A woman I know from work has three great kids, only one of whom is still at home. All three were bright, well-behaved kids expected to do well in school and in life. I once asked her what the hardest thing about raising her kids was, thinking it must have been effortless. (Yeah, how would I know?) She surprised me by telling me that having teenagers really put a stress on her marriage. That there’s just more tension, more at stake, when they’re more often away from home, finding out who they are and who they want to be, dealing with peer pressure, etc.
Did anyone else find this to be the case? Are even Perfect Teens harder on the parents’ marriage than Perfect Kids? I’m not quite sure I believed her (or understood her, anyway).
I’m not a parent myself, but I can safely say that I made my parents pretty miserable during my own teen years. No serious trouble, but the emotions and hormones at that age make drama almost a certainty.
I think it was in the book “Stumbling on Happiness” where I saw a graph showing that parents generally become increasingly unhappy as their kids get older until things totally hit rock bottom during the teen years…then things get better once the kids finally grow up.
I dunno. We’ve had some rocky times throughout our 20 years of marriage, but the last couple - while our 3 kids were teens - have been about the best yet.
I think it may be because the issues and such seem so much more real and important. When you have young kids you spend your time wiping asses and worrying about things that matter to a little kid - play dates, what activities to enroll them in, and such. To some extent they are so helpless, irrational, and inexperienced that the parent has to be more constantly aware and protective of them. I found that stressful.
By the time they are teens, they seem much closer to fully formed individuals. You can see who they are, instead of worrying about who they will become. They have personalities and interests, and are able to communicate more clearly.
Plus, you’ve got that many more years of a track record to rely on. Every situation is not the first time, and both parents and kids have a better idea of what the other is capable of and expects.
Not to mention - by the time they are teens, the finish line is within sight!
Those years were hard on our marriage (which wasn’t great to begin with). Four kids, one of whom was involved with drugs and unsavory friends. Dealing with her problems took a lot of time away from the three boys. She’s fine now, but the boys were shortchanged, and one of them still resents that she got all the attention for being “bad” while he was pretty much perfect and was (he thinks) ignored.
It would have helped immensely if my husband and I agreed on how to handle things, but we argued about it all the time and ended up being pretty ineffective.
Maybe that’s part of why Dinsdale’s experience was better – a united front, similar notions on child rearing, a real partnership with your spouse.
That’s probably a good part of it. A common enemy brought us closer together!
Another thing is, when your kids are young, you are putting so much effort to achieve relatively small results. A lot of young kids’ school projects, activities, and accomplishments aren’t exactly all that impressive. A lot of your effort is spent on teaching basic life skills.
Whereas by the time they are teens, they are actually doing things that are impressive. You start to see all of your years of hard work parenting pay off.
I think this is very important. My husband and I have two teenagers (and a seven-year-old). Our oldest is 19 (will be 20 in June), and is currently living with her boyfriend. She was our problem child. Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, suicidal ideations, suicide attempts, self-mutilation, bipolar, borderline personality. Our marriage was not strained by this, but most likely would have been if we had disagreed on how to handle it.
My middle daughter, who will be 16 in just a couple of weeks, is your quintessential “perfect” kid. Her biggest flaws are that she’s very prone to worry, and she forgets to do her chores. But she’s very bright, a joy to spend time with, and a huge help with the little one. Not only can I not see that she causes any stress in the marriage, but she probably even helps the marriage, because when hubby and I want to have a date night, we’ve got a built-in babysitter who doesn’t charge!
I will say that, if the relationship isn’t strong to begin with, parenting in general can be very stressful to the relationship.
Oh yes. I was pleasantly surprised when my 16-year-old was promoted to produce manager at the grocery store where he worked. He initially thought a kiwi was a lime that had gone bad, but his friendly attitude, work ethic, and attention to detail impressed his boss.
Honestly, I think even a strong relationship can hit problems if there are honest disagreements about child-rearing–a person can be very open to compromise and sacrifice when it’s about them, but when you start talking about compromise and sacrifice over what you think is best for your kid . . . that’s different. I don’t have kids, but I teach teenagers, and I see this a lot. Another problem is that competing visions of the kids can reach a crisis: you can have a kid that mom wants to be the next [sober] Hemmingway and Dad wants to be a pro baseball player, and for the first 16 years their really isn’t pressure compromise–kid can be prepping for both fates. But at some point those goal become mutually exclusive, and it gets more complicated.
My son was quite a handful. He put quite a bit of stress on both my wife and me, which caused us to sometimes go at each other out of frustration. Not very often, though, and it was never anything where our marriage itself was stressed. Again, we had a common, er, challenge. My son’s a really nice guy now, BTW.
However, there are still times when our kids, esp. our 22-year-old daughter at the moment, raise our blood pressure quite a bit. But it’s nothing like the teenage hell.
I didn’t mean to imply that people with strong relationships don’t disagree over child-rearing. I simply meant that, if the relationship isn’t strong to begin with, parenting a kid of any age can stress the relationship. Obviously, happily married people can, and do, disagree about many things. I just think that the main reason raising such a difficult teen didn’t stress my marriage is that we didn’t disagree on a basic level, about how to approach the problems.
