Parenting is believed to be one of the most sacred relationships in the world. Experts say parenting not only helps in building trust among the couple but also makes them emotionally stronger. In an ideal parenting scenario, one partner always has the back of the other and hence they go through a lot of emotions together, which, otherwise they wouldn’t have ever experienced in their lives. Plus, they get to share the parenting responsibilities making it easy for both the partners to spend time with the child, the family and also on their personal needs. Many couples have shared the fact that it was parenting which brought them together as parenting has the magical power to bind the couples in an emotional relationship.
But sadly, that’s not the reality. Parenting is increasingly becoming one person affair, where the moms take care of the child, the family and also other chores of the house, most of the time, while the father tends to spend time for personal purposes. In fact, the sharing of responsibilities of parenting has gone down to such ridiculous levels that, ladies’ have started revealing that the stress of managing the husband is way more than the stress experienced by them while managing the child. What this essentially means is that, not only do the husband’s not contribute much time in parenting the child, they also increase the burden on their wives by not taking up as many responsibilities as they should. The stress of managing the husband have gone to such levels that, women share that they look at their husband as an extra baby in the house.
46% of the 7000 women who took part in the survey conducted by Today, shared that they feel husbands as a larger source of stress than the children. It might take some time for you to digest this fact, but the truth is that women are increasingly finding their men to be more troublesome than their children.
Deno Fleno, one of the moms who was surveyed revealed her frustration by saying, “A 7-year-old kid is going to be a seven-year-old kid. But a 35-year-old acting like a 7-year-old is more stressful because they should know better”.
The surveyed found out that an average level of stress level for women is extremely high at around 8.5 on a scale of 10, which can have extremely dangerous consequences, if not addressed at the earliest.
A lady says that she gets exhausted both mentally and physically when her husband comes home. She feels managing her husband is one of the jobs she does. When asked about sharing the household tasks, women scoffed and said that it is they who perform the major work at home. Interestingly, about 75% of the respondents feel that their husband does not help in performing the daily chores and hence they have to single-handedly attend every other work that needs to be done at home. Sadly, one in five women is stressed out on a daily basis just because of the fact that their husband does not take enough responsibility and interest in performing household chores.
Many women feel that they are figuring out the aspects of parenting alone, without any inputs from their better half. Some go on to mention that even though they also work as many hours as their husband does outside the house when it comes to household chores, it is they who have to all the work. The worst part, some moms point out is that, because they take complete responsibility of parenting and are looking after the needs and behavior of the child single-handedly, they alone will be blamed, if something goes wrong.
One of the ladies’ mentioned that her husband gets all the time in the world, whereas she is always short of time. I cannot even take a relaxing bath, as suddenly out of nowhere my husband will bring the crying baby and hand it over to me, she adds.
You might be surprised by the results of the survey and because of some of the comments made by women about her husband, but the experts aren’t surprised. Therapist, Hal Runkel, is one among those experts who don’t seem to be surprised by the results of the survey and feels that communicating the thoughts is most important when it comes to having a successful relationship be it marriage or parenting.
Though there’s no doubt that the couples have to share the responsibilities jointly and communicate to one another about what are they good at and what not, they also have to show trust on the other partner. There have been many cases where men have reported that they want to contribute and help their wives when it comes to parenting but do not do so as their wife doesn’t trust them enough and hence takes singular responsibility of looking after the child. Also, this situation of the stress of raising a child and looking after the family has gained importance and making news for all the wrong reasons because the society is moving towards the concept of nuclear family with each passing day. Earlier when people used to stay in joint families, stress like these was very rare. Hence, we do think that there are solutions available to keep stress like these at bay, but one has to take the first and most important step.
