All those different roles within your relationship

A poll by the Netherlands Center for Youth Health in 2021 found that more than half of parents find the balance between carrying capacity and carrying burden in raising a child difficult. How does that affect your relationship? What roles are involved?

Parents are mom and dad (or mom and mom & dad and dad), partners, as well as two separate individuals. You can become aware(er) of all those roles within the relationship. This can help keep the balance in your relationship healthy. In this article, we zoom in on the proportions.

As parents, you may experience tension in the relationship due to (work) stress. For example, there is much less time and attention to recharge, and that very thing provides nourishment and new energy to feel good and be good partners and parents.

Restore balance: what can you do yourself?

If you, you and your partner, are walking around with this and you feel the tension, the fatigue and the gestruggle, share those concerns about this with each other. That’s already a great start. Then you can start thinking together about how you can regain balance in time and (mental) load.

Pulling the roles apart

The important thing then is to “pull apart” the different roles you play. All these roles depend on each other, they need each other, but they can also clash. Therefore, make them visible together. How are those different roles that you both have individually divided? The I role, the role you play as a partner, the dad and mom role and the role you have professional.

Write them down and attach percentages to them. Make your roles visible. But also: how do you divide the percentages for your partner? Come back to it after a few weeks together. Can you shift attention within roles? So what does the distribution look like? Good luck! And please feel free to contact us with any doubts or questions.

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