Children come first - Opinions please

[heretogrow]

Hello.
name changed for anonymity.
I’m looking for opinions from those in all situations/relationships/marriages whether partner is parent of none/one or all of your children.

I’ve been told several times by ex partner that I put too much of my care/attention into my children, but he was also in particularly very needy so I’d like others opinions so I can grow/learn lessons here.

I understand a relationship requires attention paid to the partner but I’d like to know others opinions on if I’m right or wrong in doing so; how do you all manage said balance and does your partner/relationship come first for you?

I don't live with DP, but I expect his DC to be his priority - I accept this as it's how it should be.

I never expect him to miss a day with them or cut his time with them short for me. If fact it makes me love him more that he is like that

The kids should always come first. I wouldn't date anyone who expected to be prioritised over my kids.
The only time ex-p prioritised me over his dc was when my bath flooded through my ceiling and tripped all my electrics (he was an electrician so it wasn't any different to him getting an emergency call out).
Ex-husband prioritises his dp and the kids are all too aware of it. So much so, they have reduced their contact with him

Within a relationship where you’re both the biological parents of the same children (blended stuff way more complicated)
I do think having a balance where you as adults also prioritise each other to an extent is important for a healthy relationship. Out dc never go without but we recognise the importance of each other too.
I think sometimes women have kids and become sooo focussed on their children that it’s to the detriment of the relationship with the other parent.
i know that’s a bit controversial but I see it all the time before a break up happens

Broadly speaking, of course the DC. Having said that, there are a lot of parents who prioritise the DC in ways that go too far and are unhealthy so that they never do or have anything for themselves.

Impossible to say from your OP which you are. But somehow I suspect not the latter.

I truly think it depends - in most situations the children's needs absolutely come first.

however, DH and I have been together 12 years, he is the father of both of our children, and we definitely make sure that we book a morning off together once a month and go out for breakfast together and put each other first. We ensure that once the kids are in bed we prioritise sitting down together and putting out phones down. If he's done a nightshift I prioritise his sleep and make sure that the kids are quieter or get them out even if they don't want to.

so, it depends.

It’s not black and white.

Families, especially blended ones, only function well with a constant balancing of needs and wants. If there’s more than one child they can’t both/all be prioritised all the time.

If you want your relationship to survive you can’t ignore your partner/spouse and solely focus on what the DC want, rather than need, and expect it to look after itself. It won’t.

biological kids first but also try to have regular time alone with DH.

I would not dream of saying this to a partner if they had children, I'd expect to be punched in the head.
It's disgusting to say such a thing. Too much attention onto your child? They want that for themselves? That's an ick right there.

For context; I have a ‘tween’ DC from a previous relationship and we now have a baby together. We spent lots of time making sure we were intimate, I would dedicate a lot of time to pleasing him (cooked every night/cleaned) and whilst pregnant was expected to often sit by his side on a weekend whilst he played computer games/watched sport (often expecting DC to be happy in their room). I hadn’t minded joining him sitting next to him whilst he enjoyed his hobbies as long as my eldest DC could join in with us and the discussions but when I was pregnant I could see DC was no longer enjoying it (perhaps the age) so I stopped to spend time with DC and think that’s where the jealousy lies and that he didn’t like I had ‘changed’ to prioritise DC. (I had to encourage him to do things as a family (I guess we were mismatched here in our hobbies).

I hold my hands up and could very much be in the wrong here; that’s why I’m after opinions so I can potentially be better in the future.

Children’s needs come first.

The wants of children and a partner depend on what works.

Much the same if you have to balance multiple children - needs get priority over wants and then it goes from there.

Kids always come first, we don't really get much alone time or date nights so do things such as a lunch out when kids are at nursery or will cook a special meal and a film on etc instead.

I commented on a thread a week or so ago on this topic. I mentioned that I put my relationship with my husband over my child and some people weren’t happy with that response.

This is how I see it, and it is only my opinion.

My relationship with the father of my biological child is the most important in my life. He is also the person I am married to, and will be married to once my child has left home. The relationship is conditional though, it comes with caveats. I expect my husband to be sexually and emotionally faithful, to work (he has some disabilities so there may come a time when he can’t which I understand), to be responsible with money, to do his fair share around the house, and to be kind and caring to me and our child. If any of these things change, the relationship would likely end. I hold myself to the same standards.

The relationship with my child is entirely unconditional. There is nothing they could do that would make me not want to be their mother. I would still visit them in prison were they to commit the most heinous of crimes. I wouldn’t say the same for my husband. In that sense, my child comes first and my love is unending. I would die for my child. I would not die for my husband.

On a day-to-day basis, my child’s needs come before my husband’s needs. However, this is where we put our marriage before our child. Our ‘wants’ come before our child’s wants.

