How Your Marriage Impacts Your Parenting

Aparna & Sanjay Balasundaram’s mission lies in strengthening families by supporting individuals, parents and couples find hope, healing and courage. As relationship and life coaches they have cofounded Life Skills Experts (lifeskillsexperts.com) that empowers children, parents and schools - as well as The Flourishing Marriage Course (flourishingmarriage. com) which encourages couples to refresh and rekindle their marriages.

- Aparna & Sanjay

Imagine this.

Mom and Dad come home from work – often at different times. The children are doing their own thing – watching TV, playing games, doing homework. A brief exchange of pleasantries follows. Sometime later, the family gathers to eat dinner. Conversations range from the mundane to the practical. After dinner, each goes their separate way – to bed. Lights out. End of day.

In nuclear families of today, scenarios like this play out faithfully – each night, all over the nation. Our children rarely get to see their parents spending quality time together and much less, their mutual love and affection. And since monkey see, monkey do – we risk yet another generation instinctively replaying harmful marital behaviours.

Flourishing Marriage = Successful Parenting - The SCIENCE Behind it!

Many of us start out as spouses and then quickly we morph into being just parents and our world then suddenly revolves all around that little being! Decisions we take - be it where we live, how much we save, where we vacation or just a mundane decision of which movie to watch - are all driven by the needs/desires of this little being! Don’t get us wrong, our children are our responsibility and we owe them our best! But in the process we compromise on the very foundational and most critical relationship in the family- the marital relationship. And by doing this, we hurt not just our marriage but also our children. We may perceive our role as a parent as separate from our role as a spouse, however to the child these are intertwined.

This premise is backed by behavioural science research. Many studies have proven that the quality of your marriage has a direct influence on your child’s emotional, cognitive and social well-being.