Why I'll always put my children before my husband... even though it's already destroyed one relationship

When I had my first child 13 years ago, I had no idea it heralded the end of my relationship with his father.



I didn't know then that many men want their partner to put marriage first and children second.

I put my child first and it cost me my relationship. And yet, even though I am now with another man and we have had three children, I still put my children before my marriage.



Back then, though, life seemed simple. I hadn't thought that much about the choices I'd be unwittingly facing once I had my first child. I just assumed both my partner and myself would love this baby equally.

Priorities: Lucy Cavendish with her children, from left, Raymond, 13, Ottoline, two, Leonard, seven and Jerry, five

I thought we would all muddle along as a new family. It would be uproar, of course, but the dust would settle. I had no reason to think otherwise.



While I was pregnant, my partner seemed delighted. He talked about the baby constantly. He patted my belly. He endlessly showed his friends the scan photos.



At first, I think my partner accepted it - newborns do need constant attention - but as time went by, it became obvious that having a child had fundamentally changed me.

The focus of my life became my child and not my partner. Whereas before I would maybe cook him dinner or meet him from work and go out, I spent all day with my son and then, later, I no longer had the energy to cook or chat into the small hours.

We stopped going out much. I didn't dress up in the way I used to, either. I couldn't see the point. Our life was about our child, wasn't it?

After a year or so, my partner told me he found the life change - my change - frustrating. He hated going to the 'child-friendly' restaurants I insisted we frequent.



He hated the children's activities I arranged for us to do. He couldn't bear the fact that our life revolved around our child's routines. Even the sound of me puree-ing the food I made for our son drove him mad.

Bond: Lucy with her daughter Ottoline, now two



'You're always cooking for him,' my partner would say, as I'd mash up the umpteenth portion of organic butternut squash, 'but there's never any dinner for me!'

I found this unbelievable. How could a grown man get so cross about something as small as a baby, his baby.



As time went on, everything got worse. My partner ended up saying he hated the noise in the mornings, couldn't stand the mess, loathed the tantrums and couldn't seem to enjoy the quieter, happier times. He also seemed to fail to understand why all this - every minute of every day with my child - was so important to me.

'Why am I not important to you?' he'd ask. The answer was he was important to me, just not as important as our child.

I cared so deeply about all of it. I wanted my child to be happy, fulfilled and not stuck in a corner, being seen and not heard. I would have moved mountains for him. When he was ill, I slept in the same room as him.



When he wanted to do the same thing 20 times over - slide down a slide or get me to put together toy railway tracks for him - I did so without complaint.

I carried him for miles when his legs got tired on walks. I played hide-and-seek endlessly. I cajoled, persuaded, kissed. I have learnt more in these 13 years with my son than in the rest of my life put together.



But my partner couldn't see this. He couldn't see how he, too, could learn and enjoy so much. All he could see was a life ruined and a wife taken away from him. So a decade ago we split up.

It was painful and horrible. But despite all this, when I hear people say 'Put your marriage before your children', I want to tell them they are wrong.



I would do it all again, regardless of what my child-centric attitude did to my relationship with my eldest son's father. For I truly believe children should come before a marriage.

I have had three children since - Leonard, seven, Jerry, five, and Ottoline, two - with my husband and we both put the children first. If they were all drowning, I would rescue my children before my husband.

I would cry for them, lie for them, die for them. I would not do any of those things for my husband.

Why should women put their husbands before their children? Husbands are adults. They can make their own decisions, earn their own money, they can even tie their own shoelaces

More than that, my husband would not do them for me. He shares my feelings about our children. They are the loves of our lives, in many ways above and beyond each other.

For me, my children are my world. And they are children; they cannot do things that adults can do, such as always express themselves coherently. Children can be demanding, irrational, irritating. They break things and do the wrong thing countless times. If they were adults, you'd probably leave them and never see them again.

Your job, as a parent, is to try to help them negotiate life, not get into some attention battle with your partner.

I have seen grown men ask their small children to move at the family dinner table so that they can sit next to their wife. A man I knew who did this told me it was because the children needed to see him as being in charge.

