NEW RULES FOR PARENTS In her new book “Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up,” clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner offers rules for harried new parents. Among them: Rule No. 69: Nurture your relationship, not just your child. Rule No. 70: Keep negotiating “who does what.” Rule No. 74: Don’t make your partner the “bad guy.” Rule No . 75: Be kind to your kin — especially grandparents. Don’t obsess about getting it right.
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prived and we both can be irritable. We try to cut each other as much slack as we can.” Smiser, a software engineer in Austin, Texas, says their circle of friends is “like a support group.” But not all friends help parents cope, warns clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner, of Lawrence, Kan., author of the new book “Marriage Rules,” which discusses “Kid Shock.” “How friendships are going to go depends a lot on how the adults behave themselves,” she says. “People who don’t have children can be very arrogant because they don’t get it. People can be very judgmental.” New research by Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, of The Ohio State University in Columbus, finds that parents show poorer adjustment if they think society expects them to be perfect. “Worrying about what others think about parenting was bad for mothers because it lowered their confidence, and was bad for fathers because it increased parenting stress,” she says. The study was published in February in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. Lerner advises taking a long view. “Relationships that appear to be falling apart ... may look entirely different down the road.” And although Smiser agrees that life is different with kids, “so many other things are gained from being a parent. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
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