Having Kids

Jancee Dunn, a New York Times columnist and the author of How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids, recalls the explosive arguments that erupted between her and her husband after the birth of their child.  These disagreements were often triggered by seemingly trivial moments like a missing bottle of wine. With resentment building and roles unspoken, their marriage transformed as they struggled with sleep deprivation, overwhelming responsibility, and the new pressures of parenthood. Though the tension seemed insurmountable, Jancee candidly shares how self-reflection, therapy, and a renewed commitment to understanding her and her husband's evolving conflict styles ultimately strengthened their relationship and transforms their approach to arguing. 

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. One of my favorite quotations, and truly I find this quotation so useful in so many parts of life, can also be an acronym. The acronym is Pronounced RI and the quotation from the Science fiction writer, Carl Sagan, goes like this, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Michael Lee: Ri So if I hear someone make a claim, a really big one about human nature. Or all marriages or masculine men are like this, and feminine women are like that, or all American cars such and such. My equity antennas go up immediately and I'm listening intently for how that person justifies such a big, broad claim.

Michael Lee: What I suspect in these cases is that a person is committing, and here's your second bit of vocabulary for the [00:01:00] day, a hasty generalization. This fallacy happens when someone makes a broad or sweeping conclusion. Based on a fairly small amount of evidence, it's like jumping to conclusions without looking at the full picture.

Michael Lee: For example, let's say you're watching a reality TV show and a contestant acts rude or manipulative, and you think. While all reality TV stars are fake and only really care about drama, you're committing a hasty generalization. You're talking about the behavior of one person or a few people, and assuming it applies to an entire group without considering that many other contestants on reality shows do and don't fit that stereotype.

Michael Lee: Or how about food? Imagine someone tries a fast food burger from a chain and says, all these fast food burgers taste terribly here. They're generalizing their opinion. On one specific brand to all fast food burgers, our world is really complicated. Truth is often messy and hard to find. Simple explanations, [00:02:00] black and white thinking stereotypes that remove the messiness of gray areas.

Michael Lee: These are appealing, comfortable blankets of security in a confusing world that truth, whether some big capital T truth or smaller lowercase truths. Is elusive. Doesn't mean it's not out there finding. It does take diligence and care, not just to sift through the available evidence to find what Sagan called extraordinary evidence, but also to guard against easy thinking.

Michael Lee: That just because we've experienced some of a thing that we can make assumptions about all of a thing. I'm Michael Lee, professor of communication and director of a civility initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on when We Disagree is Jany Dunn. I. She is the well columnist of the New York Times.

Michael Lee: She's written eight books, and today she's talking about her book, how Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids, which was published in 2017. [00:03:00] Jany. Tell us an argument story. 

Jancee Dunn: Okay, so this happened, I mean, you can probably get a clue from the title of the book, but this happened, uh, between me and my husband Tom, after we had a baby and.

Jancee Dunn: So I'm making dinner and I am, um, feeding our, I guess she was around six months at that point. And I was, I was, I was just doing a bunch of different things at once in the kitchen after, um, having work that day and to Tom came into the kitchen and I thought, oh, good. Some help. And I sort of smiled at him.

Jancee Dunn: Or maybe it was sort of like a grimace at that point that was, you know, kind of like a, a, 

Michael Lee: yeah, a 

Jancee Dunn: faux smile, 

Michael Lee: bearing your teeth. 

Jancee Dunn: Yeah. And he wa yeah, maybe I was bearing my teeth like an animal, but he, he was actually heading past me. He weaved past me to get to the fridge. He opened up the fridge for a long moment, and then he said, there's no wine left.

[00:04:00] Oh, here we go. 

Jancee Dunn: And I, I was still, you know, doing a, a bunch of different things and I was cleaning up and. Emptying the dishwasher. I was, this, you know, it was an octopus. And I said, what? I, I guess not. And he said, you didn't get wine today? And I just, I just lost it. Yeah. And I, I remember, no, the kid wasn't six months.

Jancee Dunn: She was old enough. She was a toddler 

Uhhuh 

Jancee Dunn: because, okay. Because then she jumped in between us. So what happened was he said. You didn't get wine today? Look, I'm imitating. I'm like, which he, that's not how he was speaking. He speak like a normal human being. Um, and I said, oh, what? Now I managed the store rooms.

