A Look at the Many Phases of Being a Parent

A couple of months ago I flew up to New York and stopped by to see my friend and former barber for a cut. If you have ever had a barber you have known for close to twenty years, you know the chair is about half haircut and half group therapy. We chop it up, talk a lot of nonsense, and every so often land on something good. This time it was parenting.

My son just turned one, and for some reason the reality and gravity of it all really hit me on his birthday weekend. Time is zipping by, and so are the phases of parenting. It took me back to that haircut. My barber’s son is now in his early twenties, a few years out of college and living in Florida after his college years in upstate New York. We are in vastly different stages of the journey, which made for great perspective and even better conversation.

We spent most of that haircut on the phases he had lived through. We both agreed that parenting is personal and unique, even between siblings in the same household, so we skipped the tip swapping and talked about the general shape of the whole thing. Take this as a generalization with plenty of exceptions, and one that assumes a single child, since siblings change the dynamics and the older kids need something different from us once a new baby arrives.

Survival

For the first year or so, the job is survival. For the first half of that year the baby is mostly just existing. There are developmental milestones, and they matter, but it really comes down to a loop of fed, clean, warm, sleepy, hungry, and repeat as often as needed. Babies also arrive with no daily rhythm at all. They spent months inside their mother and now have to learn how to live out here, which is new for them and new for us, and it is a shock to the psyche and to the whole ecosystem of life as we knew it.

My barber saw this phase as a test of the relationship. We are both running below our best, so the job is to give each other grace while still taking care of the baby. For anyone doing this solo it looks a little different, but the idea is the same, which is to find space for ourselves where we can. This is also where “it takes a village” stops being a saying and becomes a logistics plan, because support makes a real difference to quality of life in those early days.

Sleep is part of that strain, and it varies a lot. Some parents are lucky and get a baby who sleeps well, while others go months without a full night, so I will not pretend it looks the same for everyone. Even so, the shift is there for all of us. We are on a higher level of alert than we have ever been, listening for every sound, checking on every breath, and carrying a new kind of responsibility that does not clock out. The research reflects that. In a well-known study from John Gottman’s lab, about two-thirds of new mothers reported a decline in marital satisfaction, while the rest held steady or improved, mostly because of the friendship they had built before the baby arrived. And a 2019 study in the journal Sleep found that parents’ sleep satisfaction and duration dropped after childbirth and had still not fully recovered up to six years later. So the shock is normal, and it is not a sign something is wrong with us.

Then survival changes shape instead of ending. Somewhere around the end of the first year and into the second, the baby starts crawling, walking, and talking, and the job shifts from keeping them alive to keeping up with them. They are still very dependent, but now they are mobile, which means childproofing, chasing, and learning what a toddler can get into in the ten seconds we looked away. A real personality shows up too, with real opinions about all of it. It is still a challenge, with a little more of a reprieve on the survival side, and we adapt, as humans do, and start catching a rhythm.

What strikes me most about this stretch is how much changes in a short span. Not much time has passed on the clock, yet so much has happened right in front of our eyes. The days are long and the years are short, and that shows up in the first three years more than any other time.

Teaching, and Being Watched

Somewhere past the toddler years, the work shifts from keeping them alive and comfortable to being a grounding force. Discipline, consequences, and teaching right from wrong take center stage, and kids are naturally curious about why things are the way they are. It also becomes behavior parenting in the truest sense, because they are watching what we do far more than they are listening to what we say. “Do as I say, not as I do” does not survive contact with a curious kid.

Two other things change here. The first is that we start to lose control of their full 24 hours. Daycare tends to be more structured, with kids grouped mostly by age and stage of development. Grade school widens the circle to children from many different households, each with their own values and opinions and at very different points in their development, and sometimes those clash with ours. We have far less say over who they spend time with, so the environment we build at home has to be reinforced over and over, and it helps a lot to know their friends and their friends’ parents.

The second is what happens to our time. In the baby years we fit our own stuff into the baby’s sleep schedule, and now we fit it in between school, events, and activities. That makes it important to protect an identity outside of being a parent, for ourselves and for the relationship with a partner, because it is easy to lose when the role becomes all-encompassing.

Understanding Over Discipline

As kids get older, the personalities get strong and the resistance starts. Things they loved a couple of years ago suddenly are not their thing, which is biological, hormonal, and a natural progression. It is a hard stretch for a parent because the kid is still little, relatively speaking, yet is clearly becoming their own person.

My barber’s view was that this phase is less about strict discipline and more about trying to understand. We are helping guide a young brain through a confusing stretch while managing our own stressors at the same time. It becomes a real test of self and of our foundations, because our kids challenge them simply by growing, with no confrontation intended.

Living In Different Worlds

Many people call the early teenage years the hardest, and my barber did not argue with that. His take was that it is a different kind of hard. We might get more sleep and have steadier routines, but now we are dealing with a person coming into their independence, and it often looks like the opposite of what we tried to instill a couple of years earlier. A well-known meta-analysis in Child Development backs that up in an interesting way, since parent-child arguments get less frequent through the teen years while the emotional intensity of them climbs from early to middle adolescence. I am not a clinician, and this stage is heavily documented already, so I will leave the deep dive to the experts.

The Transition That’s Less Overt

The stretch right before adulthood may be the most underrated, because it is calmer than the turbulent years before it and gets far less attention. This is the transition into having an adult child, and I think it can shape how the relationship looks for the rest of our lives.

The first challenge is accepting that they are their own person with their own dreams and goals, which will not always match what we pictured. There is an irony in this, because the independent, resourceful, kind, and successful people we hope they become, who live with joy, respect, and gratitude, are the very people who need us less. The second, which my barber found harder, is that this is often the time when a child comes back toward us. After years of pushing against us for good developmental reasons, they start to understand us a little more as their brain matures. That closeness is a gift, and it also makes the next step harder, which is letting them fall.

