of her having to be the entertainment. Her kids are all very close emotionally and they don’t have the problems you all are describing. She found the preschool years very hard with her older kids because she didn’t enjoy playing around with them the way her husband did but he was gone most of the day. School age was better for her because she was able to relate easier with them. By the time she had the younger kids, the older kids provided the play for her while she was able to do the things she enjoyed with the kids (reading, crafts, teaching).

My example was to simply say that it is not the time to think in absolutes. No one knows how things will change in the future so dealing with anything beyond today is useless and stressful.

 

[BoomBoomMancini]

OP, I don’t mean to ask nosy questions or pry into your married life too much, but this occurred to me. You wrote that you’re willing to “abstain as long as necessary.” Is there perhaps some discord between you two surrounding sex? Like, maybe his interest level is higher than yours? Maybe you resent him expecting you to be intimate at night when you’re exhausted from dealing with the kids all day, and all you want to do is pass out?

Just thinking out loud. I’ve heard of tension surrounding sex manifesting itself as disagreements surrounding children.

 

[Perian]

OP, I don’t mean to ask nosy questions or pry into your married life too much, but this occurred to me. You wrote that you’re willing to “abstain as long as necessary.” Is there perhaps some discord between you two surrounding sex? Like, maybe his interest level is higher than yours? Maybe you resent him expecting you to be intimate at night when you’re exhausted from dealing with the kids all day, and all you want to do is pass out?

Just thinking out loud. I’ve heard of tension surrounding sex manifesting itself as disagreements surrounding children.

It’s a relevant question to this multi-faceted discussion. Thankfully, there is very little discord in that area now that my husband has gained a great degree of control over his pornography addiction. Our relationship was a textbook case of “how porn damages marriages” a few years ago. All the way down to the erectile dysfunction. It was terrible. He was rejecting my advances 9 times out of 10. One of my lost pregnancies was a result of him making an advance for the first time in six months. It happened to be a risky day, but I was so hungry for his affection and so badly hurt by his continual rejection, I said yes.

All that to say, I understand why you would ask because I know entirely too well how difficult it is to make level-headed decisions when you just want to be loved by your spouse. But, fortunately, that dark part of our marriage is healing

So far, he doesn’t press me when he knows it’s not a good time, and I do my best to save my polite declining for serious reasons in an effort to make long, postpartum periods of abstinence feel shorter. As stated previously, though, I fear my no-pressure period is going to be ending soon. I’m stronger than I was last time, but I’m afraid he’s going to stop being so respectful of the abstaining period when he’s no longer on board with avoiding pregnancy.

 

[nodito]

This baby is the most darling angel, but when the going gets tough, I can’t help but think about how everyone else made this decision and I did not… and none of those people are here in the trenches with me to help.

Perian, who are these other people who made the decision to have another baby? Are you or your husband being pressured by family members?

I think you’ve gotten some great advice. My thoughts:

1. It sounds like you need breathing room and you want your husband to acknowledge that you’re done so that he won’t pressure you when the little one turns two and the spacing would be the same as for the other kids. Likewise, it sounds like he’s insisting on wanting more because he hates the idea of being done. What if the mutual decision to come to is instead that you’ll both forfeit your positions in exchange for no pressuring/no discussing the topic of more children for X amount of time. Off the top of my head, maybe a year or a year and a half? Two years? You can let him know that if your thoughts and feelings change in the meantime, you’ll share them with him so you two can revisit the idea of more kids, but unless you initiate it, he should assume for that year or two years that you still don’t want another kid.
2. You both acknowledge and agree that more help would be ideal. He seems to think it should be offered for free by your parents and/or neighbors. Can you afford to hire help? Would he sacrifice something he values (cable TV, a hobby, etc) so you could have a mother’s helper, a regular babysitter, or put the kids in a part-time school program of something? Just an idea.

For everyone else on this thread: I just want to say I’m really impressed that (so far) no one has asked the OP how many kids she has. I’ve always thought it irrelevant to conversations like this whether an overwhelmed parent has one kid or seven, and I’m proud of my fellow CAFers for not making this a point of discussion.

 

[Perian]

Perian, who are these other people who made the decision to have another baby? Are you or your husband being pressured by family members?

I think you’ve gotten some great advice. My thoughts:

1. It sounds like you need breathing room and you want your husband to acknowledge that you’re done so that he won’t pressure you when the little one turns two and the spacing would be the same as for the other kids. Likewise, it sounds like he’s insisting on wanting more because he hates the idea of being done. What if the mutual decision to come to is instead that you’ll both forfeit your positions in exchange for no pressuring/no discussing the topic of more children for X amount of time. Off the top of my head, maybe a year or a year and a half? Two years? You can let him know that if your thoughts and feelings change in the meantime, you’ll share them with him so you two can revisit the idea of more kids, but unless you initiate it, he should assume for that year or two years that you still don’t want another kid.
2. You both acknowledge and agree that more help would be ideal. He seems to think it should be offered for free by your parents and/or neighbors. Can you afford to hire help? Would he sacrifice something he values (cable TV, a hobby, etc) so you could have a mother’s helper, a regular babysitter, or put the kids in a part-time school program of something? Just an idea.

For everyone else on this thread: ** I just want to say I’m really impressed that (so far) no one has asked the OP how many kids she has. I’ve always thought it irrelevant to conversations like this whether an overwhelmed parent has one kid or seven, and I’m proud of my fellow CAFers for not making this a point of discussion.**

Yes, I must agree with this entirely! I deliberately made a point not to say how many children I have. I feel like I’m suffering from this imaginary pressure with a specific number in my mind that everyone thinks a Catholic family must reach before you can be considered legitimate and erase all doubt that you use ABC. No one asked, and that helps. The last thing I needed is for that suspicion to be confirmed, so I thank you all, too!

As for the help question, we could afford to hire a babysitter once every two weeks or so for a date night but not much else. Preschool is budgeted for the 2018-2019 school year. We live very simply, no cable, no car notes, our only debt is our mortgage. Single income family. But, that date night would help a great deal.

Since I began this post, my husband-- through no effort of mine-- has started to make a point to treat his evenings as an opportunity for quality time with the children. Honestly, the time change helps so much. There’s just something about it being dark outside when he gets home that makes the whole evening feel like we should be winding down to bed time. He did that all on his own and has been savoring time with them and hasn’t made any mention of what he wishes he could have. I can only attribute it to your prayers. I find it incredibly touching to know that strangers are willing to pray for an anonymous poster.

 

[Xantippe]

Yes, I must agree with this entirely! I deliberately made a point not to say how many children I have. I feel like I’m suffering from this imaginary pressure with a specific number in my mind that everyone thinks a Catholic family must reach before you can be considered legitimate and erase all doubt that you use ABC. No one asked, and that helps. The last thing I needed is for that suspicion to be confirmed, so I thank you all, too!

As for the help question, we could afford to hire a babysitter once every two weeks or so for a date night but not much else. Preschool is budgeted for the 2018-2019 school year. We live very simply, no cable, no car notes, our only debt is our mortgage. Single income family. But, that date night would help a great deal.

Since I began this post, my husband-- through no effort of mine-- has started to make a point to treat his evenings as an opportunity for quality time with the children. Honestly, the time change helps so much. There’s just something about it being dark outside when he gets home that makes the whole evening feel like we should be winding down to bed time. He did that all on his own and has been savoring time with them and hasn’t made any mention of what he wishes he could have. I can only attribute it to your prayers. I find it incredibly touching to know that strangers are willing to pray for an anonymous poster.

Very nice!