Jancee Dunn: My apologies, Lord, grant them all alert the staff. And I just kept yelling and yelling and yelling. It was, it was so out of context for what was happening. But what had happened was I had just built up this resentment and I didn't voice the resentment. I didn't say, Hey, I could use some [00:05:00] help. I just expected him to read my mind.

Jancee Dunn: It did not work out that way. And so my reaction was completely out of proportion and we just started, 

yeah, 

Jancee Dunn: fighting and. Then what made it worse? You know, I had done this, I had my behavior and this, I've heard this from so many other parents. I did this thing where I would fight with Tom and we would argue, but I was super sweet to my child, and as if she's not going to absorb that somehow, right?

Jancee Dunn: That, that her parents are fighting. Like I would, I would reserve my ire for him and then it, it would be like. Hey, Tom, do you think you could manage to put gas in the car today? Yeah, that'd be great. Right? And then her, do you want some Cheerios? I want some Cheerios. Great. You know, well, kids aren't stupid and they're emotionally intuitive and they, they, she knew what was going on.

Jancee Dunn: So when we started fighting about the wine, which just spiraled into. [00:06:00] Into my list of grievances for him. I'm so ashamed. I, I'm, I'm actually blushing thinking about, oh, how, how wrong I was. I mean, it wasn't great that he was saying no wine, you know, not ideal, but. But our argument was just, 

yeah, 

Jancee Dunn: brutal. And it was, it was, we were digging up old grievances and he was saying how crabby I was, and that word set me off again.

Jancee Dunn: And, and I could see he's not a fighter. I, I grew up in a household where, you know, we would fight and he isn't. And so he would, I could see him kind of retreating and he would throw something out a little bit that would get me upset. Yeah. But he was turning gray and he was kind of like. Like retreating into his shell like this, this, this gastropod, and, and I, I was so mad that I couldn't see his grayish tone and feel sorry for him.

Jancee Dunn: Um, 

Michael Lee: can I ask you a quick question? 

Jancee Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you, will you tell 

Michael Lee: me a little bit about, [00:07:00] um, your conflicts or lack thereof before your daughter's birth? You characterize kind of an a BC to ad shift. Not just in the number of conflicts, but in the tenor and tone and duration of conflict. And I eventually wanna get to the why.

Michael Lee: You know, what do you speculate happened? I mean, around the birth, around moving from two partners to spouses, to to family, right? That that transition from a relationship to a family I find fascinating, but just characterize this kind of lack of disagreement in the before times. And this more aggressive antagonistic culture in the after period.

Jancee Dunn: Well, I was steeped in in wellness culture, in mental health culture, and I knew the, I knew the tricks, or I thought I did before the baby came. And so I remember one counselor told me, um, [00:08:00] oh, when you fight. Hold, hold your partner's hand, like that'll remind you that it's a person that, that you're, that you're hurting a person.

Jancee Dunn: That this is your, you know, the familiar contours of their hand will kind of ground you. And we were, that helped, like we were two grownups. Mm-hmm. We had, we were grateful to find each other and we by and large worked out conflicts. In a respectful way. We were both, um, writers and we liked quiet. Yeah. You know, when, if, if there's conflict, um, we, you know, we, we wanted it to be over with quickly.

Jancee Dunn: Yeah. Um, peacemakers, we startled from loud noises, like, panic dear, you know, and, and so we, we generally did not. You know, some people are kind of stimulated by fighting. I did grow up where people fought, but then I didn't wanna do that afterwards when, um, I got out into the world. And, um, and I don't [00:09:00] mean I grew up in some sort of abusive household, I just meant that, you know, um, that my parents, you know, fought in front of us and, um, but then we saw them resolve things in front of us too, which was helpful, you know, as sort of modeling.

Jancee Dunn: So anyway, when, when we were. First married really for 10 years. It was mostly a grownup situation. It was resolving conflict in a neutral tone. Um, you know, I was a little better kind of sharing how I felt about things. You know, I, I knew the formula. Like, name the problem, talk about your feelings about the problem, you know?

