Giuliana Rancic, E! News host and cancer survivor, stirred up controversy last week with her statement to US Weekly that she and husband Bill Rancic, reality TV star and first Trump “Apprentice” hired, “put our marriage first and our child second.”

If you’re married with children you know all too well how hard it is to find time for everything. There’s meal planning, homework, Little League Games, breast feeding, runny noses and first dates. . . the list goes on. The stressors in living up to the this American standard of super parent with a myopic child-focus can be daunting! That is if you buy into this standard. Sometimes it may feel that you’re just not good enough if you don’t give your child the opportunity to participate in every activity, bake cupcakes for the PTO fundraiser or purchase all the latest and greatest things your child  desires.  The pressure is strong and the ante is high because so & so’s parents let him/her do/have such and such a thing. 

Really?

Most American parents dream of offering their children something better than they had as kids, but to what extent? 

To the extreme where they indulge their children at the sake of their marriage? 

And then who benefits?

A child-focused standard hasn’t always been the American way. If we go back just a few generations, children were far from the focus. Many of us have fore fathers & mothers who dropped out of school as children to work and support the family. Life 100 years ago was not easy for children. No one would wish such challenging childhoods on their own children.  

When an individual or a society makes a change, we often move from one extreme to the other before we settle out with a moderate balance. 

What about your family?

Balancing family relationships takes work and the pay off is great. From early years in Marriage & Family Therapy with pioneers like Salvador Minuchin and Structural Family Therapy to contemporary practices such as John Gottman’s Method; Marriage and Family Therapy has helped couples find balance in family relationships providing opportunities for all family members to grow in loving relationships.

How do you balance family relationships?