Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's health.
Making time away from junior
When a class from one of the local schools visited the zoo the other day, the main object of interest was the baby gorilla.
My informants told me they could not see much of the baby because the mother was holding onto it very tightly. The father, I was told, was allowed to approach only when the mother beckoned him.
I bet there are a few fathers reading this who can empathise with that experience. Human fathers sometimes feel cut out of many aspects of the rearing of a child, especially the firstborn, because of the mother's fiercely protective attitude. She may suspect that if she lets the father pick it up, the baby will break. Or perhaps she fears the father will teach her baby bad habits like drinking and gambling.
Either way, some fathers feel they are being kept literally at arm's length from the baby. Like their counterpart in the zoo, they are outside the inner circle.
The birth of the first baby has long been recognised as a potential time of challenge to a couple's relationship. When they got married they may have been so madly in love with each other that, as the Bible puts it, the two became one.
But when baby comes along it is a question no more of one or two but of three. And three, as we all know, is a crowd. Not only is there now a third person in the household but this particular third person happens to be the most demanding one there. As a result, the new parents suddenly find they have little time or energy for each other.
Of course it makes perfect sense that the parents' attention should be directed towards the demanding but quite helpless creature who has entered their lives. Trouble begins when they forget to switch some of their attention back to each other.
As time passes it is terribly easy to fall so far into the role of parents that the two lovers who decided to spend their lives together fade out of the picture. They may even start to call each other mammy and daddy as every meal, outing and holiday is built around the kids.
That is why some relationship counsellors encourage couples to go out on dates with each other minus the kids. Doing the things they used to do before the kids came along can reawaken two personalities who used to have fun together once upon a time. This is by no means the whole answer when a marriage gets into trouble but it can contribute a lot towards a solution.
Some counsellors even suggest that the parents refuse to tell the kids where they go on these special dates. That's a way of emphasising to all concerned that they are a couple in their own right and not simply an extension of their children.
The key point, whatever they tell the kids, is that if the parents begin to go out as a couple again they can start to rediscover some of the feelings they had when they were courting.
Now, by going out I mean going and doing things that interest and engage them, whether that's the races, a movie or a stroll in the park. We have all seen the bored married couples sitting in the pub with nothing to say to each other and it's a fate to be avoided.
Retaining their identity as a couple is something parents have to work on quite deliberately after junior joins the family. You wouldn't think people would have to work on having fun but they do. If they don't round up babysitters and make time for each other, they may open their eyes one day and realise they've missed about two decades of life outside the home.
So what about that poor old gorilla dad down in the zoo? I think he would be very wise to work on the missus to hand junior over to a babysitter now and then and to go out for a quiet, romantic banana and a moonlight scratch.
pomorain@irish-times.ie
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.