Is your marriage getting lost in the rhythm of everyday life?

In the middle of busy parenting, managing schedules, responsibilities, and constant demands, it’s easy for your marriage to slowly shift into the background.

Not because anything is “wrong.”
But because everything else feels more urgent.

That’s the mistake many couples don’t even realize they’re making:
Letting their relationship run on autopilot while they focus on being great parents.

Over time, conversations become about logistics. Time together becomes rare. And connection starts to fade, not from lack of love, but from lack of intention.

In this episode of Parents Making Time, we explore the reality that many couples experience a dip in marriage satisfaction during the parenting years, and more importantly, what you can do about it. Because strong families don’t happen by accident. Strong families are built on strong, intentional marriages.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:

•  Why a dip in marriage satisfaction during the parenting years is normal, but doesn’t mean your relationship is in trouble
•  Practical, realistic ways to stay connected to your spouse in the middle of busy parenting 
•  How small, intentional habits can strengthen your marriage and create a healthier foundation for your family 

If you want a marriage that not only survives the parenting years, but grows stronger through them, this episode will give you simple ways to start today.

Easily improve your intentional parenting efforts at mealtime with our FREE resource, Dinner Conversation Starters.

Download our FREE resource, 30-Second Micro Moments of Intention with Your Kids, created for busy parents like you who need easy, actionable ways to have daily meaningful connections with their kids in less than a minute!

Parenting Questions? Email us at [email protected] (Please note, your question may be featured on the show).

For parenting inspiration, time management ideas, and encouragement for families, follow the hosts' individual accounts:

Anthony Craiker: Instagram | LinkedIn

Jennifer Craiker: Instagram

Interested in joining our free online parenting community? Send us a DM to receive an invite!

VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://www.parentsmakingtime.com/

Enjoy the show? Leave a rating & review: Apple | Spotify

 

Transcript

Parents Making Time Ep. 28

Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Before we get started, we wanted to invite you to check out our website parents making time.com. There you'll find our full library of podcast episodes, blog posts that expand on the ideas that we talk about here on the show, and free resources designed to help busy parents. Connect more intentionally with their kids.

It's also a place where you can learn more about me and Jennifer and reach out to connect directly with us. We're continuing to add more content and resources, so we'd love for you to stop by and take a look. ​

Jennifer: A few weeks ago, I came across something that a clinical psychologist and marriage researcher shared about marriage and parenting, and it totally caught my attention. It's fascinating to me for a few reasons, and here's what he said. He said that marriage satisfaction typically starts off high right when you get married, but that the trajectory of marriage satisfaction is a downward slope.

Starting when the first child is born. Then you get a [00:01:00] little bump right at the end, right when that last child leaves home. So I'm gonna let that sink in for a few minutes while the intro plays and then we're gonna discuss it.

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.

Jennifer: Okay. Did that sink in? To recap it's marriage satisfaction starts high, it declines when your kids are born, and then there's a slight bump when your kids leave. Now I know I have some thoughts on this, but Anthony, what is your first reaction when you hear that? 

Anthony: My first reaction is that kind of sucks, but as I think about it, it's not all that surprising, uh, considering.

What it takes to raise a family. It's not super surprising that marital satisfaction would decline, [00:02:00] uh, some with the kids. Um, I don't. I don't know if that holds true for our marriage. I think maybe in some ways it does. In some ways it doesn't. But on, on the whole, from a macro perspective, I, I could see how generally speaking.

That's probably the case. I think what one thing that was disappointing to me to hear is that there's only this slight bump in satisfaction when the kids leave the house. Um, I would expect it to be higher than that. I don't know if the trajectory continues upward until you, until you die, but that, you know, that's my initial reaction.

Jennifer: Yeah. And I guess, you know, we're having this reaction considering we're very close to this. Hopefully small bump, right? That we, maybe it's a bigger bump than they're saying. Maybe ours will be a big, big bump in satisfaction, but we're, we're hitting in about four months. We will be empty nesters. We're gonna have our 25th wedding anniversary, so we're kind of stepping [00:03:00] into this zone.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to, to see if we're more satisfied in our marriage. In a few minutes 

Jennifer: we'll get back to you on that one. 

Anthony: Yeah, we'll, we'll have to report back. So, yeah, we should do a follow up episode on this. Uh, that'll be fun. But it, it's actually pretty understandable if you think about it.

I mean, I, I do think we need to be careful not to mistake declining marital satisfaction with complete dissatisfaction. 'cause those are two different things. It's one thing to have your. Your satisfaction decline for a period of time. It's another to be completely dissatisfied. As I've thought about this, I've reflected on our relationship when we were first married.

I mean, I think you'd agree. We had less to manage. There was less distress over, um, just. Any given evening, we generally had to think about just a couple things, right? What we were gonna have for dinner, uh, if we wanted to do something other than hanging out at our apartment, and then what time did we wanna go to bed?