I’m in the “teenagers are pretty cool to be around” camp of parents. Yes, there are some stressful and challenging times, but overall we really enjoy watching our kids develop into young adults. It helps that we’re on the last two of six, so the finish line is very, very close.
Honestly, it was harder with our foster teens who joined our family at a time when kids naturally begin to separate from their parents a bit and they had to juggle bonding and separating at the same time … that was fun :rolleyes: but worthwhile in the long run.
Now that we’re down to AdoptaTeens, who we’ve parented since their respective births, it’s a lot easier because we KNOW they know the basics of how to be a good, honest, upstanding, honorable person and that even if they are deviating from it right this very minute that they have that core base of knowledge to fall back on when they decide to act human again. That assurance alleviates a great deal of stress. It helps that we’re older now, and have learned that when the shit hits the fan that a raincoat is a good thing to have
This is a topic I won’t usually discuss on the boards because of the possibility there are family members lurking, but…
I got married a little over a year ago and we both brought teenagers from previous marriages. (His don’t stay with us all the time.) The teenagers don’t really care for each other, they are at different maturity levels, different financial situations, and have been raised with widely different parenting philosophies. So far, they have been the only stress on the marriage.
Daughter is 17. I think there’s less kid-related stress on our marriage now than there was when she was younger. As Dinsdale said, we’re feeling a little more that we’re “over the hump” with her. Some of the things she does still drive us bananas, but we’re beginning to see the effects of all the angst we put ourselves through second-guessing everything and flying by the seat of our pants. The actual concerns are scary - now we’ve got cars and boys and unsupervised social settings rather than “be nice and share and don’t pick your nose” issues - but as we watch her make choices we’re seeing that she’s making pretty good ones.
The stress on our marriage NOW, however, is that a great portion of our life together has revolved around the kid, and now that she relies on us less for the day-to-day stuff, we’re having to get to know one another as PEOPLE (rather than as parents) again.
Ah, yes! What I wouldn’t have given (during the toughest years) for a script writer, a hair and makeup and wardrobe guy, a live-in housekeeper, and a guarantee of no problem that couldn’t be solved in 22 minutes or less!
Guess I will have to disagree with the majority here. We have 2 teens, and the stress level is incredibly high. Between the sports schedules, homework and sibling rivalry we’re strung pretty tight. My wife and i do not disagree over any basic parenting issues, but the scheduling and constant teen drama are taking a huge toll on us. Our eldest, 16 yr old girl is in danger of failing most of her classes and is in counseling. She requires huge amounts of supervision even at her age since she can’t or won’t take any responsibility for her academic performance. Son, 13 is quite a bit different. He does just fine academically, but has sooo many sports that he’s got obligations most evenings. And he and his sister fight like cats and dogs; really mean vicious stuff. Sometimes i can’t wait until the two of them are gone so we can have some peace and quiet.
Yeah, I can imagine if a teen has significant behavioral problems - failing classes and needing counseling - that could be quite stressful. I consider myself fortunate to have dodged that kind of bullet, and am certain my efforts would likely have been far less fruitful had I been even slightly less lucky.
I’m not sure about the sports “overscheduling” stress, because to some extent it strikes me as self-imposed. (None of our kids has ever been into competitive sports, but I believe last fall my youngest was playing in 6 different musical groups. Which was too much.) We bought our present house because it was within walking distance of the grade and high schools. Just about every time a new semester starts or a kid considers a new activity, we sit down with them and discuss how it will fit in their - and the family’s - schedule, and whether it will affect their existing committments. And when someone seems to be overcommitted, we have no qualms about recommending that they cut back on something.
The sibling rivalry is indeed a tough one. My 2 youngest have never been the best of friends, and often they seem to put an awful lot of effort into perceiving and responding to slights from the other. Again with the family meetings. And following some pretty direct discussions and follow-up we’ve been making pretty good progress over the last several months. Essentially, we told them we simply would not tolerate that type of behavior because of the stress it imposed on the entire family. We pointed out and discussed every instance of such behavior when it occured, instead of waiting for an eventual firestorm. And we outlined a series of progressive punishments that would be meted out to both parties upon any infraction.
I know my 17-year old son in particular didn’t care for it when we observed: “Right now we are discussing colleges, which will involve us paying tens if not a hundred thousand dollars. We want you to realize that we don’t HAVE to do that. How you behave towards your sister is your choice. And if you choose to be unpleasant to your sister and make our homelife unpleasant, we can just kick your ass out of the house when you turn 18.”
I think we can be pretty lenient, forgiving, understanding, and loving parents. But there’s a line of stuff we just won’t tolerate. Kinda surprizes the kids when they get reality thrown in their face.
Our marriage definitely was strained with the older kid, who was hell on wheels. (Caught drinking, driving, 2am phone call from the police etc etc.)
I was constantly in the middle between the kid and his dad. For awhile, my husband and I even undermined each other, which did nobody any good. I wanted to trust the kid more, the husband wanted total domination.
Then during the final agonies of 12th grade finally we pulled it together. The kid was fine after he got away from our clutches and went off to college.
The younger one has been an angel, probably partly because he’s just not such a risk-taker, and partly because he remembers how it was with big brother.