Jancee Dunn: Right. Propose solutions, be collaborative. I, I knew all that stuff. And, um, and he sort of went along with it too, and. And so we were much more sort of tender with each other. And you know, when the dyna it's funny when the dynamic is just the two of you, and it was in a peaceful environment. Um, [00:10:00] we just, you know, we liked to read at home on weeknights.

Jancee Dunn: Like it was, it was just, we just, it was just, that was kind of the culture that we created in our, in our house. 

Yeah. 

Jancee Dunn: Apartment. And so it. It was amazing how different it was with the addition of a baby. And I think part of that was that we kind of slid back into these sort of gender, uh, roles that we weren't expecting to do.

Jancee Dunn: I, I, I thought, oh, you know, he's enlightened, right? You know? Right. And, and it just didn't turn out that way. And that was the result as I see now, of just how both of us grew up and societal expectations and all that stuff, you know? And, and talk a little bit more about the gender role 

Michael Lee: stuff, uh, in other words, to, to people, to accomplish, folks to writers.

Michael Lee: Um, two folks who are probably, I imagine putting words in your mouth, somewhat skeptical, critical of traditional gender roles in terms of how they box us [00:11:00] in Right. And yet find yourselves replicating the very roles you've spent most of your adult life criticizing and living differently from. 

Jancee Dunn: Yes, it was an absolute shock.

Jancee Dunn: I, I, um, you know, and part of that is that a lot of it was sort of. Um, it's not like we had this conversation about our roles and how we were going to sort of, you know, repudiate them. It was, it was more, it was just sort of an an, it was just sort of implied. It was like, oh, of course this is going to happen organically.

Jancee Dunn: Of course, we're going to figure out how to do everything. And so we never had a real conversation about it. We didn't, I wouldn't even know what to sort of ask now. I would, but we just didn't, we just, we made a bunch of assumptions and, and also we didn't, looking back and I wrote about this, we, it's not like we sat down and figured out, okay, who's gonna do what in the house?

Jancee Dunn: Like, [00:12:00] who's gonna, who's gonna stay home with the baby if she gets sick? We didn't ask any of those questions of each other, like just, just. Normal life stuff. Like, okay, who, who's gonna feed the baby? Who's going to change the baby? Like, what about weekends? How's that gonna work? We didn't ask the really practical, logistical things.

Jancee Dunn: And you know, some counselors have said, write down all the chores you do in your house and, and divvy them up ahead of time. And, and I just wasn't thinking because it was much more exciting to spend. Weeks and months debating about what to name the baby or what to paint the baby. What color To paint the baby's room.

Jancee Dunn: Right, 

Michael Lee: right. The nursery. My god, fun stuff. What color is the nursery gonna be? 

Jancee Dunn: I, I mean, so many conversations around that. Right. Which are much more fun. But everything from the role of in-laws to what happens if one of us has to travel for work, which we did a lot in those days. Nothing. So everything was like a brand new problem.

Jancee Dunn: That's right. [00:13:00] When the baby came and, and that, that was a mistake. And so it was, you know, we're, especially Tom, he's just a very thoughtful and kind person and, uh, which made him a great father. But, but we just, I remember in the early days, excuse me, um, hold on. I'm gonna take a sip of water. I remember in the early days.

Jancee Dunn: He had said, um, how do you button up this onesie? You know how there's 3000 buttons on a onesie? And you're like, who, who manufactured this with the, with the, I mean, with the snaps, right? There was like, yeah, there was like this, so many like seemingly hundreds of snaps. And he said, how do you do this?

Jancee Dunn: You're the expert. And I, I said, I'm, I'm not the expert. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't know how to do this. I'm learning with you. But he was just, it was, it was also, I see his insecurity. And he just thought, oh God, you do it. You know, please, you must know what you're doing. Yeah, you [00:14:00] babysat five times when you were a teenager.

Jancee Dunn: Surely you know how to do this. And we were just both not as kind to each other as we should have been. Like, God, we're going through this together. This is really much harder than we thought. And so, yeah. Let 

Michael Lee: me ask about that first, just a second. You, you talked about, um. Having a little bit of shame about the way that you fought, in other words Oh, yeah.

