Why You and Your Spouse Disagree About Parenting

Have you ever felt like you and your spouse weren’t on the same page? You both love your kids deeply — but sometimes, it feels like you’re speaking two different languages when it comes to rules, routines, or how to handle a situation.

It’s one of the most common (and most frustrating) challenges parents face — especially for busy couples trying to balance work and family while still showing up as present, intentional parents. The result? Tension builds, connection fades, and it can start to impact not just your marriage, but your entire family dynamic.

But there’s a better way — In this episode, we’re talking about why you and your spouse aren’t seeing eye to eye and how to fix it.

IN 15 MINUTES OR LESS, YOU’LL DISCOVER:

• Why most parenting disagreements aren’t really about the kids at all
• Simple strategies to communicate with your spouse before responding to your child
• How to handle parenting decisions in the moment — without tension or mixed messages
• Creative ways to stay united as parents (even in front of your kids!)
• How this one shift can strengthen both your marriage and your family dynamic

00:00 Introduction: Parenting on Different Pages
00:32 The Big Mistake: Lack of Communication
03:46 Strategies for Unified Parenting
07:46 Real-Life Examples and Lessons
11:30 Conclusion and Resources

When you finish listening, we’d love for you to connect with us on social media!

Follow us on Instagram and like our page on Facebook to keep the conversation going. It’s the best way to get quick tips, encouragement, and resources to help you make time for what matters most—your family.

Get our FREE resource, "30-Second Micro Moments of Intention with Your Kids", by going to: parentsmakingtime.com/freeresource

Parenting is hard. Intentional parenting can seem even harder. Motherhood, fatherhood, marriage, and all that goes with those important aspects of life can make it difficult to prioritize tasks, embrace intentional living, focus on present parenting, and build family bonds. We're here to help ease your parenting anxiety so that you can stop feeling overwhelmed, find joy in your parenting journey, and build family bonds that last for generations. Here at Parents Making Time, we are all about that parent-child connection, self-care for parents, and helping you overcome mom guilt and dad guilt. If you have a question or would like to share an experience about your own parenting, please feel free to reach out to one of us! Please note, we may use your question and/or comments as a part of a Q&A Parenting Advice segment on one of our episodes.

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Transcript

Jennifer: [00:00:00] Have you ever felt like you and your spouse were on two completely different pages about how to parent your kids in a specific situation? Perhaps that's even caused an argument. Today we're going to be talking about the big mistake that parents make that is actually the cause of that argument.

Anthony: This is parents making time. The show that helps busy parents put family first without burning out. We are Anthony and Jennifer Craiker. We don't just give parenting tips. We help you become the parent you want to be.

So several years ago, I had a friend come to me and ask for some parenting advice, and he was having a behavioral issue

with one of his kids. And it was a a fairly common behavioral type issue. I'm being purposely vague, so I don't identify who the person was, but I shared with him some rules that we had in our house about how to deal with this particular issue and. We had a good conversation about it. My friend though, decided [00:01:00] to just unilaterally implement that role without talking to his wife about it beforehand.

And as you can imagine, it didn't go well. 

Jennifer: Yeah. And. It definitely wouldn't go well in our house. So the mistake here is not communicating regularly with your spouse about your values, about rules, about the atmosphere you wanna create in your home and the environment for your family. And you've gotta do that often because situations.

Come up that you weren't prepared for Situations change, you've gotta be ready to communicate and pivot quickly as parents. 

Anthony: Yeah. Just because you decide to parent one way at the beginning of your parenting journey doesn't mean that there aren't going to be a billion. Adjustments and changes, right, that you have to make, right?

It's kinda like a game plan for a football game. The coach comes up with a game plan and you go into the game with this, uh, strategy, and then the first half goes terrible. And so you go back to the locker room and you have to make adjustments. The team has to adjust to the [00:02:00] way that the other team is responding, and then you.

Come back out in the second half and hopefully do better. It's like that with parenting. It requires a lot of communication and adjustment, and the most important thing is that you're making those adjustments together as parents and not by yourself. 

Jennifer: Yeah, and and this sounds like a no-brainer. It sounds actually quite simple, but the problem is we come from different upbringings.

Your spouse, and you come from two different families. You've got different family cultures you're trying to parent, but. Maybe they were parented one way, you were parented another and you have differing views on what's best and you've got to get past that. 

Anthony: Yeah. And bringing those differences together can be challenging sometimes or, or figuring out those differences coming together as as parent can be difficult.

