Episode 74: The Who Does More War with Dr. Jennie Rosier
/Do you ever feel so overwhelmed by your responsibilities as a parent that you feel like you are carrying a huge burden, all on your own? Like no one sees all you do, and that no one else in the family is doing as much as you? Well, you aren't alone. Most of the parents I coach who are parenting with a partner struggle with communicating with their partners on navigating parenting and responsibilities at home.
And the reason for this is complex and simple at the same time. Our homes & experiences growing up informed our (often unspoken) expectations for the division of labor and load in our families of creation. Whether we unconsciously absorbed what we saw modeled in our family of origin OR we actively decided we wanted something different for our new family, what we learned & witnessed makes a difference in how we show up with our partners. And because you and your partner grew up in different families with different experiences, OF COURSE your expectations will be different too! But the big problem is, most of us don't actually COMMUNICATE about these differences in approach or expectation in a way that is healthy & connecting.
And that's what we are going to talk about in this week's episode on The Balanced Parent Podcast. To help me in this conversation on expectations around parenting and how couples can go about feeling more like a team, I'm bringing in a new friend and colleague, Dr. Jennie Rosier. She is the host of her podcast Love Matters and the author of the book "The Who Does More War." As an expert in romantic and parent-child relationships, Rosier focuses much of her research, speaking, and writing endeavors on helping others create more realistic expectations while enhancing the communication skills needed to maintain these bonds with empathy, respect, and attachment.
Here is a summary of what we talked about:
Setting expectations in our marriage and parenting
How our way of communicating impacts our partner
The common things couples with a baby argue about
The Who Does More War and how we can meet each other's needs and expectations
To find more resources about this topic, follow Dr. Jennie on her social media and website.
Facebook: The Relationships, Love, Happiness Project
Instagram: @RelationshipsLoveHappiness
Website: www.RelationshipsLoveHappiness.com
I also want to give you my free Partners in Parenting Workbook (if you haven't downloaded it yet). It's a tool I use with my private clients to help them navigate their parenting styles.
If you want even MORE support, I have an entire course dedicated to getting more aligned and connected with your parenting partner! You can learn more about The Partners in Parenting Course HERE!
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura Froyen in with another episode of the Balance Parent Podcast and I'm really excited to have you here with me today to join me in this conversation on expectations around parenting and how couples can go about feeling more like a team, have things more balanced in their marriages as they work to parent their kids together. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today and to help me with this conversation. I'm bringing in a new friend and colleague, an expert on all of these topics. Dr Jennie Rosier and she is the host of her own podcast, Love Matters and she has a wonderful book that I'm right in the middle of The Who Does More War. So Jennie, welcome to the show, why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Jennie: Thanks for having me, like you said, my name is Dr. Jennie Rosier, I am an associate professor of Communications studies at James Madison University in Virginia. I am the host of the Love Matters Podcast, the author of a few popular press books. My most recent one is The Who Does More War. I'm the director of the Relationships Love Happiness Project and I am married to my best friend. We have been together longer than we haven't. So we are celebrating our 21st dating anniversary in June.
Laura: Congratulations!
Jennie: Yeah, and we have four wild and free, rambunctious destructive young children.
Laura: Awesome. And so tell us a little bit about your book, what made you want to start writing this because this is a very common thing I get asked. I know so many parents and when I talk to them separately, they both feel like they're doing more and so I would love to just talk a little bit about your book and some of the things that you found while you were writing it. It's a lovely mix of practical, real stuff and good research which I love in a book. It's my favorite kind. So tell us a little bit about it.
Jennie: So when I was in graduate school I did not have children yet. And my husband and I, we dated for about seven years before we got married. And so... and we had lived together and I just thought like you know the sun rose and set with him and everything was just perfect and we were just going to have this perfect life together. And when I was in grad school I wrote my first book called Make Love Not Scrapbooks. And it is very similar to this book but also very optimistic and flowery
Laura: and rosy color…
Jennie: Yeah. It is very rosy and I wrote that book and I just thought, wow! Like I am going to help people learn how to be in a relationship.
