Why are relationships so much harder after having kids? With Alex Trippier
The mental load, why couples struggle and how to navigate it together, with Alex Trippier, AKA @beahappierparent.
Listen to Steph and Alex’s conversation on the Don’t Buy Her Flowers podcast. Choose your usual podcast app and press play.
You love each other. You love your children. So why are you having the same argument again? The one where someone feels they’re doing everything, someone else feels nothing they do is right, and somehow you’re now arguing about how you’re arguing.
In this episode, Steph Douglas is joined by couples coach and Be a Happier Parent founder Alex Trippier to explore why relationships after children can feel so difficult, even when both people care deeply about their family.
It’s candid, funny and reassuringly honest, particularly when Alex looks back at his own marriage.
Being good with the kids is only part of parenting
Alex admits that he thought being good with children made him a good dad. He was involved and couldn’t understand why his contribution didn’t seem to be enough.
What he hadn’t fully understood was the work happening around those moments with the children. The anticipating, remembering and organising that keeps family life moving, often without anyone noticing until something goes wrong.
Steph and Alex explore the gap between feeling like an involved parent and sharing responsibility for everything parenting involves. It can be uncomfortable to question your contribution when you feel you’re already doing plenty. Alex’s willingness to examine his own assumptions makes this a conversation with room for both recognition and change.
The mental load: who is thinking ahead?
The mental load of parenting involves knowing what needs doing, when it needs doing and what might happen if nobody does it. Completing the task is only one part.
Steph and Alex discuss the invisible work of anticipating children’s needs. When one parent carries that responsibility, they can struggle to switch off, even when the other parent is physically there.
That difference can leave both people frustrated. One feels permanently responsible; the other feels their efforts aren’t recognised. Understanding what sits behind those feelings gives the familiar argument somewhere more useful to go.
The nag paradox
Being responsible for everything is exhausting. Being criticised for reminding someone about the things you’re responsible for adds a particular extra sting.
Alex describes the nag paradox: women can end up managing family life and then being criticised for the managing. Asking, reminding and checking become part of the job, but those behaviours can also become the focus of the disagreement.
If one person has to keep prompting the other, the responsibility hasn’t really moved. And if the conversation becomes about the reminder rather than the unfinished task, the original problem remains.
There’s plenty here for anyone who has ever wished they didn’t have to ask in the first place.
Why mothers feel judged
The conversation also looks beyond individual couples to the expectations surrounding motherhood.
Steph and Alex discuss intensive mothering and the way social media has raised the bar for mums. There’s always another parenting approach to consider, another thing to worry about and another apparently effortless family to compare yourself with.
They also discuss a messy room study, exploring how mothers and fathers are judged and why feeling scrutinised isn’t necessarily something women have imagined.
That context matters when couples disagree about what needs doing. Expectations from outside the relationship can influence what happens inside it, including whose job it feels like to keep everything together.
When shame gets in the way of change
What happens when one partner says the current arrangement isn’t working?
For the person raising it, this may be an attempt to explain how exhausted or unsupported they feel. For the person hearing it, it can bring up shame and a sense of failure. Defensiveness follows, and suddenly the conversation has moved away from what needs to change.
Steph and Alex discuss why dads can be dismissive of discomfort, alongside Alex’s idea of the Mr Miyagi fallacy. They explore the assumptions people bring into parenting and how hard those assumptions can be to question.
Neither partner has to be the villain for a pattern to cause hurt. Understanding each other matters, alongside taking responsibility for doing things differently.
A more hopeful way forward
For all the uncomfortable recognition, this is a hopeful conversation. Alex shares why he believes a better life sits on the other side of change for men, too, with the possibility of a closer relationship and a fuller experience of family life.
There’s also his theory about why men begin random DIY projects at precisely the moment something else needs doing. If that sounds familiar, you’ll want to hear this bit.
Whether you’re carrying the mental load, wondering why your efforts aren’t landing or tired of repeating the same row, this episode offers plenty to think about and talk about together.