Babyproof Your Marriage!

No one wants to say it, but everyone knows it’s true: having babies and parenting small children can be pretty tough on a marriage. When couples find themselves struggling through early parenthood, they often think there’s something wrong with them (and only them). The truth is that post-baby bickering and marital stress are normal hazards that come with having a newborn. But just like you can cover the outlets, fence the pool, and block the stairs with baby gates, there are practical steps you can also take to safeguard your marriage.
We talked to Stacie Cockrell, wife, mom and co-author of Babyproofing Your Marriage: How to Laugh More, Argue Less, and Communicate Better as Your Family Grows (HarperCollins). The book offers straight talk on sex, intimacy and surviving life “in the trenches” of early parenthood.

SP: You’ve said you (and co-authors Cathy O’Neill and Julia Stone) wrote this book because you wanted answers to the problems you faced yourselves. How did writing the book affect your own relationships with your husbands?
Our own marriages have improved dramatically! To hear hundreds of other men say the same things our husbands were telling us, really made us take notice and start to understand the male point of view better.

SP: You call the chapter on sex “the most important chapter in this book.” Why is that?
We talked to hundreds of men, and that was their number one issue. They all told us that if they go a week without sex, [it feels to them like] the sky is falling down, the wheels are falling off—things start breaking down. And if they get rejected three or more times, it’s soul-crushing… it really feels devastating to them. Men need to connect with their wives, and they do that through sex. Women, of course, also need to feel connected emotionally, but we more often need to do that verbally before we’re interested in sex.

SP: If readers could take just one thing away from all the practical advice in the book, which suggestion would you recommend most?
We discuss what we call “The Great Mom and Dad Divide”… Men feel what they do [in terms of helping out with the kids and with housework] is never enough, and never good enough [to satisfy their wives], while women feel like, “He just doesn’t get it.” The Babyproofers’ solution? The Training Weekend. Defined in the book’s witty Glossary of Terms as “A 48-hour Navy SEALS-type experience for Dads,” this is a weekend in which Mom takes off and Dad is left to man the family and household duties unassisted. But—Stacie explains—it has to be done right in order for it to work: No backup allowed; no help from the neighbors; no babysitter relief; no Grandma-911. When she asked her own husband if he’d mind watching the kids for a weekend while she went out of town to reconnect with her girlfriends, he responded with a breezy, “Sure—no problem.” Stacie returned to find her husband unshowered, unshaved, surviving on 2-day old pizza, and with a whole new perspective on the work she’d been doing day in and day out since their newborn arrived. He was in shock. After The Training Weekend, he told me, “‘I have no idea how you do it. Now I get it.’” I realized that ‘he just didn’t get it’ because he just hadn’t done it. But after that, he was completely transformed. Now, we work as a team.

SP: Any last words of “Babyproofer” wisdom?
Kids are never the problem. The issue is how we respond to the challenge of parenthood and how we relate to each other as a couple. When we’re “in the trenches” with all the work that comes with having kids, it’s important to remember that the enemy is the work, not each other, and that a happy marriage makes for happy kids.