A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom

Real Talk: Marriage After Kids

• Charmaine • Season 1 • Episode 11

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Balancing marriage, parenthood, and financial goals can feel like a juggling act, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. 

In this episode of A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home Mom podcast, Charmaine reflects on how new stages in family life have influenced not only their economic choices but her and her husband's marriage. 

She shares personal stories as well as tips for fueling the marriage fire in the midst of big changes. Join us for this enriching discussion, and don't forget to share your thoughts, tips, and questions for future episodes!

Speaker 1:

Hey there and welcome to another episode of the Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom podcast where we chat about entrepreneurship, mom life and earning a side income as a busy mom. I'm your host, charmaine, and I am so happy you're here. I just got done wrapping up a mini-series about marketing for small business. If you are thinking of starting a business or you already have and you're not sure about the marketing piece, you might want to listen to those episodes. They were the last three numbers let's see eight, nine and ten, so those are worth checking out. If you have a small business, likely there will be some sort of promotion or marketing that you'll need to do for that, unless you're already a celebrity and everyone knows you. But check out those episodes if you're interested. And we are actually nearing the overall end of the season, the first season of Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom, so that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

I do have at least two more episodes, including this one, in my pocket for you all, and so the topic of this episode is a little different than the past three, but still within the theme of the whole podcast, and that comes from a listener question. I actually went on just my personal Instagram, where I've been sharing so far about the podcast and asked if people have questions or topics they're interested in within this sort of niche of family and economic life. Family and finance, I would say, is kind of the overlap of what I like to talk about. And so I did get a listener question and that was all about marriage after kids and I thought this was a good question and maybe not so often talked about, and so I wanted to dive into, you know, what we personally experienced in our marriage after having kids and then any insights, any tips we're not gurus by any means, but some helpful things I think. So I would love to share that today. And you know, if you're thinking what does marriage and kids have to do with increasing household income? As a busy mom, I think you know marriage and family is a powerful force for finance. Actually, the longer I'm married, or maybe just the older I get, the more I view our role in the economy is centered in and around the family.

Speaker 1:

The old way I used to view sort of my place in this economy was very shaped by going through the typical school system and sort of how when you go through the public school system. At least, nothing against public schools, but there is this goal of achieving either college or career, and usually leaning towards college. Especially in my time, it was very emphasized that to succeed you would go to college, and so I did that. I did well at school. I did well at college, you know, was in my early 20s when I started my career. But I think this is sort of a whole mindset where you're constantly thinking of how you can get a job, you can serve an employer and you know how can they serve you in return through salary and benefits, and then at a certain age, when you get old enough, you retire and you just hope that you have enough saved up or in your pension, 401k, whatever, and that's sort of the typical route and the typical, I guess, american way of viewing economic models, I suppose. But I've reframed that in the last couple of years while I was forming my family.

Speaker 1:

A really great book I would recommend, and it's not fancy at all. It is sort of an older book but it is chock full of really hardcore information but also so many lessons to learn from it. And it is called Amish Enterprise and it focuses on the Amish. And no, you don't have to go out and become Amish after reading this book, but you can learn a lot of lessons from this ethno-religious culture and I did, in fact and it's interesting to me that they don't view their place in the world like this. They are not eager to go out and serve an employer.

Speaker 1:

Most Amish, at least in the book and historically, have aimed to work together as a family through their own business and usually on a farm, farm setting and the farm business, and this keeps the entire family on one property. This keeps the entire family on one property, you know, together, working alongside each other. So you know, even if the mother might be more typically working inside the household and raising children, she can also be free to help out on the farm, and then if the father figure is more typically working out on the farm, he's still not going too far, you know, as opposed to going out every single day out of the household to work for another employer. And then another thing is like these Amish usually, generally speaking, do not depend on government assistance or employer assistance. They really want to rely on themselves, employer assistance. They really want to rely on themselves, their families and their church community to help them with, you know, any needs that come up.

Speaker 1:

So reading that and then just experiencing our life as we've shifted more towards this. My husband had a great job that we both loved him in a couple years ago, but then he shifted to self-employment and that's been a whole journey but it's been worth it to us. And I also work in the school system as a substitute part-time, but my goal is to be self-employed as well through my own business. So really we're trying to bring our employment, our work, back into the home almost, and all of that to say. That's why I think it's important to have discussions about marriage and family while we're having these finance discussions, because I at least I can't split up the two, like they're all, they're all together in this topic. If you're also interested and marriage and family, having kids and also that book about the Amish, check it out. It's called Amish Enterprise. Stay tuned for this episode.

