Two Disparate Wall Street Journal Articles Offer Similar Advice on Marriage and Kids

The “Review” section of the February 8, 2025 edition of the Journal featured the inevitable Superbowl article and a celebration of Twizzler’s licorice. But wedged in the middle were two other articles that many parents could benefit from. The first was by psychotherapist and author Rachel Glik. The awkward title portended the advice: “The Kids Always Came First. Then I Realized My Marriage Was Falling Apart.”

This is a classic story that tells a lot about how marriages disintegrate. Young couple falls in love and marries in a world without children. Children come along and there is a sea change in what is important. Glik notes that the perceived needs of the children meant that the role of spouse was relegated to the back seat. She knew this from her practice but then she started to realize that it was occurring in her home; in her marriage. She found herself studying Jewish traditional teachings from the Kabbalah and there found clear ordered priorities: (1) self (2) spouse (3) children. The message was that happy couples make for happy children and miserable couples risk just the opposite. Young children especially devote much of their waking day to analyzing and responding to their parents. Perhaps just as important, Glik realized that she was happier in a world where her needs and those of the spouse were balanced rather than subordinated to those of her kids. Her book is titled “A Soulful Marriage.” (Morehouse)

The back page of the Review section again had an article for which the title was the story: “Don’t Try to Rescue Your Kid from the ‘Learning Pit’” Author Jenny Anderson has a book out espousing the importance of failure in the development of a child and the reward children feel when they emerge from the learning pit we all experienced in parts of our academic and athletic lives. This is not about accepting failure. On the contrary it is about overcoming it by mentoring a child while he/she realizes that failure is a condition and not necessarily a conclusion.

I read more history and biography than I can fully remember. But I recently read one of a student whose father was a very busy farmer fully immersed in all that occupation requires. The subject of the biography revealed that at one point he was failing a foreign language. His father’s response was: “Well bring me your books and for some time you and I (father and son) will see what we can learn of this.” The child was gobsmacked. He knew his father knew nothing of this subject but was making his son’s success such a priority that other important business would be set aside. We live in an age when the tendency is to resort to tutors and coaches-resources once considered prohibitive in cost or impossible to locate. Of course, parents are making an investment when they engage outsiders to coach/teach. But the parent in this instance “owned” the problem and the child remembered it decades later.

Steven Tyler and Ralph Waldo Emerson were right: “Life’s a journey not a destination” and the fruit of life is centered by a pit. When you encounter one, you work around it and demonstrate to your own kids that you understand failure and will help them to overcome theirs. Your personal engagement signals that you care.