How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids

by Jancee Dunn

couples often fall into a pattern of demand and retreat—most often, the woman demands and the man retreats. This dynamic has arisen, she says, because men have less to gain by changing their behavior, while women are more likely to want to alter the status quo—which means they also initiate more fights.

As it happens, men really might be oblivious. Researchers from the UK’s Mindlab International measured subconscious brain activity in sleeping men and women and found that while a baby’s crying was the number one nighttime sound most likely to wake up a woman, it didn’t even figure into the male top ten—lagging behind car alarms. And strong wind.

“One of the most insidious and probably profoundly dangerous coping mechanisms that we have absolutely glommed on to as a culture is staying busy,” she tells me. “And the whole unconscious idea behind it is ‘If I stay busy enough, I will never know the truth of how absolutely pissed off I am, how resentful I am, how exhausted I am from juggling everything.’”

As child psychologists like to repeat, kids often register what you do more than what you say. I can’t count the number of soaring speeches I gave to our daughter about how girls—and women—can do anything. Girls rule! Then why was she given to observations like “Moms do the boring stuff, and dads do the fun stuff”? Because day after day, it was her mom who was doing the boring stuff. That is what she saw, so that was what she knew. Again: you can’t be what you can’t see.