And then my husband, I got married and we had a surprise twins. So all twins are a surprise to be clear. But uh we did not know that we were having twins when I was 6.5 months pregnant and then we had them six weeks early. So we had a very short gap between when we found out we were having twins. So when we actually had twins to figure things out and it was really difficult. They both had a lot of things that made them cry a lot more than the average baby. One of them had acid reflux. The other one had an ulcer rating hemangioma when she was a baby. And so they cried a lot and we were just really overwhelmed and really stressed out and there were some things said to each other that probably…
Laura: I mean we’ve all been there.
Jennie: Yes. And so we quickly had to like make a rule that anything that was said in the middle of the night, you know, we weren't allowed to be mad about the next day. And I started thinking like, wow, a lot of the craft that I just spent two years writing about isn't really working here, what's going on.
Laura: Oh no.
Jennie: And so I started thinking about, you know, all of the things that we were arguing about that. I never thought we would argue about that. I just really never could have imagined. Our twins are now 11, they're about to be 12 and for years I just kept these notes of all these things that we would argue about until I had five solid arguments that I felt like all people who have young children argue about.
Laura: Oh my gosh. I'm dying to know. What are they?
Jennie: This was again with my experience and then backed up by research in the book. But so The Who Does More War, that's the tit for tat war. You know, I'm doing more than, you know, I'm doing more than you. Well I do the dishes while I do the laundry and so I think that some people have the tit for tat war or the who does more war before they have kids, but it is significantly amplified after kids come. And one of the reasons for that is because our list gets longer, your to do list gets exponentially longer. And so of course you're arguing about who does more, especially if one of you is staying home, if one of you is working more and one of you is at home more that tit for tat war is going to potentially become nuclear. So...
Laura: And nobody is seeing all of those things. So, you know, the folks who are at home are not seeing what's happening at work, the folks who are at work are not seeing all of the work that goes into being at home.
Jennie: Yeah. And nobody wins that war, right?
Laura: So there's never a winner.
Jennie: There's never a winner. And so we found ourselves very frequently having this war with each other where I would say, well I am breastfeeding and diaper changing and the least you can do is A B and C. And he's like, well I am, you know working and worried about you all day long and I'm like, and I'm going to grad school and I am doing this and I'm, you know, it was just back and forth and nobody wins.
So there's no clear winner because no matter what you think or your partner thinks both of you think you're doing more than the other person, no matter what is reality. Both of you think you're doing your part both of you think you're doing enough. I mean I'm sure there are relationships out there where it is very clear that one of you is doing more work than the other person. And there may even be relationships out there where it's, your partner knows. Oh yeah. I am not pulling my weight. But for the most part, most people really think that they're doing a lot.
Laura: There's this tenderness to it too because I think many parents know they're doing so much. They have so much to do there. So overwhelmed. And then at the same time they feel like they're failing at whatever it is that they're...
Jennie: Exactly.
Laura: There's this really, it's a very tender subject.
Jennie: Yes.
Laura: Vulnerable subject.
Jennie: And when we had our third son, so when we have a third child, so we had twins first and then two singleton. So which is a word that I apparently have learned when you have to win like oh is it multiple or singleton? So anyways and I just think it's hilarious that I use it all the time now. So when we had our third child, I was put on bed rest for the last 10 weeks, strict bed rest for the last 10 weeks of the pregnancy. And it was in those 10 weeks that my husband recognized just what I did. That he had no idea or just didn't really realize it. I mean I remember him coming to me at some point probably at like week three and he's like how did you do this?
Like how, because he became the full time caregiver for our twins, for the house, for meals. I mean he was in charge of everything and so he was just like wait, how did she do this and work? At that point, I was already a professor and so it was just a very eye-opening experience. So that's one of the wars that new parents, no matter how many children you have. So it doesn't just happen with your first child because with every subsequent child there's more things on the to-do list.
