i find this question really really hard to answer, i haven't voted in the poll because none of the answers are quite right - there's no doubt that parenting is exhausting & challenging but i find it hard to say if it's had a bad effect on my relationship with my husband and who wants a life without challenges anyway. At the same time i'm wary of making it sound like a fairytale or being blase or worst of all smug - yuck.
I think you're right that it's a good idea for a couple to spend 5+ years getting to know each other and building their relationship before having kids. Family members that are expecting people to have kids as soon as they say their vows are idiotic and you just have to try to tune them out, especially if you're still in your 20s. I remember my mother-in-law saying to my dad at my wedding that "hopefully they'll be grandparents soon", my dad who's a lot smarter than her said "i hope not too soon". We were really young, I was 22 my husband was 21, which makes her comment even more ridiculous. We had our 1st child after we'd been married 5 years (together 7) but it's impossible to say that things are great now because we waited or that if we hadn't everything would have fallen apart - there are just so many other factors in whether a marriage works. I think there's a lot of luck involved anyway, people change over time, i know my husband and myself have both changed since we got married but we've changed together rather than apart, i'm sure that's mostly luck.
if you want to know the bad stuff - we sometimes bicker about petty stuff, not usually parenting related, but more likely to happen when we're tired and have used up all of our patience on our daughter that we dont have much patience left for each other. I'm talking about really short exchanges that are over in a minute not full blown rows where you feel upset and bear grudges afterwards, i don't think we ever have those. Another thing i've noticed is that we tend to get snappy and bitchy at each other when we've forgotten to have sex for like 5 days or something. I say forgotten because after kids you obviously lose spontaneity and by the time you've got the kid(s) asleep you're knackered so you do have to make an effort with these things. But you'll also find out what early morning cartoons are for
But also, I think the stress from parenting that could weaken a marriage is balanced out by the good things that it brings to strengthen the relationship, you can't get a stronger tie to another person than having their child, there's no experience that is more deeply shared than that.
And you've got to remember that there are many things that can bring stress into a relationship even without kids such as money etc. that's just life - you need the bad stuff to make the good stuff good.
Shanny you sound really smart about your relationship, i don't think you should let your brother's marriage put you off having kids in a few years time, when you feel ready for it. it must be a horrible atmosphere to be caught up in but maybe you're just witnessing a bad patch. Or maybe it is the case that after the honeymoon period is over they're finding out they're not so well suited afterall, i hope not because that's very sad. I hope the kids aren't getting upset by all this.
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