Keith Urban has an order for his love: it’s Nicole and then his kids.
Welcome to Mamamia’s Top 20. Over the Christmas/New Year period, we’re counting down the most clicked-on, the most commented-on and the most shared posts from throughout 2012 – the posts that you, our lovely readers, enjoyed the most this year.
Number 19: Keith Urban has an order for his love: it’s Nicole and then his kids. This post was written by LANA HIRSCHOWITZ, who is the editor of iVillage.com.au. Lana asks the question ‘is it OK to love your husband more than your kids?’ And we love her honestly reponse.
“Love grows downwards” a friend once said to me. “You will always love your children more than they love you”
And it’s true. I do love my child more than he could possibly love me. In fact I love him more than anyone I have ever loved before and in a completely different way. It’s an emotion and a feeling so strong that the word “love” doesn’t really do it justice.
Yet every time I tell him that I love him more than anyone else on earth he always asks, without fail, “what about daddy?”
Maybe he’s been chatting with the Urban/Kidman children. Country music star Keith Urban (who we have been, “rediscovering” since he appeared on The Voice) recently spoke to the Australian Women’s Weekly about the love he has for his wife Nicole Kidman and their kids.
“We’re very, very tight as a family unit and the children are our life, but I know the order of my love. It’s my wife and then my daughters. I just think it’s really important for the kids.”
“There are too many parents who start to lose the plot a little and start to give all their love to the kids, and then the partner starts to go without. And then everybody loses. As a kid, all I needed to know was that my parents were solid.”
And I so get it from the children’s perspective. I know that my own child needs to know how much I love his father. It makes him feel safe. Maybe I understand this even more having dealt with the divorce of my own parents at age 10.
There was no doubt my parents no longer loved each other when I was a child, but all I really wanted was that they both love me. Selfish? Maybe. Immature? Probably. Their loving me was going to keep me safe when they no longer had each other.
Keith Urban is not the first person to publicly declare his love for his partner over his love for his children. Ayelet Waldman caused a public outcry in 2005 when she wrote an essay for The New York Times. Talking about the birth of her daughter she wrote:
Ayelet Waldman
She looked like a newborn baby, red and scrawny, blotchy faced and mewling. I don’t remember what I said to my husband. Actually I remember very little of my Percocet- and Vicodin-fogged first few days of motherhood except for someone calling and squealing, “Aren’t you just completely in love?” And of course I was. Just not with my baby.
I do love her. But I’m not in love with her. Nor with her two brothers or sister. Yes, I have four children. Four children with whom I spend a good part of every day: bathing them, combing their hair, sitting with them while they do their homework, holding them while they weep their tragic tears. But I’m not in love with any of them. I am in love with my husband.
If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.
It was something seldom said. Something that seemed almost taboo. Imagine saying that you love your partner more than you love your child? Even if it’s true. And why do we as a society find that so hard to hear?
Lana Hirschowitz
Her honesty won her a spot on Oprah, it spawned a book and it certainly allowed mothers to look at the way they feel about their children with a little more honesty. Surely it doesn’t make you a bad mother if you love your husband more than you love your child and certainly not if you love them in a different way.
I’ve spent a lot of time ruminating on my love for my husband. And of course for my child but I can’t control the depth of feeling that I have for my child. The love I have for him is so hugely different to the love that I have for his father.
He’s got his father in him and I love that about him – but I also love all the other parts that make him my son – the bits of me, the parts of my own parents and my siblings that I see in him. Some days I even love the parts of him that clearly come from my husband’s side of the family. He represents all the good in my life and truth be told as much as I love my husband, and I do, there is no greater love I know than the love for my own child.
And he’s just going to have to deal with it. Even if Keith Urban thinks it’s dangerous.
Michelle Obama with Malia and Sasha
Do you love your kids more than you love your partner? Do you think your parents loved you as much as they loved each other?
Comments
14 Comments so far
I love my husband more than anyone else. I’m more afraid of losing him than anyone else. Wait. Before that statement freaks you out. My feeling being that if the worst happened and we were to lose one of the boys, we’d help each other, and the other child survive. But were we all to lose him – I can’t bear the thought. My breath catches and my heart races and I start to panic.
I love him more than anything. But. While my children are children, he and I both know – their needs will come first. Their needs have to take priority over ours.
It works though. Because my goodness, all 4 of us have an astonishing amount of love to share. This family is one of those much sneered about over-the-top in love with each other families. And I, personally am grateful for it.
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My mother told me that she loved my father more than us when we were little (I had asked her who do you love more) and I was really hurt. I also think as time went by and that became more apparent for both my mother and my father they were each others priority and it ruined the parent child relationships. I dont recommend this approach to parenting.
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At the end of each day, when I’ve finished caring for the kids, working and looking after house chores I’m not sure I have anything left for my husband.
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I understand that feeling too (despite my earlier comment). He knows that while my children are young (while they are minors) they’re going to get my energy and most of my focus. No matter how much I love him, he’s a grown man who doesn’t technically ‘need’ me to take care of him. They do, so they win. (If that makes sense).
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I agree totally, I grew up knowing both my parents loved me but they also loved each other but it was different. Now I have a daughter I love her more than I could ever of known but it’s different to how much I love my husband. My parents will be married forty years soon and are still very much in love and they still love me, but it’s just different can’t compare!
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We don’t play favourites in our house.
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I love my children and husband in completely different ways it’s not comparable. I will always love my children but one day they will become independent people and have families of their own who they will love more. I hope that my husband and I will still be together then and just as much in love as we are now.
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I love my husband and my daughter in different ways, but I love my daughter more.
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My mother has always been very open about the fact the she chose my father, but did not choose us. That is, she loves him more and he comes first.
Problem was he was an abusive parent and she always took his side. No matter what.
For me now, as a 37 mum of 2, the love I feel formy boys is very different to the love I have for my husband.
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I can’t really grade them because the love I have for my husband is different to the love I have for my children. Neither is more or less, it’s like the apples and oranges comparison. That’s how I feel anyway
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I agree that my love is very different. My husband is amazing and I love having so many plans with him for when we are grey. I love my kids. I spend everyday with them nurturing them and loving them. They are wonderful. But I can hardly wait til they move out and are established adults so I can have hubby to myself again.
I think it certainly is apples and oranges.
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I agree with Keith on this. Whilst I don’t have kids, I grew up with parents who not once showed any affection towards each other. As a kid, this used to make me angry and confused. I know they love each other, but ‘in love’ has always been questionable, and I know this has affected the way my relationships have panned out over the years. So, please, show your love to your partner first, it makes the kids happier, believe me.
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Love my kids and husband the same
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At my baby shower, everyone wrote tips for me in a book; best nappies to buy, comments about lack of sleep etc, etc, etc
My mum was the only person who wrote about my marriage. She said “love and take care of each other, and everything else will take care of itself.” Wise words from a woman married to my father for 43 years. 6 years on, it is still working for us!!
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