So it happens with every single addition to your family, whether you have one kid or seven kids, it's always going to be there. And the trick is to really check yourself to just not have that war to not bring that conversation up because it's nobody wins.
The second war is the sex war. So this is the why don't you want to bleep me anymore. And this is usually a product of hormonal changes, physical pain, tiredness and this is inescapable as well. There is a period where you just are not interested and this can go both ways. It can be male or female can just be not interested for a certain amount of time and it just seems like so hard to find time to reconnect and to reconnect sexually, like not just emotionally or communication wise, I mean, really to physically connect with one another, it seems just so out of the realm of possibilities because again, there's so much to do.
There's so much to think about. There's so much to worry about. There's sometimes physical issues, hormonal issues. And that is an argument that lots of couples have. And we know this to be true with decades and decades of research about divorce and about marital conflict, that sex is a huge, huge issue and having a baby seriously, you know, complicates that argument that people have. The third war is that you're not doing that right war. So the whole war about gatekeeping and,
Laura: Hold on maternal gatekeeping, a phrase that I know, can you explain to us a little bit of what it is?
Jennie: So maternal gatekeeping, which is usually what it is. Let's be serious. This is when a woman feels that she knows the right way to do things, the right way to care for a baby, to care for a child and they limit their husband's involvement sometimes consciously, many times unconsciously, like you're not even thinking about it.
So this could be where you just take over and you just do all the stuff so you just do it and then it leaves no room for your partner to do anything or you could even go as far as criticizing him whenever he does something or correcting him whenever he does something and then that also limits his willingness to do it again later to try later.
So you know, you're not putting that diaper on correctly, okay, he's just not going to want to do the diapers later because he doesn't want to be told that he's not doing something right or you could make fun in a lighthearted way, I don't know how many times I've seen on facebook, someone has a post of the diapers on backwards and it's like, look at my silly husband
Laura: Or the kids’ clothing on backwards or something.
Jennie: Yes. And so and that can hurt people's feelings. I don't want... people don't want to be made fun of. And so gatekeeping is when you in some way limit your partner's involvement in doing things and then it can start another war, right? So you've created this gatekeeping that, you're not doing that right war and you've had this, it's not always a like direct conflict. Sometimes it is like you're not doing that right? Yes, I am. I know what I'm doing. But many times it's just you're creating this environment of gatekeeping where you are the knower of all things and you keep the gate closed and you don't let him in.
Laura: Yeah, it can be so subtle just even like watching...
Jennie: Yeah, so subtle.
Laura: Just even just like when they're changing the diaper, standing over them and watching how they do it is a very subtle form actually conveys something.
Jennie: Exactly and then it can create that, who does more war because then you're stuck doing everything because you gatekeep the hell out of it and now you are doing more and now you're complaining about that. And so it's this vicious cycle that women very frequently put themselves in. And some of the reason for this is because when we are growing up, when we're kids, even people allow girls to care for other children much more than they allow boys to.
So how many babysitters do you know that are male? How many females do you know who have babysit? Many! Or even just at the family function? Hey, Vivian, could you watch the baby real quick while I run into the other room? I have three boys and one daughter and I have maybe asked one of my sons to watch a younger child a handful of times, they're just like not.
I used to joke that when my daughter saw the baby crawling up the steps, she would go, no, no baby, get off the steps and when my son saw the baby crawling up the steps, he'd be like, yeah, let's do it, come on, go up the steps, let's see what's going to happen. You would like encourage the terribly difficult behavior. And so, um, and so we don't ask little boys to care for babies. We only ask girls to.
Laura: Even young childless men. We don't. So I mean this is something that I loved about my husband before we had kids, he would change my niece and nephews’, diapers and and take care of them and babysit them so that when my brother in law was at work and my sister and I wanted to go out and have lunch, he would take care of them. I love that about him. But that is not typical.
Jennie: It's not the norm. Listeners, how many of your husbands didn't hold a baby until you had a baby?
