The world changes as you enter parenthood because your perspective must now adjust to the responsibilities of responding to the vulnerable needs of your child.  You are beginning to experience the world through the developmental lens of parenthood.  As you consider your life experience, you can reflect on previous lenses that have shaped your perspectives:  the excitement of playing in the park at age nine, the anxious curiosity of age twelve, the bold adventure of age seventeen.  Our lives are best appreciated when viewed through the specific, normative challenges of the stage we are traversing.  Our needs, desires, frustrations, and challenges are to a large degree determined by these challenges.  It is the unique manner in which we engage those challenges that shapes each of our developmental narratives.  In order to be constructive, parental trainers of our children, we must be conversant with the series of basic, maturational challenges that create frustrations and opportunities for our children.  This chapter will provide you with that essential framework.

Divorce, separation, single parenting are all too familiar in the lives of families in contemporary society.  Living together with an intimate mate creates profound psychological, emotional, and logistical challenges.  Many couples who chose to move in together find themselves having more tensions and less satisfaction.  It is in the very nature of sharing space that the intimate psychological dance begins to truly unfold.  The reservoir of melodies and noise that shaped our early years reassert themselves as we find ourselves in conflict between the confusing loyalties of our past and the current demands of our partner in life in the present.  Couples that are able to negotiate the dueling themes of their past begin to emerge with a coherent narrative that is able to accommodate the needs and dreams of each.  Within this developing story, couples “choose” to bring in a child.