But then you fast [00:04:00] forward and we've got kids now. We have five people to feed, three kids to entertain, clean up after help with school assignments, bedtime routine, doing lots of laundry. And that's just if we stay home for the night, uh, if we want to go out on a date, well, that's a whole other list of things like finding a babysitter, preparing for our kids to be gone and so on.

And so to put that more simply, once we have children, you, we have less time together, we have more responsibilities, constant fatigue. There's an. A shift from being strictly partners to more of like logistics managers. And then the conversations that we have in the marriage become about schedules and problems and primarily the kids.

And I think when you think of it that way, you see the difficulty in prioritizing a marriage when juggling the demands of family. 

Jennifer: Definitely. And yet the marriage is the [00:05:00] foundation of the family. So when you're looking at this statistic or this idea, it's like the foundational relationship struggles as the family grows.

So one thing that I think that was important for us, and you know, sometimes you look back and realize that you did something really great, but in the moment you didn't realize how great it was. But I remember that before our oldest was born, we had a conversation just between the two of us that we wanted to remember.

That our marriage came first before the children, and it wasn't that setting that standard or setting that, um, you know, idea between us made everything easy, but. It certainly didn't make it so that we never missed a date night, but it made it easier for us to gauge how we were doing. 'cause we'd set that priority first.

Anthony: Right. Right. We could, that became the standard by which we could measure the success of our relationship. 

Jennifer: Yeah. And so when we realized we were outta step with that, we knew where to come back to. 

Anthony: Yeah. I think it's important to note too, if, if you're just [00:06:00] hearing this. Statistic or this data point for the first time, and you're identifying with it, we want you to know that this is normal.

It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with your marriage. Just because there's some declining satisfaction while raising your kids doesn't mean that your marriage is in a crisis mode or situation or that there's a problem, but. At the same time, you don't have to buy into the belief that there's nothing you can do about it.

This kind of mentality of it is what it is. We wanna talk a little bit today about what you can do to prioritize your marriage, even when you're pulled in every direction, mentally, emotionally, and physically, while trying to raise your family, 

Jennifer: right? Because ultimately, the consequences can be pretty severe if you just accept that idea and think well.

We'll work on this marriage when our kids are gone. We'll have time then [00:07:00] and the closer we get to empty nesting. Like I said earlier, we're about four months out of it now. The more I realize that there are things that we've done in our relationship over the past 22 years while parenting minors that has set a tone for what we're about to experience when they're all out of the house.

Anthony: Yeah. So how do you protect the relationship while you're in the thick of it? Well, I think it kind of depends on the stage that, of the stage of parenting that you're actually in. 

Jennifer: Yeah. And we're gonna be. Or try to be really real here, like very practical. 'cause I know I used to hate when I would read articles that, or people would talk about the importance of getting away overnight every two to three months because that wasn't even close to possible for us.

We didn't live near family, and especially when our kids were small, we didn't have the budget. To do that. And so when people would say that as like, oh, you just need to get away overnight and prioritize yourselves. I'm like, that's not even possible. It, it would be great if you could. We could, but we wanna share ideas [00:08:00] that anyone can do.

Anthony: Right. Most people can't afford to get away for two or three nights, six different times a year. It's just not, 

Jennifer: especially right now. 

Anthony: Yeah. 

Jennifer: In this economy, right? 

Anthony: Yeah. Right. 

Jennifer: With all the inflation. So when your children are young, we're gonna go through the stages. So we'll start with young children. Here are just some things that we have looked back and seen that have helped us.

And so the first one is really just to help share the load of the work. Young children is a lot of work. It's late nights, middle of the nights, early mornings, diapers, messes, all of those things. So if you're not sharing that load, there can become resentment between you and that's hard to overcome. Also, when our children were really young.

We used to have home date nights because we couldn't afford a babysitter and it was a lot of work to find one. Um, so we would put the kids to bed and our kids had really early bedtimes and that was on purpose because we knew even if we weren't having a date night, we needed time. [00:09:00] Just the two of us or sometimes alone.

Even if like you were at not home 'cause you might be studying or I was gone. We needed that time where the, we had a little bit of peace and quiet and rest even if we weren't sleeping. 

Anthony: I think that was one of the best parenting decisions that we made early on, was that we, we established that when our kids were younger, they would have an early bedtime.

That that was, it was better for them and it was better for us. 

Jennifer: Definitely. I can remember telling our kids. Mommy can't mommy anymore. I, I, I can only be a good mom until seven o'clock or whatever. I mean, our kids at one time, one of the bedtimes was six 30 when they were infants, they would get in bed at six 30.

Yeah. And they were good sleepers. They would sleep till six 30 the next morning. But I know not everyone has good sleepers, so you do what works best for you. But that really worked well for us. The other is we took advantage of visiting family. Like I said, we didn't always live near family. And so for instance, when your mom would come visit us, we [00:10:00] always took at least one night to go out, just the two of us because there wasn't a lot of coordination that needed to happen there.

We just. Nana was there, they knew her. You know, she knew the routine and so we could get away quite easily. And there were also several times when we visited her on vacation where we took the opportunity to even go away overnight. Just for one night. 