'I am the Alpha male,' he told me. 'My wife is my woman. She needs to be with me, and we are the children's parents, not their slaves. That is why I insist on sitting next to her at dinner.'

Yet my husband and I, when the children were younger, would sit with them to help them chop up food and eat. It never occurred to either of us not to do this.

I make time for my children. I listen to them. I bend over backwards for them. I cook them the food I know they like. I joke about with them, bathe with them (well, the smaller two).



I spend a fortune on them. I spend almost no money on myself and not a lot on my husband, bar birthdays and Christmas.

I think my children smell nicer, look nicer and generally are nicer than most people.



They are funny, too. If I had a choice, I would far rather spend my time with them than with any other person on this planet.

But all this means I have little energy left for the other areas of my life. I am generally exhausted by the time my husband comes home. I forget to cook for him. I forget to buy bottles of wine for us to share. Most of the time I can barely speak to him I am so tired.

I am not the only woman who does this. Every woman I know puts her children before her husband. She may not tell him that, but she does.

Happy families: Lucy, with sons Leonard, Raymond and Jeremiah, believes in putting her children before her marriage

But now, according to a new book, I am jeopardising everything, our very family's existence, by not putting my husband first. Apparently, in order to get better-adjusted children, parents should put the welfare of their marriage before that of their children.

David Code, a family therapist and writer for the Wall Street Journal, says in his best-selling book To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First that adults should spend more time being a perfect spouse and less time being a perfect parent.

'We parents today are too quick to sacrifice our lives and our marriage for our kids,' he writes. 'But as we break our backs for our kids, our marriage and self-fulfilment go out of the window.'

Yet, for me, putting a husband first is outmoded. Why should women put their husbands before their children? Husbands are adults. They can make their own decisions, earn their own money, they can even tie their own shoelaces.

Why on earth would they need a wife to do all these things? And why are we supposed to work so tirelessly on our marriages? Can't marriages take a back seat while the children are young? They'll grow up soon enough, so why not give them the attention they deserve when they are young?

The truth is, of course, that children are so much nicer than men. They smell better. They look cuter. They also love us unconditionally



What kind of life is it to go back to the working model our mothers - and certainly our grandmothers - had to stick to?

I remember asking my mother how marriages used to work, especially after women had children, and she told me that the traditional role of the wife was to put their husbands first.

Her own mother would make sure the children were in bed, then change into evening clothes, do her hair and make-up, and cook dinner. By the time my grandfather came home, there was a gin and tonic waiting for him and something delicious to eat. She would then spend her evenings listening to my grandfather's tales of the day.

Times have changed. Women don't have to cook, clean, chivvy and then turn to eveningwear in order to keep their man. I imagine many women of an older generation were financially dependent on their men.



They probably had to keep their husbands happy in order to stop them from running off with someone else. But imagine all that effort!

In this day and age, both partners probably work, so who is going to cook for the working mother and wife? Who is going to pour them an evening gin and tonic? Who is going to listen to them talking about their day?

The consequence of all this is that something has to give when the children are young and needy, and that tends to be the ability to nurture the marriage.

Of course, women put their children first. If you work, you see a lot less of them than women who don't, and consequently want to spend every other available minute with them.

Women's roles in the family and in working life have undergone a revolution over the past 50 years. Yet one thing remains the same: as soon as a woman has a baby, every single bone in her body shouts out that her job is to look after her child. It is a natural instinct.

Children need us to love and protect them. When you meet a man, you don't think: 'I must look after this man for the rest of my life.' Our relationships with our spouses are more complicated and more fulfilling than that.

Men, however, have a totally different relationship with their children. Quite often, if you ask a man who comes first in his life - and that man is being honest - he will say: 'My wife.' For many men, the love of their wife is more important than that of their children.

What my generation of babyboomers know is that children are hard work. Marriage is hard work. The pressures of modern life and the change in women's roles has meant we no longer live our lives following a traditional model. Our lives have become dominated by our children because that's how we want it.

The truth is, of course, that children are so much nicer than men. They smell better. They look cuter. They also love us unconditionally. Of course we put them first. Why on earth wouldn't we?