And sometimes, frankly, we're just not being humble about it. We think we have the better approach and we're not really being a team player, but when you talk about things together with your spouse. As it relates to parenting, [00:03:00] things become a lot easier. 

Jennifer: So yeah, the consequence there is there's tension in your marriage.

You've got frustration that you're holding onto with your partner because you're not agreeing. The kids observe that nonunified approach between the two of you. It's just not ideal in any way. And you know, there's the classic example where you have a child who goes to one parent and asks a question and the parent gives an answer that they don't.

Like, and so then they turn around and go to the next parent because they know they're gonna get a different answer, and so then they can get what they want. And when those kind of things are happening in your home, it's just not a good environment. It's not good for you and your spouse. It causes that tension and that frustration that only then permeates into other things.

Anthony: Yeah, you don't want your kids to pit one parent against the other. You need to be on the same page with the parenting. And so the important thing is to find ways to communicate with your spouse regularly. We've worked on this over the years. We haven't been perfect with it, but we've found some things that do work really well to make sure that.

We're on the same [00:04:00] page when it comes to making decisions for the kids, implementing rules in the household and, and things of that nature. So one thing that we've done is sometimes when, when our kids will bring up something with us and we're both in the conversation and they're trying to get permission to do something, we've actually used cell phones during that conversation where Jen and I communicate privately with each other via cell phone while we're talking to the kids.

Now, this is something that. You can do for more simple issues where it doesn't require a, a lengthier conversation between the parents to decide whether to do what the kid is asking you to do or, or, or whatever. But we've certainly done that before and it's an easy way to communicate without one parent making the decision or giving an answer before both parents are on the same page.

Jennifer: And I think it's important to recognize when we're doing that our kids actually knew about it. They knew we were texting one another. It wasn't a secret. But what's interesting, or what's funny is we had to remember like when our son was very small, [00:05:00] he was still in elementary school one day we were doing that, but he wasn't aware, and I think it was me, I ac actually convinced him that we had telepathy as parents, that we CI said, ask your dad something.

And he would ask and I'd text him the answer and he'd get it right. So our son was convinced that marriage came with telepathy. 

Anthony: That's kind of funny, but like I said, this is. More for the kind of simple issues. So for example, we've done this when one of our kids has approached us and asked if they could go out and do something with a friend or you know, something along those lines.

And rather than Jen or I just saying, oh yeah, that's fine, or No, it's not fine, we'll text quickly and just check in with one another. Check. Yeah, exactly. Check in with one another, make sure we're on the same page, and then give the kid the answer. 

Jennifer: Even better than that, sometimes the answer is so easy and so obvious, and we know each other so well that sometimes just eye contact does the job.

Like a kid says something, we look at each other, we know exactly what the other person's thinking, and we can act on it. 

Anthony: Yeah, the, the principle here is communication, but these different little tactics can be helpful in the moment. [00:06:00] We also have what we refer to as parent councils. So if we're in a conversation with one of the kids and the other parent's not there, we'll oftentimes stop the conversation and say, well, I need to talk to your mom about that, or general say, I'll need to talk to, to your dad about that.

And then we'll actually have a private conversation to discuss the issue without the kid there to make sure that we're in agreement about how we're going to move forward. 

Jennifer: But there's also been times. Though when we've been in conversations together with the kids where we've said, hold on, we need to pause this conversation.

'cause your dad and I, we need to go in the other room and have a conversation just 'cause he was maybe a little bit more deep than, can I go do this with a friend or whatever. And we just needed to have a little more of a conversation. 

Anthony: Yeah. So the, the big takeaway here is don't be afraid to tell your kid I need to talk to your.

Mom or your mom and I need to talk together, your dad and I need to talk together. Don't be afraid to make them wait. They, they'll be fine if they don't get an immediate answer. The [00:07:00] important thing is to be on the same page with your spouse. Make sure you have that communication going and uh, that you're unified in your response.

To your kids. It just makes life so much easier. It, it gets rid of that tension and frustration that Jen was talking about earlier. And frankly, there may be sometimes where there is some tension between the parents during those, those private conversations, right? Because one parent thinks, oh, we, we should do this.

The other parent thinks we should do that. That's okay. But the important thing is to have that conversation and come to an agreement. Not in the presence of the children. 

Jennifer: Right. And maybe that's just a, going back to your analogy about the football game, you have to remember you're on the same team.

You're trying to achieve the same thing. You're raising kids together, you're working as a team. 

