I always believed my husband was shredding my work. He would come home to a tired wife and child. Child whimpers and he backs down. Child asks for something reasonable and his first response is no, child insists and he says yes because it isn’t worth fighting over … reinforcing the idea that a little performance might help his case.
I used to think this was a male vs. female thing until I stayed with a friend who works and whose husband stays home and looks after the kids – this could be many people I know at the moment since it seems to be a common trend right now – and realised that in certain ways the roles are truly reversed.
It is the parent who spends less time with the child who tends to back down as soon as the child whimpers … the parent who goes to work who doesn’t force the child to do what they are perfectly capable of doing. They want to feel needed so they do whatever they can to make up for the space they have left by not being there.
I have pushed my child to live up to my … yes, often unreasonable … expectations, and my husband comes home and shreds my work. In his position though, I’d probably do exactly the same thing.