Speaker 1:

Before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my business, effective Media, by Charmaine. If you're a business owner, you're good at what you do, you have a quality product or service, but you're just not sure how to explain that to the world adequately or you don't have the time. Let me help you out. I can save you from spinning your wheels and wasting time on the internet. With my background in copywriting, blogging websites and more, I can help you craft your media into meaningful content that supports your business. From media strategy to website copy, to social media content creation, to even ghostwriting your founder's story, I want to make your media work for you and not the other way around. The easiest way to get in touch with me is through my website, bysharmainecom. That's B-Y-C-H-A-R-M-A-I-N-Ecom. Hurry over and fill out a contact form to get in touch with me. So let's get started.

Speaker 1:

The listener question was about our marriage after having kids, and so I will truly tell all in this episode. So a little bit about our story is that we were me and my husband met and were married in our late 20s. We had a short relatively short, I would say dating and engagement period and we were married literally one year from meeting in person to marriage. It took one year, and then we had a year or so about a year and a half before we had our daughter and then. So that was our early 30s where we had our daughter. I'm pregnant with our second child, and that's just our story. You might be able to relate to elements of that or yours is completely different, but I think you know if you have a completely different situation, take what you want from this talk, but also you might have to adjust for your needs, right Like at this age. We both had some years in our career and we were able to work in our careers for a while, but also we, I think we were very decisive and ready to make the next move and I'm glad that we did that. I'm glad that we had a relatively short dating engagement time period to get to marriage and I'm glad that we also didn't wait too long before having kids after getting married and I know that's not always within couples' control, but it was good timing for us and we've been blessed.

Speaker 1:

So what is the state of the union or state of our marriage after kids? Well, I would say overall it's been challenging, but good. It's definitely different. And, yeah, one reason that I wouldn't say suggest waiting too long after marriage to have kids is because you get used to a certain way of life, a lifestyle, and that flips upside down when you have kids. It doesn't matter. You know what kind of kid you have. They will change each aspect of your life, pretty sure. I'll just unilaterally throw that out there, but no, it's been good. The opportunity to see the other person take on these different tasks and roles has been really amazing and encouraging to me. I love seeing my husband take on new roles, like as a father and even you know, there's new things that he does all of the time because our child is growing and changing. So I would say, in general, it's been good. We can always put in maybe some more effort and work into our marriage, but I think overall we have already put some effort and work into it and we're seeing the benefits of that.

Speaker 1:

Do I have any advice? Maybe you are a couple who's married and thinking about having kids, or you already have had kids, but I don't know. You haven't had a chance to really reflect then. Yeah, I think this is a good conversation to have Just two main pieces of advice that I would say and again, I don't give this advice as an expert. We're still very much learning and we've had help from mentors in this as well. So please don't take this as I know everything, but my first main piece of advice would be to weed the garden, and I'm sort of taking this verbiage from Paul David Tripp in his book called Marriage, highly recommend. Like if you and your husband or you and your spouse go through any one book together, it should be Marriage Six Gospel Commitments Every Couple Needs to Make. This was recommended to me by my pastor, so helpful I would say. Mainly this is for people who practice Christianity, but even if you don't, you can draw some good points from it.

Speaker 1:

But basically, just like anything in your life, I'm finding this is a revelation of adulthood and you know people talk about the struggle of adulting and I can relate. But I'm also learning to get used to the fact that if you add something to your life, I have to expect to maintain it right. You have to work to maintain something that you add to your life. So if you're adding a new person into your life a marriage, a baby, a child you know those things are going to take work to maintain. Just like you wouldn't let a garden just grow rampant. You know the default is entropy, right. So weed the garden, take care of it, take care of your marriage, like specifically. I know sometimes we work for maintaining our family unit, but I think it's worth kind of separating that out and thinking specifically of ways that you can build up your marriage as well, not just your entire family. What kind of work can you do to maintain and keep up your marriage, to grow it, to edify it?

Speaker 1:

Pursuing the person. You know, once you are married you are no longer in this pursuing phase, you're not wooing or impressing the person, pursuing phase, you're not wooing or impressing the person. So a lot of the sweet little things, thoughtful things, that you might have done for the other person start to vanish and it really helps if you continue to pursue that person, to be thoughtful. And in the season of especially having kids newborns, you know, busy raising kids in this busy time, I understand it's not always possible to go above and beyond and do the sweet thing in the ways that you're used to. But maybe I don't know a nice gesture would be men washing your wife's bottles and pump parts. You know, if she's nursing, that's very nice. Or even you know your wife is super tired at the end of a long day with the newborn, you offer to draw her a warm bath. You know, light the candles and get that ready while you put the baby to bed, something like that. I'm just I'm coming up with some ideal scenarios, but things like that.

