Customer Reviews

Happily Married With Kids

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As a psychologist working both with couples and individuals, I have been awaiting the publication of this book with much anticipation. So often I have found that parents of young children feel very isolated and overwhelmed in their distress over having to balance parenthood and marriage. This book resonates so well with the experiences of many couples having to adjust to the challenges of parenthood and marriage. In this book Dr. Lindquist describes with a great deal of humor the frequent challenges that arise. This book is practical and easy to read, even when you have had an exhausting day with the kids... This is a book that not only describes and analyses the problems, it focuses on solutions, recovery, and repair. Dr. Lindquist offers wonderful suggestions and specific "how to" tips that will help couples stay connected, communicate well, have a good sexual relationship, negotiate responsibilities, and learn to enjoy vacations, holidays, and the rich joys that can be experienced in one's marriage and with one's children. What I also liked so much was Dr. Lindquist's comfort with self-disclosing her own marital and parental challenges as well as what worked for her. This makes for a very engaging and alive book. I loved this book. I plan to recommend it to my patients and friends. It can also be a great gift for a "baby shower". I'm glad that there is finally a book that is so useful and easy to read for couples coping with parenthood, and for parents wanting to protect and enhance their relationship.

I haven't completely finished this book but I'm close and I'm looking forward to it. I'll no doubt read it again and again. I only wish I/we had found it sooner. It is written in plain English and really hits the mark in terms of things we've been dealing with. It gives great information I've never seen anywhere else and which promises to be very helpful to us... who knew we might just be in a pretty normal phase. I think that piece of information alone could save thousands of marriages. Thank you Ms. Lindquist for writing this book - it's an easy enjoyable read and it gives me hope.

As a wife of 10 years that is having her first baby, I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to read this book prior to our first child's birth. This book is easy to read and is written with wit while giving the reader excellent tips on how to keep your marriage healthy as well as keep yourself happy as a wife and mother. The author provides realistic suggestions for you to follow! This book is applicable to all stages of motherhood, and I highly recommend both the wife and husband reading it.

So many couples experience culture shock once their children are born. Their lives turn upside down. Wives find that they do most of the diaper changes, feedings, and regular chores around the house. This leaves them to feel unappreciated and overworked. They wait until the last minute to ask for help from their husbands, usually leading them to yell in frustration. Husbands may feel inadequate in helping with the child, so they focus on what they can do best, working. They stress over whether they are providing enough monetarily, not realizing they need to provide emotionally as well. Neither of them are mind readers! Without proper communication, most marriages head toward demise.

Dr. Carol Lindquist, a therapist with thirty years of experience, strives to bridge the gaps between the husband and wife. Her book, Happily Married With Kids: It's Not a Fairy Tale gives couples the help they need. She guides couples to talk to each other, learn from each other, and keep their intimacy going in order to help their marriages grow.

She brings awareness that while having children is a blessing, it can also be taxing on the marriage. This is not the child's fault but rather how the adults handle the situations. Do they handle them together or do they try to do them alone without working as a team? To make a marriage work, communication needs to be open, listening needs to be instilled, and appreciation for each other should be an every day occurrence.

If your marriage on the outside seems perfect, but inside you know it needs help, don't shy away from asking for it. If you wait too long, it may be too late.

Having a first child means big changes in a marriage. Many couples have ideas that a child is going to bring them closer together. The reality however, may be much different. In Happily Married With Kids, author Carol Ummel Lindquist, takes a candid look at some of the issues couples may face as they grow together as a family.

Topics discussed include dealing with sleep deprivation and new baby demands, sharing the work load of parenting and household chores, dealing with anger, setting goals, family vacations, holidays, and even surviving an affair. Dr. Lindquist provides bullet points of advice for dealing with each issue. Her advice on how to communicate respectfully is excellent and can be applied to any relationship.

Happily Married With Kids is a the perfect combination of advice and humor that will help couples navigate the ups and downs of parenthood while maintaining a loving relationship. I highly recommend it.

I first heard Dr. Carol Lindquist on a local radio program. I ordered this book and after reading it passed it on to my adult children. This is a great book for all expectant parents and parents of small children to read, not only to understand they are experiencing normal stressors children bring to a relationship, but to have practical suggestions to deal with them. Sharing from her own experiences gives validity to Dr. Lindquist's solutions. I highly recommend this book.