Anthony: Yeah. So we had one example of this that we can give. Several years ago, our kids, and I don't remember which kid it was, but it was probably our oldest Bella, who kinda initiated this whole thing. But they wanted their bedtime extended and for a long time [00:08:00] they had a, a relatively early bedtime.

Sure, for sure. We felt strongly it was important that they get a, a good night's sleep and all that. And also we liked our time in the evening together with just the two of us, but mainly it was so that they could get a, a good night's sleep. But anyway, at some point they came to us and wanted to extend the, their bedtime.

And so we responded, well, that's something that we can talk about, but we need to understand your reasoning for this. You need to give us reasons why we should make this change for your bedtime. And so it was kind of cute. They got together and they actually put together like a PowerPoint presentation that's funny with, with their reasons.

And it was pretty good, from what I remember. I thought their, their arguments were pretty sound, but even for something like that, we sat down with them and we listened to. Why they thought we should extend their bedtime. And I think probably we were both persuaded, but we said, well, you guys did a really good job, but mom and I need to have a private conversation about this because this is a, a, a [00:09:00] big change for our family.

And so. We left and spoke about it. I don't remember if we did it right away or if it was a little later, but I'm 

Jennifer: pretty sure it was right away. 

Anthony: Yeah. But we, we talked about it and we kind of came to an agreement that, okay, we'll change the bedtime to a little bit later to, I don't remember if it was the exact time they were asking for, or if it was somewhere in the middle, but it was, uh, something that we decided together and then we told the kids and they, and they were happy about it.

But the example isn't necessarily about the kids so much as it is that. We made that decision together, right, as parents, right? 

Jennifer: So that's how we know this works because, you know, after 25, almost 25 years of marriage, you know, we decided at the very beginning of our marriage that we were gonna create this kind of communication.

And as we've been talking about this and. Preparing this episode, it was difficult for us looking back to really find times where we experienced that tension because of that decision at the beginning of our marriage to always communicate. And that concludes things about like our kids' homework situations or [00:10:00] issues with their friends, things they wanted to do, household chores, our religious observance, et cetera.

Like all of those things fall into that. We need to communicate about this. Yeah. 

Anthony: And we have had disagreements, of course, of course, uh, uh, before, but we've always, I, I, I feel fairly confident in saying we've always, or, or almost always had those conversations privately and worked that out and, and come to an agreement before we made any decisions that we shared with our, our kids.

We've really tried to avoid reacting in the moment and taking that time to come together as a couple and talk about things now. I wanna recognize that what we're talking about works really well for couples who are. Married, but we, we 100% recognize that there are single parents, parents who are divorced and the communication is really difficult.

And I just wanna acknowledge that as a part of this episode because I, I, I don't want it to sound like [00:11:00] this is a, a one size fits all approach, but we're just talking about generally speaking communications. Is important. 

Jennifer: Well, and the other thing to point out though is even though we always made our decisions together, we can look back and there are some decisions we might have changed.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, in hindsight, 

so communicating and talking together and being on that same page doesn't always even mean you're going to make. The right decision. The right decision, yeah. But you did it together. So right or wrong, you work together, you avoided that tension and you can learn together 

Anthony: for sure.

You know, as we've been talking about this today, it reminds me that one of the reasons we started this podcast is because we know how busy life gets as a parent. Sometimes it just feels impossible to slow down and create those big, memorable moments. That's why we created a free guide called 30-second Micro Moments of Intention with your Kids.

It's filled with quick, simple ideas that you can do anytime in 30 seconds or less to strengthen your connection with your kids without adding more to [00:12:00] your plate. Now, some of these ideas may seem basic or like no-brainers, but when you do them intentionally, they can make a real difference in your relationship with your child.

So just go to parentsmakingtime.com/freeresource, enter your email and we'll send it right to you. You can print it out to keep it where you'll see it. Or save it on your phone to reference whenever you need a little inspiration so that you can start building lasting memories one micro moment at a time. 

Jennifer: So if you found this helpful today, would you please leave a rating or a view on whatever podcast platform you're listening to us on, and also please share it with a friend. We wanna make sure that we can get our message out as far as possible, and that involves you sharing with friends. 

Anthony: Finally, if you've ever struggled with getting your kids to engage in conversation during dinner time, first of all, you're not alone.

And second of all, you're not going to wanna miss our next episode. Jen and I will be sharing three ways to get your kids talking at dinner time, making it an easy time to connect with your kids [00:13:00] over meals. Until next time, make time to become the parent you want to be.