‘Wants’ that my child has which we will not give into: she wants to sleep in our bed, she wants to stay up late into the evening when we have couples time, she sometimes wants a sibling, she wants to go to the same holiday resort every year, she wants sole use of the TV to watch YouTube videos, she wants to choose the restaurant we eat at every time we go out, she wants to interrupt conversations when her parents are talking, she wants her friends over now!

So many parents let their child run the show, and take over the house and take over the marriage. We put our marriage first by saying no, you do not sleep in our bed/stay up until 10pm/tell us how to use our home/ where to eat. Of course, she gets to make decisions about food, play dates etc, but she is not in charge. My husband and I are a team, and she is our child. By putting our marriage first, we are putting her first so she has a strong, stable happy home with age-appropriate boundaries.

(My feelings about this only apply to my child’s biological father. Were I ever to be in a relationship with someone else, they would be second to my child in all things. For that reason, I don’t feel I could have a successful relationship with anyone else other than casual dating).

Prioritising your child’s wants over the want of an adult that you both simply sit and watch him is absolutely normal.

In our house DH and I take turns prioritising the kids wants as that’s what gives the other the time to do their hobbies!

How often did/does he sit and watch you do what you enjoy? Or watch your DS do his hobbies?

It’s much easier in families where biological parents are together, in that case, I think having their parents together in a happy, loving relationship is such a benefit to children that prioritising the relationship over their wants (eg taking time out to talk without kids, booking babysitters even if kids would rather not) is ultimately in their long term interest.
Much more difficult where one person not a parent - in that case it’s a very careful balancing act, ultimately the children need to be prioritised but care needs to be taken that the other partner is not feeling completely sidelined. It can be difficult dating a parent (obv difficult for the children too). Difficult to know whether your partner is reasonable or not without examples.

If your child is not your priority then I would question you as a person/parent. No one comes before your children.

Why did you have a child with him? :(
He's a knob. Of course your DC comes first.

So you were supposed to just be available to him while he did something he enjoyed, and during that time should ignore your child.

hahahaha.

As I expected, he's the dick. I mean, if you were both heavily into sport and you chose to watch certain sporting activities together and expected your DC to entertain themselves during this time, I could possibly understand it as long as you also spent plenty of time with your DC. But for you to sit there bored, your DC to be bored all so that he can have you with him. Ick. You're well rid of him.

He would begrudgingly take interest in DC hobbies, mostly if they involved staying inside the house. Admittedly, I don’t really have any hobbies and raising my DC alone for so long became one of my ‘hobbies’ I suppose.
In his defence; towards the end of our relationship he made much more effort with trying to please our wants/needs but perhaps this led to him being bitter as he still came out with that line that I put too much into my DC’s suggesting he held it against me.

I think you’re right there, I suppose we just didn’t have many hobbies in common and there is the problem.

I really hope this hurt and constant questioning of myself stops sometime soon. As for him, it’s been 4/5 months and he’s with someone else.

and whilst pregnant was expected to often sit by his side on a weekend whilst he played computer games/watched sport

That’s ridiculous. This is his downtime where you perhaps get some time with your child. You then get downtime, and he gives your child time and attention. You also should do things as a family and do things separately as a couple. This is not intimacy. This is you all sitting round watching him, adoringly, like sycophants. He’s a man child.

So he wasn’t actually interested in what you or the DC wanted - only pretending to be interested in it when the relationship was failing and even then he couldn’t sustain it…

If having to put the needs of his partner first sometimes and accepting that your wants and the DCs wants are actually equally important to his and you should all get your wants sometimes was beyond him then he’s just a selfish twat.

I put my partner first on the most part, because when we are happy and in a good place we parent much better. Obviously there would be certain extreme circumstances that I’d put my children before him but on the whole, we find if we concentrate on each other and work as a team with things we are much better for the kids.

Children always come first, teenagers most of the time come first (depending on the situation) and adult children are well adults it totally depends on the situation.

It's about the level of dependency on you as a care giver / adult how much priority should be given.

PO's ex, however is an adult and sounds like a knob head.

I also think that defining what "putting xx person first" means. I mean, my DC's wellbeing is more important to me because they are children and they need help to ensure they are well and happy etc. DH is a grown up so I expect him to absolutely largely manage this himself.

But then, if DH has an allergy, even if the DC absolutely love that food, I'll put DH's wellbeing first and I'm certainly not going to be buying that food and having it in the house.

As someone upthread said, it's about needs and wants. I put my DC's needs first. But when it comes to wants, it's a more fluid situation. He wanted you to sit there like a support animal. But surely engaging with your DC always trumps that sort of ridiculous need.

I’ll never know if he could’ve sustained it as I ended it.

Perhaps I was asking for too much though, I think we went through such a long phase where I was giving him everything to my detriment and then a light switch flipped where I reduced that to probably 10% and he had to make a huge effort, to his detriment. We never got to that equal amount. Just trying to learn if I was in the wrong for prioritising DC’s needs over him (albeit he never went without the basics) or if that comment is fair and something I need to address.