Michael Lee: Fighting, let's say meanly, to put it crudely. Mm-hmm. You characterize him as a little more retreating. 

Mm-hmm. 

Michael Lee: Maybe throwing out a barb here and there, and certainly a, a stray Ill considered comment it sounds like. Um, yes. Some putting upon some, some deference. Towards your massive snap based expertise about various onesies.

Michael Lee: Mm-hmm. Do you think he has kind of lingering shame like you do? 

Jancee Dunn: Uh, we've talked about that a [00:15:00] little bit. And he, he, he said that he did, because. You know, he would just sort of check out. 

Mm-hmm. 

Jancee Dunn: And that's a way of fighting, isn't it? Oh yeah. Like, it's just absenting yourself, right? Yes. And so that's what he would do.

Jancee Dunn: And I, I know why he did it is because he was, you know, frightened of the responsibility. He didn't know whether he could be a good father. He was frightened of my temper. Yeah. I mean, I'm from New Jersey. I would call 'em things like. Maybe, you know what the, why did I call him? I call him a dick wad. I remember that's a very jersey term.

Jancee Dunn: What even is a dick wad? I mean, 

Michael Lee: that's the title of your next book. 

Jancee Dunn: Yeah. But, but you know, like name calling. I could, I could die of shame thinking of, he doesn't, he never calls me names. Right. He never has. Right. He's just, he's a grownup even when he fights. Um, except for kind of the absenting himself thing.

Jancee Dunn: So I was like the hothead. It was awful. It was really awful. And 

Michael Lee: so, had [00:16:00] you ever called somebody a dick quad before in your life? 

Jancee Dunn: I mean, yeah. Yelling out the window of my Buick LeSabre as I was driving on the New Jersey turnpike and somebody cut me off. Yeah. My perm blowing in the wind. So yes, I did then quite the same.

Jancee Dunn: And so yeah, it was part of my vernacular, you know. 

Michael Lee: Gotcha, gotcha. 

Jancee Dunn: On the way to the shore. Um, so, but it, it had, I had stifled it for many years as I entered the workforce and became a, you know, a grownup human being. But all that stuff came. Came flooding out again and it was just poisonous and awful. Yeah.

Michael Lee: When you look back, do you think it's probably, the answers to this is probably all of the above, but I, I just wanna hear you talk it out. Sure. Which is, I. What is, what are some of the primary source? What is the primary source of the post-baby conflict? Is it sleeplessness? Is it equitability of labor? Is it our relationship has changed?

Michael Lee: Is it existential crisis over? Am I qualified to [00:17:00] keep this thing alive and hope it, hopefully have it develop secure attachment? Is it terror about what's happening to us dynamically from a couple to a family? How do you. How do you piece all that out? 

Jancee Dunn: I mean, definitely every single thing that you mentioned, um, equitability of labor would probably be the primary one though, which seems so ridiculous in a way.

Jancee Dunn: Right. And, and, um, I. Yeah, but it, it really, you know, it didn't mean that things had to be 50 50, just that they somehow felt equitable. 

Yeah. 

Jancee Dunn: We just could not, I mean, my feeling is you really have to negotiate this stuff in a calm way, and we just didn't. And so then it was probably the top two were that and just completely being overwhelmed and, and.

Jancee Dunn: FF frightened of, of raising this baby. I mean, when they, when you, when you bring the baby home from the hospital and you're, [00:18:00] you're, you know, that you're thinking, wait, the hospital just gave us this baby and we can now take the baby home and we're in the living room with this baby. It was, it was, it was wild.

Jancee Dunn: And so I was, I'm that they 

Michael Lee: let you just take it home like, you know what you're doing. Yeah. You like, it seems negligent on their behalf 

Jancee Dunn: in the backseat. Like now. Okay. You know? Great. I guess so then it was kind of. Then like horribly enhanced by sleep deprivation and yeah, you know, worries about money and we were both freelance writers and you don't know where the next assignment is coming.

Jancee Dunn: Um, and, and then. Yeah, just, um, worries that our relationship was changing permanently because that argument that I mentioned about the wine, what had happened was in the middle of it, our daughter, I. She wasn't a baby. That was another argument. I'm getting them all mixed up in my mind 'cause there was quite a few.

