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PART V - THE MAJOR ISSUES
Children
Children are a treasure and a gift from God. They can be one of the major sources of joy and satisfaction in a marriage. They can also be a huge source of aggravation and stress. They can suck up tremendous amounts of time, money, and energy, and leave a married couple with little left for themselves or each other. Children should be important, but when everything revolves around the children, a marriage suffers.
Balance is sorely lacking in many lives and marriages today. Individuals and couples need time, space, and money to call their own. It is not selfish to do so. On the contrary, unselfishness demands that individuals and couples be in top condition to properly care for their children. Exhaustion and/or resentment on the part of one or both parents, can damage both the children and the marriage.
Finding balance requires excellent communication between parents. They need to decide as a team how to allocate available resources (time, money, and energy), being sensitive to the needs of each other, their relationship, and the children. Tough decisions may have to be made, for example:
- Billy won’t be able to play baseball, track, and soccer all at the same time because of the time demands on Mom and Dad,
- Mary won’t be able to go to the private high school she wants to go to because the impact on the family finances would be just too great,
- etc.
These are family decisions and should be guilt-free and not compared to others’ decisions. Sometimes, though, differences in cultural, religious, or family background make it difficult for parents to resolve conflicts on how to raise the children. In a lot of cases, these differences are relatively minor, and if the communication is good, and a spirit of unselfishness, not martyrdom, prevails, the right decisions for your family can be made. In severe cases, however, where parents cannot agree and the marriage is strained, professional counseling may be required.
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