The Parent Trap: Two Viewpoints On Co Parenting

904 Words4 Pages
The Parent Trap: Two Viewpoints on Co-Parenting Parenting is as immense and complex an undertaking as imaginable. Children bring an entirely new experience to an existing relationship, sometimes this change is for the better and sometimes for the worse. We are given examples from two perspectives of the stress that child rearing can bring to a couple in the “The Myth of Co-Parenting” and “My Problem with Her Anger”. Hope Edelman in “The Myth of Co-Parenting” recounts her story of being single-handedly mother and father to her children while her husband was busy building a company. On the other side is Eric Bartels who, in his article “My Problem with Her Anger”, describes the hostile nature of the relationship that he has with his wife since the birth of their children However the authors may differ they do touch on similar topics throughout the articles. One common idea among the two viewpoints is that a family requires sacrifice from both partners in order to be successful, but just what that sacrifice entails seems to differ from one perspective to the next. Both authors refer to the feminist movement as an underlying cause for much of the disharmony in their relationships; both cite the notion of co-parenting and equal division of labor as a cause of embitterment and anger on the part of the wife when they realized that it was not the case. While the ideas expressed by the two authors may differ in many ways, there are some ideas that are shared by both parties. That is building and maintaining a family is no easy task and, no matter how hard you may try, you cannot please everyone all the time. Edelman describes the resentment that stemmed from the unfulfilled ideal of co-parenting as anger but also as a massive disappointment in her life. This was something that she had assumed would be from the start and it hit her hard when she discovered that

More about The Parent Trap: Two Viewpoints On Co Parenting

Open Document