This book helped my wife and I understand us now that we have kids, it truly brought so much peace to our marraige, we are very grateful for this book.

As a pediatric/family psychologist seeing dozens of families per month, I am very impressed with Dr. Lindquist's new book and will be advising my patients to read it as an adjunct to their own therapy to expedite their counseling process. This well-written, practical, and humorous book does an excellent job of focusing on the logistics of parenting while insightfully exploring how to keep our marital relationships strong, loving, and collaborative. Dr. Lindquist's wisdom, warmth, and wit help every reader see the essential link between a healthy marriage and a healthy family foundation. It is the absolute best book of its type I've read and I heartily recommend it to everyone who is in that "two decades of parenting" phase of their lives. This is indeed a great addition to the literature!

While reading the book I was blown away by all the "ah-ha" moments I had. I kept talking to myself saying "wow, had I known that at the time I totally would have worded things so differently", instead of saying "take out the damn trash", "Why do you leave it on the flipping porch every damn morning" or "would it hurt you to change a flipping diaper once in a while" it would have been better accepted had I just asked Franc in a nice non-nagging way to "please take the trash out when you leave for work" or "can you help me by changing D's diaper". Carol talks a lot about how we as couples speak to our significant other in ways that we would never imagine talking to a friend or stranger. I think she makes an excellent point. I would never yell at a stranger that he's an incompetent trash remover (and that's toned down for my blog:), and I doubt Franc would tell his boss that he can't believe he's been in the office for x amount of time and hasn't done nothing to show for it. In the beginning we struggled a lot because I was not a stay at home mom. I worked and went to school. He worked long hours and did not understand that I was carrying a double load with work, school, and taking care of a new child plus dealing with jealousy issues with our oldest. It would have been nice to have a book like this then. Let's face it. When there's a new child involved we say things to our loved ones that we don't mean. Those little spur of the moment fits have real impact but not in a good way.

In Happily Married With Kids, Carol goes through many techniques for real marriages. There are the 5 stages of marriage, normal marriages-real problems, discussion on vacations and how to develop a plan with or without baby in tow. I really enjoyed the section on Living Together Happily During Tough Economic Times. Since we're living in a country that is experiencing a drastic shift in our economy, and many couples are really struggling to pay the bills and find time for them, I think this chapter is priceless. Another section that I found helpful is Recognizing Helpful Conversation, this chapter talks about how to change the way you talk to your spouse so you're on equal playing ground. A spouse will respond much differently when you leave the accusations out of it and focus on what you really want to say without the negativity.

Pro's/Con's
Overall the book is great and I would definitely recommend it to new parents. My children are 9 & 12 but I still found spots in the book that were helpful to me. I did feel the book was written for new and existing parents with children under school age though. Carol does not talk about children and school issues which is a factor in marriages with school age children. I like how Carol discusses things that the couple can do for free, but I did feel that the author focused on middle class families a lot. She talks about hiring a maid to take pressure off of the family a lot. Families of low SES (social economic status) cannot hire a maid nor can they afford a counselor. It is true that a maid is cheaper than a counselor but neither is attainable in a SES family. They likely can check out books at the library or perhaps purchase a self help book. There is a lot of good information in Happily Married With Kids though, and even if you are not in a position to hire a counselor a self help book can help.

When I was 17 I met the man I have been married to for the last 8 years. Yes this means that I married young, and with that also comes having children young, I though at least we will still be young enough to do things when the kids, grow up. Those were thoughts of a naive me. After 10 years together, and 3 children we were in the same place as many of my friends without realizing it. We were not making the time for each other and this would lead to one or the other feeling ignored. I wanted to be a great mom to my kids and make sure they knew I would always be there, but I forgot about my partner in all of it, and one day I realized we were doomed once the kids moved out, because we had become so much about the kids, and so little about each other.

I was so glad to have the chance to review Happily Married With Kids It's not a fairy Tale, because now I feel like we really have a connection. I don't feel were doomed to have nothing to talk about and will just grow apart. I can say I am a happily married women and more in love with my husband then I was before. Our relationship has improved because of what I learned in this book.

Would I buy this book? yes
Would I recommend this book to any couple with children? Yes it is a great read. Overall I am so glad to have read this book and will be telling all my friends.