A year after Margie changed her mind, Gene and Margie stopped using birth control, and she got pregnant very soon thereafter. This decision had some unexpected costs associated with it. Most of Margie and Gene’s friends at the time were single. They report that they lo t some of their single friends when they decided to have a child, and it was a hurtful experience. They also lost some of their free time together and some spontaneity. On the other hand, it was quite clear during the interview that their four-year-old daughter plays a very powerful role in their relationship. According to these-doting parents, their little daughter “runs the show.” Margie even feels that Gene devotes too much time to their daughter, and that they don’t go out enough as a couple or take trips the way they did before she came along. They spend time together on hikes or going out and about but always with their daughter.
Margie is clearly a good and loving mother (at least to her new daughter), but she is feeling sorely neglected. This is Gene’s first child (of his own) and is a “cherished dream come true.” It would seem, however, that while Gene is in his dream state, Margie is in the midst of a mid-life struggle with having had one family, as well as a career in a helping profession. She now wonders what it’s all about. She is riot content to return to the totally child-cent/red mode of her earlier life, yet wants to support Gene in his new-found love, and appreciates the attention he shows their daughter. Like many dual-family couples, Margie and Gene are at different individual stages of interest in their own child-rearing careers and must find an appropriate and mutually-satisfying compromise with regard to their joint-childrearing career as a couple.
In other cases, we found that couples we interviewed don’t have to worry about fitting children into their busy work lives, for they cannot give birth to their own children or have as yet been unsuccessful in having children. This inability to have children can often be a source of considerable stress and strain in the relationship, unless the couple is able to direct their energy (and desire to create something together) toward another valued end. Ted and Velia, for instance, have been trying to have a baby for five years. According to Velia “trying to get pregnant put a strain on our relationship for about a year.” Furthermore, she believes that the strain could reappear again in the near future, if they continue to be unsuccessful in their efforts to have a child.