Letting them make mistakes and learn from setbacks runs through every phase and never gets easier. A toddler falls off a couch cushion, a kid loses a game, a teenager makes a poor decision with a friend group, and a young adult takes on a relationship that does not work out. Each time the instinct to catch them is strong, and each time there is a cost to catching them too often. A study in Couple and Family Psychology found that parents who score higher on perfectionism are more likely to overparent their young adult kids. The urge to rescue feels like love, and it is love, but sometimes it is also our own discomfort with watching them struggle. The work is to support without taking over and to be the safe place they land after the setback instead of the person who prevents it.

Still Our Babies

Then they become adults, and sometimes parents of their own. This is where my barber was most reflective. Even if our grown child is our best friend, they have their own life, and we have to build an identity beyond being their parent. We did the work, we raised a good person, and now life goes on. That is a hard shift, and empty nesting is just one version of it. The irony from earlier follows us here, since the qualities we worked to raise in them are the same ones that make us less needed. I would argue, though, that while a grown child may not need their parents in the same day-to-day way, there is something in them somewhere that still wants their parents in some way or another.

What does not shift is the feeling. Regardless of how old either of us is, they are still our babies, and we still want to do anything we can to see them have a happy life. We want to be there to support them whether they ask or not, the same way we were when their eyes were barely open. If they become parents themselves, the reality gets even stranger, because we are watching our baby hold a baby.

Our love for our children is generally unconditional, but the relationship itself is not one-sided. Keeping it healthy and consistent as they become adults takes openness, honest communication, shared respect, and accountability from both sides, which makes it a collaboration and not a chain of command. That means we have to grow and evolve in it too. The way we relate to a child cannot be the way we relate to an adult. In practice, with adult children, it starts with clear boundaries and real respect. Their home, their money, their partner, the way they live, and the way they raise their own kids are theirs to run, and our opinions land differently depending on whether they were asked for or handed over uninvited. A study in the Journals of Gerontology found that unwanted advice from parents was linked to a worse mood for adult children and that more advice is not always better, especially when it is unsolicited. It also means accountability in both directions. Being the parent does not make us the final word or exempt us from being wrong, and if we want them to own their choices, we have to own ours, including apologizing when we overstep. That honesty is what lets the relationship grow into something closer to two adults who love each other.

Grace works in both directions, and it does not mean dismissing bad behavior. Access to our lives, our homes, and our kids still comes with accountability, and there are consequences when that is missing. Still, we all have (or had) parents of our own, and we should strive to give them grace where it applies. No parent is born an expert, and all of us are figuring it out each day in real time with whatever we were handed, our own stressors, and our own blind spots. I understand my parents a lot better now that I am in my own captain’s seat. I also know I am going to make a ton more mistakes and missteps on this journey, and I hope my children extend me some of that same grace someday. Our kids are learning how to be people and adults while we are learning how to be parents of people and adults, so a little patience in both directions goes a long way.

So Which Phase Is the Hardest?

My barber’s answer, and the one I have come around to, is that no one phase is the hardest. Each stage has its own challenge and its own reward, and some personalities will click with one stage more than another. Stepping back, parenthood may be the hardest job a person ever takes on, and a big part of the reason is that it never ends. Most jobs we can leave at the office, change, or retire from, but once we become a parent, we are never not a parent again (even if the natural progressions in the Circle of Life doesn’t hold true). Through every phase, every age, and every version of ourselves we grow into more along the way. As Jim Hopper says in Stranger Things, “One of the joys of being a parent is that you’ll have a constant reminder your whole life that every choice you’ve made has been wrong.”

Yet, it is also a privilege and a blessing, and in my opinion one of the best things there is. The same love that makes it so hard is what makes it so worth it, and I feel lucky to be in it, even at the very beginning with a one-year-old who constantly reminds me we’re in the big leagues now. We are learning in real time, and we just hope we do a good enough job that one day they will understand it all and can forgive us. I am grateful to have perspective from people further down their roads. It really does take a village, and I am glad to be part of the village of parenthood.

For now, I am going to continue to enjoy the stage we are in, whatever it is. I am also going to try to remember that someday I will be a little further down the same road, hoping to do the same for others when I am invited in, and telling my tale: every phase is both the hardest part and the best part.

– Keith

Sources

• Richter, D., Krämer, M. D., Tang, N. K. Y., Montgomery-Downs, H. E., & Lemola, S. (2019). Long-term effects of pregnancy and childbirth on sleep satisfaction and duration of first-time and experienced mothers and fathers. Sleep, 42(4). doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsz015
• Shapiro, A. F., Gottman, J. M., & Carrère, S. (2000). The baby and the marriage: Identifying factors that buffer against decline in marital satisfaction after the first baby arrives. Journal of Family Psychology, 14(1), 59-70. doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.14.1.59
• Laursen, B., Coy, K. C., & Collins, W. A. (1998). Reconsidering changes in parent-child conflict across adolescence: A meta-analysis. Child Development, 69(3), 817-832. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9680687
• Segrin, C., Burke, T. J., & Kauer, T. (2020). Overparenting is associated with perfectionism in parents of young adults. Couple and Family Psychology, 9(3), 181-190. doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000143
• Fingerman, K. L., Cheng, Y.-P., Birditt, K., & Zarit, S. (2012). Only as happy as the least happy child. Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 67(2), 184-193. ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v67by2012i2p184-193.html
• Wang, H., Kim, K., Burr, J. A., Birditt, K. S., & Fingerman, K. L. (2021). Adult children’s daily experiences with parental advice: The importance of life problems and relationship quality. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 76(9), 1745-1755. doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbaa169