It may seem to you that your baby belongs entirely to his parents. In a way he does, but actually he will be born into three families: his own, yours, and his father's. He is important to all of the people related to him because, for each of them, he represents the continuation of the family. On the other hand, the loyalty his three families as a whole can give him will be a big part of his security throughout his life. You can see what an advantage it will be to him if the family atmosphere he comes into is friendly, cooperative, and reasonably free from tension.

Once, young couples starting new families were guided, mainly, by the teachings of their parents and their own beliefs. Today, they have knowledge from many other sources, including a rapidly growing number of scientific studies of family life.

These studies have already told us a great deal about how families grow and develop. They are helping to answer such practical questions as how parents learn to work together, how families decide what they want to work for, how families solve their problems, how values are learned in family life, why young families need relatives and friends.

Parental teamwork

There is one thing, according to these studies, that successful American families seem to have in common—responsible, joint, parental leadership. There are, of course, many one-parent families, but more than ever today a family needs two parents to see it properly through all the stages of its life cycle. Furthermore, it is not enough for these two parents to be a "married couple." They need to be a team.

Your teamwork started when you and your husband planned together for your wedding, your honeymoon, and your first home. You probably had to find a place to live that suited you both. You had to fix it up and get furniture for it. As you shared ideas and made decisions, didn't you feel that, together, you were getting somewhere you both wanted to go; that you were learning things you hadn't known before about each other's values and beliefs; that you were becoming more clear about your own? You made some mistakes, but you made them together, and by the time you knew you were going to have a baby, you really felt that you were partners.

The quality of your teamwork will be tested, again and again, as the two of you deal with such family issues as family goals, division of family responsibilities, sources of family support, family use of money, religion, children, sex, and the place of the family in community life.

Management of differences

What do you do when you agree, when you disagree, about things that really matter? Some husbands and wives play it "by ear" until they harmonize. Some give up without trying. Some follow, as best they can, the rules for problem solving they learned in school: define the problem; think of several possible solutions; try one; see if it works; if it doesn't, try something else.

You and your husband probably do not always settle your differences in the same way. Sometimes one of you makes the decision and the other agrees to it. Sometimes you compromise, each of you giving up something. Sometimes you can shift things around so that you both get what you want. Sometimes you are able to invent a solution that not only meets your immediate needs but creates opportunities for you both to have new and valuable experiences. The important thing, of course, is to form the habit of settling differences instead of prolonging them by arguing.

Meeting family needs—the long view

With a baby coming, you will be thinking more seriously than ever about what you want for your family and how the plans you make can best be carried out. Since babies are usually fairly expensive, your main concern now may be what to do about major investments. Every family hopes to have, someday, a nice home in a nice neighborhood; a car; such laborsaving devices as a washing machine, a dryer, a vacuum cleaner; perhaps such luxuries as a color television set and air-conditioning. Even more, most people want a good education for their children, and the security of a good lifetime insurance plan. Someday you will likely have all of these things, or their future equivalents. It is your timetable for buying them that is important now.

You and your husband probably started housekeeping with more than either of your parents had. You will get more things more quickly than they were able to do. There is nothing wrong with this, if you have a buying plan that is adjusted to your income and makes provision for large, routine, future expenditures as well as for emergencies. Every family has to be ready to take care of unexpected illness, and to tide over times when the chief income-producers may be out of work.

It is when we think of future expenses for other babies, for their education, and for their marriages that we realize most fully what a long, long process family development is. It begins with courtship and marriage, but this is only a beginning. You probably know couples in their seventies and eighties who are still finding new values, new delights in their family living and in their companionship with each other. If you can take this long view of marriage and family development, it will be much easier for you to decide what must be done—or bought—today and what can wait until later. It takes time to meet the changing needs of a growing family—time, careful planning, and patience. Families who try to go too far and too fast in too short a time often find they have lost their way. Many banks, savings associations, and insurance companies have advisers who are glad to help with family financial planning.

Sharing family responsibilities

Closely related to this question of what families work for and how they reach their goals is another one, one about which people often have very decided opinions. This has to do with the way in which husbands and wives share parental leadership. Did you discover, after your marriage, that you and your husband had different ideas about the duties, rights and responsibilities of men and women in homemaking and family living?

