Author and mum of seven Constance Hall is the Queen of Truths.
In a raw and poignant Instagram post on Tuesday, Hall has described the effect on her marriage of having her baby, Raja, who was born in May; the first child with husband Denim Cooke.
“The first time you have a baby you’ll notice a few injustices,”she wrote. But then she says something many mothers know to be true; with each subsequent child, you either become accustomed to the injustices – or you leave your marriage.
“The second time you have a baby you’ll be used to them. And the third you could accept it or you could just move out.”
The injustices which Hall speaks of are due to the significant imbalance in parenting that most couples experience in the first year after a baby is born. As Hall explains, it’s something she’s very concerned about, “because I don’t want the stats to keep growing on relationships breaking up in the first year of a baby being born.”
You won’t find the statistics Hall’s talking about reported in the Census results – because it’s not a direct question that’s asked. But the incredible stress a partnership experiences after a child is born is regularly discussed widely by academics, professionals, and of course, parents, world wide.
Speaking to Mamamia, a family therapist from Relationships Australia confirmed that, “Many couples do find the first year after childbirth stressful on their relationship, and seek counselling as a result. They also commonly experience an ongoing decline in marital satisfaction.”
The main causes for discord include factors such as sleep-deprivation, transitioning to one income, and a dire lack of personal time; but arguments about the changed roles in the couple place a particular stress on many couples.
In 2016, The Conversation published a piece called, Decades of Studies Show What Happens to Marriages After Having Kids, which said, “On average, couples’ satisfaction with their marriage declines during the first years of marriage and, if the decline is particularly steep, divorce may follow.”
The author, Matthew D. Johnson, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Marriage and Family Studies Laboratory at Binghamton University in New York, cited research about the challenging – and sometimes catastrophic – affects on couples after children.
“For around 30 years, researchers have studied how having children affects a marriage, and the results are conclusive: the relationship between spouses suffers once kids come along. Comparing couples with and without children, researchers found that the rate of the decline in relationship satisfaction is nearly twice as steep for couples who have children than for childless couples. In the event that a pregnancy is unplanned, the parents experience even greater negative impacts on their relationship.”
The almost-universal experience is what makes Hall’s post so brutally honest – and relatable. In it, she carefully explains how the imbalances have affected her.
“I carry the mental load of our baby. I know when he’s hungry, tired or needs a bath.”
She observes that the situation is not dependent on her husband’s participation. His contribution, which he happily makes, is almost ‘the icing on the cake’ – which she finds infuriating. The frustrated mum provides a recent example to explain her point:
“The other day I was giving my husband a kick up the arse to get ready quicker so we weren’t late and he turns to me and says.. “Calm down, Iv [sic] been looking after the baby all morning…. for you..” Wait what? For who? Oh me? Doing me a favour? Hang on should I get you some cash?”
Hall also notes the imbalance between her husband’s personal freedom, and hers:
“When I need to leave the house without the baby I must book it in, ‘darling I’m going to the shops, you have Raja, I’ll be 20 mins’. Nobody reminds me that I have my baby when they leave.”
Hall admits she is exhausted, and explains her state of mind as “brain fried”, and that she’s tired of “single handedly micro managing every member of this god forsaking family!!!!”
She also explains that she’s not trying to “bag blokes.” Indeed, far from simply complaining, Hall’s point is expressed perfectly in the conclusion to her post:
“Equality doesn’t mean shit if it doesn’t start in the home and what better place to start showing your kids what equality looks like then when they first arrive on this beautiful world.”
And it’s that important conversation that Hall is now trying to start.
Top Comments
To be fair, the issue of women taking up the majority of mental labour in households is not new, nor is Hall the first to address it in the public domain. It's a worthy topic of conversation, but let's not act as though it's her new invention/Kween movement, please.
How many of these cases start with the mother setting an initial dominance of the baby and then this precedent entrenches over time? If dad goes back to work after a couple of weeks this precedent further entrenches. You then have the mother gaining a huge amount of experience around caring for the child and the father being a novice. The whole situation is a self fulfilling prophecy.
...Only this phenomenon exists in household domains other than child rearing, too. It doesn't take a specialized set of skills to proactively do domestic chores (it's not as though they are holding back because they don't know how to clean a dish!), but many men don't do so - they need to be asked or rostered.