Anthony: Right. 

Jennifer: Um, and then there was also the time when she came.

One time we said, you know, we know you're coming. Can you extend your trip a little bit? And then you and I went on a cruise. I think that was for our 10 year wedding anniversary. 

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that was a, that was a good time. So what about school age children? Okay, well, the dynamic changes a little bit, but in some ways it gets a little easier.

So we would do lunch dates pretty frequently. Um, you know, meet up for a quick lunch together, um, while the kids were in school. Um, you can also. Do something simple but unexpected for one another. So just kind of random acts of [00:11:00] service. 

Jennifer: Yeah. So I don't even know if you know this, but years ago I had a reminder set on my phone every day and it said, do something nice for Anthony.

And that sounds silly, but it would remind me in a daily, I don't 

Anthony: think it's silly. 

Jennifer: Um, well, it might sound silly to someone else, but it would remind me in a, in my day-to-day routine to make time to do something for you. So it would be simple things. I'd pick some, something like. Get you a treat when I was at the store or if I was driving your car, fill up your gas tank so you didn't have to or send you a nice text or tidy your office.

Just really simple things. Whatever I could think of that might take just a few minutes, and it wasn't that we were having issues, I just decided to try to be more intentional about how I was loving you. And I don't know that you picked up on the fact that I was doing little things every day. It doesn't matter that you did or didn't, but I think.

In the long run, it helps. 

Anthony: Yeah, absolutely. Another thing that we did during that time was babysitting swaps with another family that had children close to our children's ages. So one weekend we would [00:12:00] watch their kids and they would go out and the next weekend they would watch our kids and we would go out and that was really nice.

Uh, and. We didn't have to pay for the babysitter because we were just, it was a quid pro quo thing. And, um, it, it worked really well, um, for school aged children. 

Jennifer: It also became a habit for the kids. They knew. So it wasn't this big, like prepping them to go over to someone's house that they weren't aware of.

Anthony: Yeah, 

Jennifer: they knew that every Friday night they were gonna be with their friends, whether it was at our house or their house. They were gonna hang out with friends, 

Anthony: right? And then when you get to the teenage years, you actually have quite a bit more time together if you think about it. It may not feel that way, but, but you do, because most teenagers are pretty busy.

They're busy with extracurricular things or maybe they get a part-time job. And so you learn to take advantage of that time when the teenagers are not at home. Uh, and, and. You [00:13:00] know, have date nights or date afternoons or, or whatever. Um, another thing that we've done regularly, and, and this is something we've done throughout all the different stages, is we have a show that we like to watch together regularly.

Um, that's just our show. We don't watch it with the kids. And so that gives us something to do together and something to talk about together that's not related to, to raising our family. 

Jennifer: And like you said, we've done that through every stage, but I. I do think putting it in teenagers is important because when you're teenagers, when you have teenagers, they want to watch more of the things you wanna watch.

Anthony: Yeah. 

Jennifer: But it's kind of like a protection, like this is something that is mom and dad's we're not involving you in this. 

Anthony: Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Um, and then also one of the things that we found to be helpful is when you do go out on a date. Um, at times, you know, it might be helpful to make talking about your children or whatever's happening in their lives off [00:14:00] limits so that you can focus the conversation on things other than your kids.

That's especially true we found during the teenage years when there's drama and they're, you know, they're going through the, those difficult years of adolescence and. Maybe there's stress and tension in the home. It's nice to step away and just kind of have a, a, a rule where you say, okay, we're not gonna talk about the kids tonight.

Let's talk about other stuff 

Jennifer: for sure. And now these are just ideas for you to start with. You know, think about it. Think what works in your own life. Think what your interests are. Maybe there are things you and your spouse like to do together that you can fit into. Being more intentional about your marriage during these times.

But one thing that can be done in almost any stage is setting boundaries with your kids that protect your relationship. It can totally be okay to say, I'm gonna need you to wait for however long until I am done spending time with your mom or dad, or, I can't talk right now because I'm talking to dad.

It's okay for them to know [00:15:00] that. Your relationship is important. Actually, it's more than okay. It's good for them to know that your relationship is important and you're mirroring or modeling that for them for their future, and they'll know that going into their future relationships. So if you've been listening today and you hear this statistic or idea about marital dissatisfaction and you have related to it, just remember first that it's normal, but also remember that.

A decline in satisfaction doesn't have to mean dissatisfaction. And there are things you can do about it 

Anthony: 100%. So if you like today's episode, please share it with a friend. Help us get the word out about this show. Uh, we are growing and we're so grateful to all of you that listen. And if you haven't yet left us a rating or review on Apple or Spotify, please do so.

That also helps us with the algorithm and getting the show out. We'd greatly appreciate it. 

Jennifer: So next time on parents Making Time, we're gonna be talking about. High love and high expectations. [00:16:00] Why your kids need both and what it actually looks like as a busy parent trying to be intentional. We'll share some simple ways to start living this out in your day-to-day life and parenting.

Until next time, make time to become the parent you want to be.