There is no one answer to this question. In some families, husbands and wives prefer to be as independent of each other as possible. Each has his own way of life inside and outside of the home. In other families, husbands and wives like to do almost everything jointly. They share the marketing, cooking, cleaning, dishwashing, the care of the children. They may or may not both work outside of the home, but they usually have a joint bank account. They spend their free time together and have the same friends. Still other couples have a more flexible plan. The husband has his responsibilities and the wife her's but each expects to help the other out in an emergency.

If you and your husband are both pleased with the way you share your family responsibilities, the arrangement you have is probably the one that is best for you. Whatever it is, there may have to be some changes in it during your pregnancy. When the baby comes, there will be three people to consider instead of two. Whether or not the gears shift smoothly depends on how well each of you understands what your present relationship means to the other and on how you both feel about your approaching parenthood.

Your own emotional ups and downs may be a complicating factor. These may completely mystify your husband, especially if this is his first experience with you as a pregnant wife. He has, of course, just as much at stake in this as you do.' He must go on with his own work and anything extra he does to make things easier for you must seem reasonable and necessary to him as well as to you. After all, nature is guiding you rather firmly but his responses to your needs and feelings must often be based on sheer guesswork. Even so, most husbands and wives do finally learn how to comfort and encourage each other when comfort and encouragement are needed.

How fathers can help

This kind of companionship does not come overnight. There are certain things two people can do to cultivate it, however, that seem fairly simple. This is why it is so important for you and your husband to see the doctor together from time to time, especially at the beginning of your pregnancy. Then you both hear what he has to say about your condition and about any problems that may be connected with it.

The doctor knows that you may be unhappy at times about your appearance, your diet, or the restrictions that will gradually be placed on your normal activities. He can explain your feelings so that your husband will understand them better. At the same time, he can help you see the need for being as reasonable and considerate as possible.

Traditionally the mother prepares the layette but nearly everything else that needs to be done in advance for the baby, you and your husband can do together. Fathers who are handy with tools often enjoy making things that will be needed later—the crib, perhaps, or a cabinet, playpen or sturdy table. Any public librarian will know where to find designs and instructions for making or repairing baby furniture. When expectant parents get ready for a new baby by sharing both the fun and the work, they usually find themselves looking forward with growing anticipation to the new responsibilities that come with parenthood.

How families grow

You may have known families where husband and wife were so close that they did not really want the baby they were expecting. To be perfectly honest, haven't you sometimes wondered what this child of yours might do to your marriage? Why shouldn't you? A major change is taking place in the inner life of your family. It would be strange if you had no misgivings about it. Yet most people find that fatherhood and motherhood give new depth and meaning to their husband-wife relationship.

Until the first baby comes, a family may be represented by two people facing each other. When the youngster arrives, where do we put him? Between his parents? No. If we do that, they will have to go either through him or around him to reach each other.

If we think of the family as a three-sided figure, however, we can give mother, father, and baby each a place of his own at one of the corners. No one comes between either of the other two in this arrangement. Each is seen as a personality in his own right, free to work out his own relationships with each of the other two. This will be true if the family later adds one, two, three, four or any other number of members. This is how family "circles" are formed.

At intervals on this circle are the people in your baby's other families: his mother and father, brothers and sisters, his grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles and aunts. Here is your baby's world. Long before he knows anyone in it, he will get the "feel" of it from you and his father. What kinds of feelings are running along those lines connecting the people in the circle with the people in the triangle or the square? No one person can ever be wholly responsible for the feelings of anyone else. But, as everyone knows, the way we act toward people has a lot to do with the way they act toward us.

Grandparents

In this country, we seem to have the impression that a family consists of two parents and their child or children. As a matter of fact, a normal family has three generations and each of these generations needs the other two. Children and grandparents, particularly, need each other so much that the lives of both are impoverished if they cannot know and love each other. Sometimes they are separated because families move apart, sometimes through misunderstandings, sometimes because parents resent interference or fear loss of authority.

Young families do need privacy and freedom to do their own growing. At the same time, grandparents need to feel useful, to be able to give and receive affection. This does not mean that parents should abdicate. It does mean that, with a little diplomacy, understandings can often be reached that meet the needs of all three generations. When you have to say "No," it helps a great deal to be able to make some other suggestion—to think of something a mother or mother-in-law can do that will really be helpful. The friendliness in the family that results from your efforts may be one of the most valuable contributions you can make to your child's future welfare.

No matter how big your family is, the key to its life is the relationship between you and your husband. The more satisfying this is to both of you, the happier and healthier the life of the whole family is likely to be.

Marcus Siegel

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