Laura: Yeah. Most of them.
Jennie: Most!
Laura: My husband's dad had never held a baby so young until he held his granddaughter.
Jennie: Oh my gosh!
Laura: Seriously. Until his granddaughter. There's this cultural shift that's happening and it's hard on this new generation of fathers who has so many expectations fathers haven't had placed on them before and we have expectations on us too to allow that. That's hard too. So we're all learning this new thing together.
Jennie: That's really hard.
Laura: But I think we just need to realize that you know, he is a grown man and you marry him and he can figure it out, even if it takes him 10 times changing the diaper wrong to figure out the correct way to do it. He'll figure it out and the baby is not going to die while he figures it out. It's going to be fine. So just like let go of control and let him figure it out because I mean just think about if the tables were turned and your partner was telling you that you weren't doing it right, you'd be like, please, come on. I know what I'm doing. I'm a woman. You know, I'm the mom.
Laura: And of course I do think that like there's good intentions we wanted. First of all, there's this pressure on at mom's that if things are done wrong, the person who's going to get blamed for it or judge it's the mom. So of course there's this bigger cultural and societal pressure that's there, that's present and that's real. So there's that pressure. But there's also like room for being helpful for showing, you know, I don't think anybody is going in saying like my husband is a buffoon and doesn't know how to change.
Jennie: Exactly!
Laura: Genuine helpfulness. The delivery is a critical skill.
Jennie: So we have 1,2,3 now. The fourth war is that there's no time for us anymore. Or just there's no time when you have kids, when you just have one kid, your time is completely changed. The amount of time it takes you to get out of the house completely changed. The amount of time that you have by yourself, if you have any, completely changed the amount of time that you have with your family and friends that you have with your partner, just all of your time is different. And I honestly believe that that is the hardest shift for most people. That's the biggest like jolt to our expectations because nobody really talks about that. Nobody really talks about the idea. Like there's jokes that, oh well you used to take you two seconds to go in the house and now it takes you two hours to gather all the stuff and there's jokes about that.
Laura: But say goodbye to your social life.
Jennie: Exactly. But I think people really don't realize your time is now dedicated to another person who doesn't care about your time at all.
Laura: And they might go to daycare, they might have times where you are apart, but you're never alone again. They're always on your mind. They're always in your heart.
Jennie: Exactly. Exactly. And so your time is just completely different. And that is something that causes a lot of disagreement, especially if you have, if one or both of you were really independent before kids. Like you had a lot of alone activities or guys’ nights or you know, girls’ lunches and you were really used to that kind of lifestyle and then one or both of you can't go play golf for four hours anymore or can't go shopping with your friends every weekend anymore. It causes some disagreements. And I think the disagreements can get really, really bad when one of you maintains their pre-child life and the other person doesn't, which again often falls on women and you know, the dads just like I got to keep my golf game going. I've got to keep going. I'm going to go this weekend and then he just gets to go and it's just expected that you will stay.
I think the point of all of this is really that we don't have these discussions. We talk about baby names. We talk about what color the nursery is going to be. We talk about what it's going to be like to go to the grandparents house maybe, but we don't have these conversations about this stuff like how are we going to deal with time? The whole book is not just about infancy. I basically have been writing this book for 10 years. I've been thinking about it and taking notes about it for 10 years. And these wars continue all the way through all childhood where... My husband and I are still having some of these disagreements about our 11 year olds.
In the book, I talk about the driving from activity to activity to activity that feeds into the who does more war. My husband is typically the taker of boys to wrestling practice and I am typically the taker of all the kids to school and pick them up from school even though that ends up kind of evening out. We would still argue about it. I mean pre-pandemic. We would still argue, all those things are gone now life is great, but we would still argue about it.
He'd be like, well I'm driving these boys all over the place. You know, four nights a week. And I'm like, I'm driving them to and from school every day, five days a week, what's the difference? And we would just have these disagreements. And so the arguments don't stop in infancy, it's not just about having a baby, it's about having kids of any age.