Yeah. 

Jancee Dunn: Um, she jumped in front [00:19:00] of my husband and said, don't you yell at Daddy, because what she saw as a toddler is me losing my, you know, 

right. 

Jancee Dunn: Blank in front of him and, and attacking him. And so that's what she sees. And I thought, ah, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm making things unhappy for her too. And. And that's what really sadly, I see now.

Jancee Dunn: That's what really got my attention is, oh, you know, oh, I'm ruining our child. Not, not, I'm ruining our marriage by not being able to control my temper. But Uhoh uhoh, the, you know, our child's in trouble. 

Yeah. And 

Jancee Dunn: so it took a lot of, um, you know, therapy and, and realizing like, no, no, he's, he's so important.

Jancee Dunn: I love him. Like, why am I treating him this way? And why are we. Arguing. So why is it, why does that, it feel so scarily out of control when we argue. Yeah. And so, you know, 

Michael Lee: let me ask you a follow up on [00:20:00] that. Um, which is why did something, let's say like an insult or a tone that's aggressive enough to inspire a toddler to get in between, why were those actionable?

Michael Lee: Why were those possible? That environment when they hadn't been for years and years. I mean, y'all had been together for over a decade at that point. 

Jancee Dunn: Yes.

Jancee Dunn: Gosh, that's a very good question. Like what? What had changed so significantly beyond the addition of another person in our house? It was just this, you know what it was? It was things were. I think it's that things were galloping forward so quickly. Mm-hmm. Um, that we didn't have time to pause and analyze anything that we just couldn't say, like, wait, what's happening here?

Jancee Dunn: It was just like, you know, because again, we were both working. We had the baby, we were just trying to kind of get [00:21:00] through each day, and so there was no. There was no analysis at all. And so there was never any time to stop and say like, Hey, we have to talk about this. You know, we want to, let's get back on track.

Jancee Dunn: We just, we just didn't, and I thought, and I know how I sound, it was just one kid. Like I'm sure anyone listening who has multiple kids is like, oh my God, that's nothing. You know, it's just the one. But it was, it was our first experience. And then when I see people that have other kids, they say, oh, you kind of know what you're in for the next time around.

Michael Lee: Yeah. I mean, I know from experience that New Parenthood is, is absolutely terrifying. Uh, just to, to sum up and talking about maybe a lasting lesson and inspires obviously a lot of of memory, um, some really powerful stories of love and reconnection and mutual understanding, also lingering shame and I'm fascinated how you make sense of all of it.

Michael Lee: So. How do you, how does one not [00:22:00] hate their spouse after kids? 

Jancee Dunn: Um, you know, if you're expecting and, um, the, you know, your baby hasn't arrived yet, then, um, or you're adopting or whatever, however you're getting a baby, you know, to just have the hard conversations, have these seemingly boring conversations about division of labor and, and.

Jancee Dunn: Walk me through a weekday and a weekend. Yeah. And what's it going to look like and who's going to do what and what are your fears? What are your expectations? How were you? I mean, a good question that, um, Dr. John Gottman raised was. Um, name five ways that you were raised that you wanna replicate with your, with your child.

Jancee Dunn: And name five ways that you absolutely don't wanna replicate. Like even talking about how you were raised, which is a conversation many of us don't have Beyond little, you know, stories here and there. Yeah. 

Um, 

Jancee Dunn: can be really helpful. So, and then it's just, [00:23:00] you know, we started, this is, this is small, but it's also doable.

Jancee Dunn: We would just take a walk with the baby and then when she got older, you know, bring her along for 10 minutes during the night and we would just talk to each other, just really talk to each other about anything except our kid and how we were feeling. And. We just have to find our way back to each other.

Jancee Dunn: And it takes effort. Like if, if you have to make an effort, and we did. And now we've been married for, uh, 24 years and we got through it and you know, I really cherish him now. Yeah. But it didn't happen organically, you know? I thought it would, it didn't. Yeah. 

Michael Lee: Well said. Nancy Dunn, thank you so much for being on when we disagree.

Jancee Dunn: My pleasure. 

Michael Lee: When we Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We [00:24:00] disagree@gmail.com.