“We can't agree on how to raise our kids”
One parent says no screens on school nights, and the other hands over the tablet. One wants consequences, and the other wants to talk it through. Disagreement about children is normal in any couple, and it gets heavier when it plays out in front of them. What matters most is what each parent is trying to protect, where each one learned it, and whether the disagreement has become a fight about the couple.
What to check first
It helps to check whether the disagreement is new, after a child reached a harder age, or has been there from the start. It also helps to notice whether the children see the arguments or get used to win them. If one parent is frightened of the other, that is a different situation from a parenting disagreement, and it calls for safety advice.
What could be going on
Co-parenting conflict (Feinberg): Fits if the disagreement plays out in front of the kids, or one of you undoes what the other said.
Parenting styles (Baumrind): Check whether one of you leans strict and the other warm and easy, so each pushes further to make up for the other.
Intergenerational transmission: Could be that each of you is raising the kids the way you were raised, or doing the opposite on purpose.
Gentle parenting: Check whether the fight is about one approach, such as gentle parenting, that one of you follows and the other distrusts.
Over-functioning and under-functioning: Fits if one of you does most of the daily parenting and the other weighs in mainly on discipline.
Four horsemen (Gottman): Check whether the arguments come with contempt, criticism, defensiveness or one of you shutting down.
Telling them apart
Co-parenting conflict (Feinberg): Mark Feinberg's model of co-parenting looks at how parents agree, support or undermine each other, share the work, and handle conflict in front of the children. Undermining and open arguing over the kids may weigh on children more than the disagreement itself. Children may learn to go to whichever parent says yes.
Parenting styles (Baumrind): Baumrind's research described parenting by how much warmth and how much control it carries. Couples often sit at different points, and each may move further out to make up for the other. The strict one may grow stricter and the easy one easier.
Intergenerational transmission: Each parent may be raising the kids as they were raised, or doing the opposite on purpose. A rule may carry a whole childhood behind it. A fight over bedtime may hold two family histories.
Gentle parenting: Gentle parenting is a popular approach that overlaps with what research calls authoritative parenting: warm, with clear limits. One parent may follow it closely while the other sees it as having no limits at all. The argument may be over a label more than over what each wants for the child.
Over-functioning and under-functioning: One parent may do most of the daily work, while the other steps in mainly to discipline or to overrule. The parent doing more may feel undercut, and the other may feel shut out. Each may push the other further into their role.
Four horsemen (Gottman): If arguments about the kids bring eye-rolling, attacks on character, defensiveness or stonewalling, the way the couple fights may be as much the trouble as the topic. Gottman's research linked these four patterns with couples who later divorced. The kids may be where the couple's strain shows.
Questions to carry
- The last time we disagreed about the kids, what was the first thing each of us said?
- What did my own parents do that I am trying to repeat or to avoid?
Also said as
- my husband and i disagree on parenting
- we argue about discipline
- different parenting styles in a marriage
- my wife is too soft on the kids
- my partner undermines me with the kids
- co-parenting disagreements