Laura: Yeah, It's not even necessarily the topics that you're arguing about, it's having the discussions, learning how to have a healthy discussion. You know, you were talking about golfing, my husband is a golfer, his two hobbies are golfing and fishing, which take eight hours.
Jennie: Time consuming.
Laura: So time consuming. And I like we were discussing how like, can't you find a hobby that's like an hour? Because my hobbies are like an hour, I go to an hour too fast or something, but at the same time, like he's a better dad when he's been out on the golf course, like he comes home, he feels refreshed, he's limber, he can wrestle like he just, he's just a better dad and partner.
And so if it was him assuming and just going without checking in without an active discussion without a sitting down and constructing our family values around like him, golfing is good for the whole family, how as a family can we make this work for all of us so that he can still have his golf game, like that's way different than him saying like, OK, saturday morning by without exactly any discussion, that's the discussion, that makes the difference.
Jennie: Exactly, I totally agree with that.
Okay, so the fifth war that I talked about in this book is the what are we going to do with them war? And this is the war where one or both parents compare their kids to other people's kids or one or both parents are upset about the behavior of their kids. You know, like yes, parenting differences, discipline differences and this can cause some serious like really like throw down conflict in my mind.
Laura: Oh I know. This war is the one that I cover how to deal with in my course, partners and parenting. Like it's all…
Jennie: So serious.
Laura: So serious [laugh].
Jennie: Again, we don't talk about this before we have kids. What are your opinions on time out? What are your opinions on spanking? What are your... I mean maybe spanking comes up sometimes but people just don't talk about these things. What are your changes? wWhat are your changes about co-sleeping?
Laura: And it changes once you're in the scenarios. So my husband, I was in grad school to be a couples therapist and I was researching marital satisfaction and its effect on early childhood at the time when I became a mom. I knew the research, I knew that right after you have your first child marital satisfaction flops. Yeah, plummets rock bottom. And I didn't want that to be my story. So my husband and I went to couples counseling preventatively. So we actually did have all of these discussions, couples therapists beforehand and it all still change the skill of the discussion, the skill of fighting. Well you know disagreeing. Well I can't overstate that.
Jennie: Sure, and I want to make it, like emphasize that “what are we going to do with them war” is not just about discipline. It's about like any parenting decision. And so I had mentioned co-sleeping co-sleeping is a great one. I think that lots of times one or both people think that co-sleeping is a great idea and then they do it. Maybe mom really wants to co sleep and dad's like sure we can co sleep with the baby, it's fine. And then three years go by and we're still co sleeping or in my case six years go by and we're still co sleeping.
And sometimes that can cause a problem. Personally, I want to let him co sleep with us as long as he wants. When he wants to go and have his own room, you can go and have his own room. My husband's like uh when do we get in our bed back? Because we've been co-sleeping for 12 years straight and just six years with the last one. And so he's like when is that happening? Like I don't know. And even though my husband is 100% on board with the benefits of co-sleeping and he wholeheartedly believes in it.
We still have little tiny spats about well, when are we going to get our bed back? You know, he's a little old for this. Don't you think? You know, and little comments are made that can stew and can cause conflict. So it's not always about discipline. It's just about any parenting choice. Yeah. Lots of people could get into. Yeah. Everything. Again.
This war is confounded by comparison when you see your friends or your families, kids doing certain things and then it's like, wait a minute, none of our friends have kids who co-sleep at all. What are we doing? Are we doing the right thing? I don't know. You know, I mean, that's just an example. You know, like I think there's just so many times where you compare your children to other people's kids and we have to stop doing that because that just creates conflict in our own relationships.
Laura: Or even just with our own between... if we have more than one kid between our own kids to.
Jennie: Every child is different.
Laura: Okay, so I feel like we've had this conversation has felt a little dire. Can there be some upswing? Can... Is there hope for us?
Jennie: There is.
Laura: And yours?
