What’s Happening with Our Partnership as Parents?

Written By Kelsey Mizell

You date for a while, fall in love, and choose commitment. And throughout this period, you get the sense that you really know your partner. You work well together. You figure people change over time, but in the big picture, you never expect it to be this much.

And then you have kids. And your partner, the mom, suddenly seems different. She's not like herself. Maybe she's more anxious, maybe she's sad, or maybe she's just angry all the time.

The Unspoken Shift in Your Partnership

There are a lot of possibilities for this shift. One is that she might be dealing with a perinatal mental health disorder.These are common and can include:

  • Postpartum Depression (PPD): More than just the "baby blues," PPD is a serious mental health condition that can cause intense sadness, hopelessness, and anger.

  • Postpartum Anxiety (PPA): A constant state of worry, dread, and feeling on edge. It can manifest as obsessive thoughts about the baby’s safety or an inability to relax.

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Often connected to a traumatic birth experience, it can cause flashbacks, panic, and avoidance of anything that reminds her of the event.

While some of these conditions are tied to a lack of systemic support—like not enough leave or a lack of focus on moms—that’s a conversation for another time. Let's stay on point for now.

There are also the massive hormonal and physiological changes. Her organs literally moved to make space for a human being. Her world has shifted, and now her brain is being flooded with hormones telling her that she needs to care for the baby and keep it alive. It’s like puberty all over again, but this time it's for a real person.

But as a partner or a dad, maybe that’s not the most confusing part for you. The most confusing part is when she’s mad, when she’s saying she’s overwhelmed but she’s still doing all the things.

When "I'm Here to Help" Isn't Enough

The simplest—and not necessarily "wrong" but definitely unhelpful—solution for many of us here is to say something like, "What do you need help with? I'll take whatever you need off your plate. I want to be supportive, just tell me what you need." And you might find yourself thinking, "Why is my help met with frustration?"

There’s an important piece here about this not being your fault. It’s not necessarily that you don’t have the capacity to work well together, the game has changed, the rules and the potential consequences are different. There are a lot of conversations that we don’t have before kids because we don’t know to have them, or more honestly, because society doesn’t teach us to have them. Society teaches women to take care of people and things, and men to problem-solve and that when you do the things "assigned" to you, you're successful and worthy and good. So it makes a lot of sense, if not all the sense, why you want to help, that the solution to the problem is not a hard one, why you might be thinking, "Just let go, I’ve got it." And it also makes all the sense why this is so confusing when your help is met with frustration.

Herein lies the issue. It's not that you suddenly lack the capacity to work well together; the circumstances have drastically changed, and everyone's needs (yours, mom's and baby's) and the potential consequences are different now. As parenthood arrives, many moms are coming to grips with the brutal realization that they've been doing too much for too long (again goes back to what society taught her). The baby and everything that comes along with it tips the scales for her to a point where she's like, "Whoa, this is not manageable." She wants support and help, but she’s been doing it on her own for so long that she’s the only one who knows how to do it "right."

A Priceless Vase, a Generation of Care

To offer a visual, it’s like she wants to hand you a large, priceless glass vase that has been passed down for generations. It’s her job to take care of it, to make sure it never breaks. She watches it, cleans it, and houses it in the most secure spaces. She can't just hand it to you, because if she does, she's not sure you’re going to handle it the right way, or if you’ll hold it by its most fragile part, or if the handoff will be mistimed. Or, in the worst-case scenario, that you might be like, "Oh, I'm not really concerned about that vase," and your hands won’t be there to catch it. And it will break.

If it breaks, the problem is unfixable. All her work, all the generations of work before her, gone in a moment.

We know you want to take the vase. You want to handle it with care and time it perfectly because you want to be an equal partner in the care of this vase, because you see her exhausted and overwhelmed. You want her to feel relief. You’re ready to say, "I’m here, I can take it! Just put it down and I've got it!"

But what she really needs you to do here is to hold it with her for a while.

From Problem-Solving to Partnership

It's an incredibly difficult thing to put in the work to understand something that feels foreign to you. This isn’t just your work; it’s everyone’s work, it’s society’s work. But you don't have to carry it alone.

And we want to be clear: this isn't about getting it "right" or being a perfect partner. This will likely be messy, and that's okay. Messy is good. Messy means you're trying. The goal is progress, not perfection.

So how does this apply to your real life here?

Let's start with acknowledging her hard work, and the longstanding pattern that is hard to break. Recognize that society's standards and ideas likely affected you both. Be willing to see where you might default to problem solving. Collaborate with her. Communicate together. Be curious about how you could come up with new systems or ideas or ways of getting things done together. Show her that you've got both hands in and that the simplest answer isn't always the best.

This is a new and confusing chapter, but it’s one you can navigate together.

Resources for a Stronger Partnership

This journey is a lot to take on, but you don’t have to do it alone. Here are a few resources to help you and your partner build a stronger foundation.

Kelsey Mizell
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When Your Brain Runs on a Different Operating System: Parenting with Neurodivergence
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The Essentials of Perinatal Mental Health: What Every Therapist Needs to Know