Speaker 1:

Ways that I try to pursue and add in sweet gestures for my husband is he is a big fan of sweet tea, very, very sweet tea, and I will try to each week make him his pitcher of homemade sweet tea and have that ready to go cool in the fridge for when he comes home from work, and so that's one thing I do Occasionally. I'll try to cook his favorite meal or you know just anything I can think of that would lift his spirits. Sometimes I will, me and my daughter will hop in the car and go get some sort of favorite food for him and bring it to his work for lunch. So you know, just thinking of the other person I could do better at this, by the way. But other ways to weed the garden confessing, confessing your wrongs, asking for forgiveness and reconciling super important. Paul David Tripp's book talks about confessing and forgiving a lot, and I think implicitly, we know it's important but we don't actually act on this a lot of times. So we have to literally work on this habit.

Speaker 1:

And then I would say specifically praying for your marriage. I don't know if you pray with your spouse, but a lot of times our prayers end up being for the general well-being of the family. But what if we started to pray specifically for our marriage and I think that's important to do regularly and then another way to weed the garden is just to have regular times of being together and this could look like a regular date night. You know you can set up whatever system works for you, but I would say, you know, emphasis on the regular. If you end up doing like a fly by the seat of your pants date night, one every two years, I don't think that's enough to be as intentional with preserving your marriage as you could be. And I am preaching to the choir because we struggle with coming up with systems. We don't have a regular date night right now.

Speaker 1:

I would say we try to do something together where we're learning at least once a year. Even if there was this conference at my church and it was the topics weren't on marriage specifically, the topics were just about like theological topics. But it was an all-day workshop and you know our relatives did babysit, thankfully, and but I called it our marriage conference, quote-unquote, just because that was like a whole day we could spend together, just because that was like a whole day we could spend together and learning together, improving ourselves, sharpening our minds, and it really was just this time of relaxation and being together. For you it could look like I know some couples do this. I would like to but like regular goal setting together, whether this is at the start of a new year or the start of your anniversary, wherever that may fall. Maybe at least once a year doing kind of a big event, getting babysitters going out, hopefully somewhere fun, or relaxing and just being with your spouse, but also goal setting together. I think that's a really good idea. So, even if it's like an annual thing, that is still a regular system of being with your spouse alone. And, yes, you can still do a ton of things with kids. You know you can have date night with your child, you can bring your child, you know, out to eat, and that's fine too. But I do think there should be times of regular getting together with only your eat, and that's fine too, but I do think there should be times of regular getting together with only your spouse. But that's just my personal feelings about it.

Speaker 1:

My second major piece of advice is to just adjust expectations for the season of having kids, of raising kids, and each season will look different. I'm not trying to justify focusing only on the kids, or even mainly on the kids. I think sometimes we can fall into that trap and we're like, okay, we have this mindset that raising kids is short term, which it really is, but if you solely focus on the children at this time, then you might be neglecting parts of your marriage right On the other side. You know, if you never adjust your expectations for the season of having and raising children, then you're just going to be frustrated with these unmet expectations. The period of like pregnancy and postpartum is going to be very physically intense for both the husband and the wife. The woman is using a lot of her body and her energy to sustain this new tiny human being and hopefully dad as well is involved in the care of this newborn. You know this newborn who is demanding pretty much 24-7 care of some sort, and so it's really unrealistic at that point in the newborn phase to expect that you're going to serve each other in all of the normal ways. So I do think there needs to be a re-evaluation of expectations for short-term periods of time. These could be short, intense periods.

Speaker 1:

I'm not saying you would just focus on the child only. There are ways, even during the most intense periods, that you can be there for your spouse, even if it's just, you know, making eye contact and smiling or a hug or a touch on the shoulder to say, hey, I'm here for you. I think there are ways to go about it, but you know, definitely in different stages you can expect different things from your kids and within your marriage. I hope I'm drawing a very, very nuanced point here that you don't want to go too far into either, ditch of like completely expecting your marriage to look like it did before kids, but also not completely focusing on kids and neglecting your marriage if that makes sense. So those would be my pieces of advice and we've tried to follow them. We're still working too.

Speaker 1:

We are actually in the middle of reading the marriage book. But again, I would completely recommend this book. It's Marriage Six Gospel Commitments Every Couple Needs to Make by Paul and David Tripp. And yeah, I think if you are able to follow those two major pieces of advice, that you A work on your marriage and, b adjust expectations for the season that you're in, then I think that'll set you up for a lot of success and a meaningful relationship. Let me know if you agree. If you disagree, let me know, or if you have any tips. Of course, if you've been married longer than I have, I cannot wait to hear your tips on staying married because, like I said, I'm not an expert, but we've done this for almost four years now and, as always, I appreciate any of your questions, your feedback on the podcast. If you have an idea for future episodes, send me an email at mostlyhomemom at gmailcom. And, as always, I appreciate your ratings and reviews.