Jennie: Yes, it's a lot of what you've already said. We have to have these conversations, we have to get more realistic expectations and we have to learn how to fight a fair fight. And lucky for people who buy my book, I have a whole chapter on 75 conversations starting questions that you can tackle a handful or just one a night with your partner and my husband. I actually went through these when I wrote the book and we learned things about each other that we didn't know and we're going on 21 years and we still benefited from having these conversations.
Laura: We're not static people. We change, we're always changing. Our views change, our goals change, our priorities change, our values change. So these questions that are in your book, they're lovely. They’re ongoing conversations that you really will have the rest of your life with your partner.
Jennie: They're not things that you need to have before you have a child.
Laura: No, it’s too late.
Jennie: Should have them. Yeah you should have them before you have a child but you can have them at any point and improve your relationship.
Laura: And multiple times. Just because you asked it two years ago doesn't mean the answer is the same now your kids are two years older. You're two years older, the world is different. Like thinking about like, what's happened this past year. There are values and beliefs and priorities that we had before the pandemic that are radically different now that requires ongoing conversation. Yeah, I love that that's in the book too.
Jennie: And so yes and so conversation starters are in Chapter seven I believe. And so you can go through those and read again, just ask a couple questions or even just one like over dinner and just have that conversation. And then there's also a chapter on how to fight a fair fight. You know, some conflict tips. I think my favorite tip about conflict is research-based and maybe interestingly, maybe not interestingly.
Laura: We're in the audience will be interesting, I’m sure.
Jennie: Research has shown that 69% of relationship conflict is actually never solved. It's just managed. And when I tell people this, sometimes I think they feel solace, right, they go, oh, okay, well this is good. So yeah, so you're saying that it's normal that I can't solve this problem or that we continue to have this argument over and over again.
Okay that's, that's good. Like, we're not we're not abnormal, but then other people, it terrifies them. They're like, I don't want to have that argument for the rest of my life. And so it's about your perspective. But I think it's really just important to recognize that sometimes you're just not going to see eye to eye and you have to figure out a way to manage the conflict, not necessarily solve the conflict.
Laura: So yeah, they're all couples have a few topics that they will disagree over for their entire relationship, you know, and will never be solved. This is also research. So it's the way that matters. And I really like the way that Sue Johnson talks about couple conflict as a dance and that you learn the steps in your family growing up and your partner learned the steps in their family growing up and then you come together and you're figuring out the steps in your own dance as a couple and that's clunky at first. The people's toes get stepped on, you're out of sync and out of balance.
And then you can learn new skills, you can learn your dance steps, you can work with a choreographer, a couples therapist who will help you choreograph a dance that's better for you, that works well for you. So no matter what topic comes up, you know the pattern, you know the flow and you actually like when you're done with the conflict, you end up feeling closer and more connected with each other. I love the dance analogy.
Jennie: No, it's a great analogy and I think it also points to the idea of where our expectations come from, which I also talk about in the beginning of the book and our expectations come from lots of different places. But one of them is our culture and our culture is so incredibly influential in our expectations. You're talking about this dance that one of you learned the steps when you were growing up and the other person learned their own steps and then you come together and you got to figure it out how to dance together. Our culture, American culture really really emphasizes the desire for people to be independent human beings.
We value independence so much and so many of our life decisions are based on, is this going to make us more independent or less independent? And when I talk to my students at JMU about this, they're always like, well how do you know that something is a cultural ideal? And I say, well if someone called you it, would you take it as a compliment? Then it's a cultural ideal. So if somebody said to you, wow, you're so independent, would you take that as a compliment? And they go of course, what do you mean? I said some people in other cultures would not so that it would be an…
Laura: An insult.
Jennie: Yeah and be like, what do you mean?
Laura: Being selfish.
Jennie: Yeah, I'm being selfish, like what does that mean? So our whole lives, we are really bred to believe that independence is so, so so important. We talk about personal happiness, we talk about self-care, we talk about you, do you figure out who you are be unique? You know, have your own style, don't follow the crowd. And then we're like, oh yeah, but marriage is also really important.
