A mother has ignited an online debate after revealing she puts her husband before her kids on her priorities list. After all, this goes against the golden rule of motherhood — being a good parent means sacrificing all for the happiness of our children, right?
Posting on online forum Gransnet, she wrote: “Apparently it’s unnatural to love your OH [other half] more than your children. When I got married my mum told me to always make sure my husband came first over the kids.”
She added: “We have a brilliant relationship with our AD [adult daughter] but our own relationship is still strong and the romance intact after 43 years.”
The anonymous woman went on to explain that once your kids grow up and move on you still have a life with your partner so it’s best to “make that a priority”.
But, to some, that concept that kids would ever come second seems ridiculous.
One user responsded: “I’m sorry, but as soon as I had my first baby I knew that I could never love my husband as much as any of my children, and after three children that feeling remained.”
“My children would come above any man in the world,” another said.
There’s no question that the bond between a mother and child is unbreakable, however, many users believe that prioritising their partners is also important.
One commentator wrote: “It’s important to keep the love alive with your DH [darling husband] but my love for my DC [darling children] and DGC [darling grandchildren] is very different to that for my DH.
However, other commentators said that you couldn’t compare the two. “I think the love you have for your children is a different type of love to the one you have for your husband,” one user wrote.
The debate is similar to the 2005 furore kicked off by Ayelet Waldman, who wrote in the New York Times, “I love my husband more than I love my children.”
In her article, the mother-of-four explained: “If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children”.
Her panting description of her sexual desire for her husband and her inability to resist his body left readers gagging and raging as she admitted she could imagine life without her children, but not her beloved husband.
“If I were to lose one of my children, God forbid, even if I lost all my children, God forbid, I would still have him, my husband,” she wrote. “But my imagination simply fails me when I try to picture a future beyond my husband’s death. Of course I would have to live. I have four children, a mortgage, work to do. But I can imagine no joy without my husband.”