How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids

by Jancee Dunn

When you have a baby, you set off an explosion in your marriage, and when the dust settles, your marriage is different from what it was. —NORA EPHRON

Research shows that after sleep deprivation, the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala, is much more reactive. Normally, the more rational prefrontal cortex works to put everything into context, but when your brain is sleep deprived, this relationship breaks down—and often, so do you. Suddenly, your responses are way less controlled—and you rip your husband a new one when he unthinkingly slams a door after you’ve just gotten the baby to nap.

on top of basic duties such as cooking and cleaning, women do countless invisible tasks. This is the time-gobbling labor that will likely never show up on any sort of time use study.

Yet another kind of invisible work is called “consumption labor”—buying the kids’ underwear and school supplies, researching the car seat and the high chair. “This often falls to the woman,” says Smock,

“What I hear most often from women,” she says, “is ‘I do not want to be the boss here, I do not want him coming to me and asking me. I want him to take ownership.’”