So I want you to be super independent and then figure out how to share a life with someone where you have to be dependent on them and that independent stuff will actually hurt your marriage. Good luck. And so our culture really sets us up for failure because like I said, we grew up our whole lives feeling like I'm gonna do me. Personal happiness is paramount. Who I am is so important.
And then we're like, oh yeah, but I have to find a partner? I gotta find someone to get married to, because that's also really important. So then I get married and by the way, I need to give up a little bit of who I am. I need to be selfless. I need to care about another person sometimes more than I care about myself.
Ugh, that doesn't sit right. I don't like that. And then marriage is really hard.
Laura: Yeah, it's that me versus we think that's so hard to navigate.
Jennie: It is, it is really, really difficult.
Laura: It is, but possible and doable
Jennie: Definitely possible and it's totally possible. I think we just need to, like I said, change our expectations and one of the best ways to change your expectations is to have those conversations, but to also talk to other people who are in the life stage that you want to be in. I mean, if we spent the same amount of time talking to people who were married as we do planning the wedding, like if you really spent. You know, let's say the average person spends 2000 hours planning a wedding, which I think is kind of small. If you spent 2000 hours interviewing couples who you thought were in good or even bad relationships, you would be so much more prepared for marriage.
So talk to people who are experiencing what you want to experience and say tell it like it is, please be real with me, you know, talk to people and ask them these questions. What was the hardest part of marriage? What's the easiest or funniest or most rewarding part of marriage? I think that people look at their parents, if your parents are still together when you're an adult, they look at their parents when they have their own children, they're like, well I don't remember my parents having such a hard time. This is like, really, you didn't pay attention to your parents when they had toddlers. They were a mess. They were the same as you. Everyone.
Laura: I just had this conversation with my mom. I was like, you didn't know mom like Dan and I were talking just the other day about like how hard it is, how much we don't like adulting, like how like there's so many things you have to think about when you're growing up and I was like, and I don't remember you acting that way at all. And my mom was like Laura, don't you remember how much I complained about having to pay the bills, you know, once a month and I was like, oh I do remember that, but she's like, no, it was hard. you just didn’t notice.
Jennie: Yeah you weren't privy to those conversations and once you were finally old enough to really start paying attention to those things. Your parents were likely out of the baby stage, they were out of the toddler stage. They were dealing with a different age of Children and they were also hiding things from you more.
We're not arguing in front of our 11-year-old, we're going to go argue by ourselves, we're going to hold that. Let's go argue in another room. You just think that your parents didn't experience this. We all did. Every single 30 years old still thinks I feel like a teenager still, how am I an adult? I feel like a kid. I shouldn't be responsible for these things.
Everyone is experiencing that. Every mom or dad of a baby thinks, I can't believe they let me leave the hospital with this thing or I can't believe that this is my life now. I'm a communication professor. I talk about this stuff all day long. I write about it, I speak about it. I, you know, make videos about it. I create memes about all of this stuff and I still, I turned to my husband very frequently and say I didn't think would be like this. I'm very surprised.
Laura: Me too, all the time. I did not know it would be this hard. I never imagined that we'd have these conversations I never thought. Yeah.
Jennie: There's lots of those. And I talk about many of those things that I never thought I'd have to say to my children. Funny things, but also serious things in the book and like I said, I have three boys and I just, the amount of times that I have to tell them to put clothes on or stop peeing on each other or stop touching each other, stop wrestling. You know, my daughter constantly will come to me and she's like, what's wrong with them? Like I don't know!
Laura: Just boys though. The number of times I've said, no vulvas on the furniture, like I can't. No vulvas in the furniture.
Jennie: You're like, how is this my life? We have rules on our refrigerator about where children are allowed to pee and I'm like, how is this my life? And there's three rules. Here's the rules. Yes, we can see the bridge kids are allowed to be if they're inside. It has to be in a toilet and not know it has to be in a toilet if they are outside, it has to be not where we play. So it can't be where we play or walk and it can't and they can't be on each other outside because before it used to just be the first two, and then when they were outside, they peed on each other and they're like, we don't play on our brother. I was like.
Laura: They're so clever.
Jennie: Yeah. So now it's, you can't feed on each other ever.
Laura: You know, Jennie, this is a great example of updating our expectations too is our kids, you know. So I love the, where you mentioned the expectations piece. Like sometimes we don't even know what our expectations are until we're faced with a time when they're not being met. And so like understanding that your expectations will change as your kids get older and as you move into different phases and like sitting down and talking about what your expectations are of your partner and of yourself, even what they are.
Not even the discussion of changing them, but just getting clear on what they actually are. And then you can take a look at are they reasonable or did you know that I was expecting you to do this? You know, like…
Jennie: It's so important.
Laura: It is like one of my like just cultural expectations is that it's going to be my husband who does the changing of the light bulbs.
You know, he's taller than me and he's going to be the one who takes out the trash because I gag if I have to smell it, you know? But there were had to be over conversations about that and conversations around like is it okay that that's my expectation. Are you willing to take on that responsibility for our family and so that I can have it off my plate? You know, those conversations are ongoing and are so important.
Jennie: You have to continue to check-in. I think that people when they move in together, they, whether you're married or not, whether you have children or not. You think that you've had that conversation like the chore conversation now the chores change. I didn't even know some of the things that are on our to-do list. I didn't even know I would ever have to do them until I had to do them.
Laura: Exactly, wow. Okay. I have this workbook and my membership community that's, it's called The Household Balance Workbook and it is 10 pages of things that I commonly hear parents have to do just and full pages of and this workbook I encourage parents to sit down and go through it together and just get how often are you doing these things just visually represent like these are our duties.
Jennie: Yeah. And there's just so many of them. Nobody talks about the fact that after your children are potty trained, you still have to wipe their ass. Why wasn't that in a book? Why didn't someone tell me that you still have to wipe their butts? Yeah. You still have to wipe their butt but still sometimes there's seven. I mean my child went to kindergarten not knowing how to effectively wipe his own. But and so he didn't, he would come home and I'm like you you stink
Laura: We have done kindergarten practice too.
Jennie: We tried, his arms were too short. He just could not reach. But nobody talks about that. You think I'll be changing diapers for a few years and people celebrate when they're done with diapers. Like there's a celebration. It's just a money celebration. The work every single time they go to the bathroom you have to go and see if they need you. You still have to get up and go. And so the work is still there. It's just the money for the diapers, you don't just spend that anymore, but nobody talks about so many of these little jobs that you have to do and that are like daily jobs.
Laura: How can you even know what your expectations are until you're in the moment? That's why it has to be an ongoing conversation because those, I mean those things like as your child, you know, starts to drive like who's responsible for teaching them? Who's responsible for checking to make sure the tire pressure is good and that the oil is changed on kids’ car that you're never in. You know.
Jennie: Yeah, these little things that you, you don't even know how are things.
Laura: Yeah Right. Oh my goodness, So many good conversations. Jennie, I know you've got to run to go teach a class so I'm really grateful for this conversation. I want to make sure that you know all of the links to everything are in the show notes. But sometimes people like to hear it out loud. So can you let us know where people can go to find your work and follow along with you.
Jennie: Yes, you can always find me on Instagram at relationships. Love happiness. You can find me on the web at www dot relationships. Love happiness dot com. You can also search for the Love matters podcast with Dr. Jennie Rosier wherever you listen to podcasts and you can send me a message and I would love to connect with you. I'm also on Youtube and Facebook. Just search for the Relationships Love Happiness Project.
Laura: Awesome. Well thank you so much for being with us. This was so much fun and thank you for sharing all of your research and experience with the world in this way. It was so helpful..
Jennie: Thank you so much.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this.