Questions to Ask Your Partner About Parenting
Questions for two people working out how they will actually parent together: discipline, screens, school, religion, grandparents, and what happens when one of you thinks the other handled it badly. Useful before children arrive or in the middle of it.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What did your parents do that you want to copy?
Why ask it
Easier to answer than a question about grievances, and it surfaces the practices your partner will reintroduce without discussing them: meals at the table, reading at night, a house that other children were welcome in.
What did your parents do that you'd never do?
Why ask it
This list is usually short and held firmly. Anything named twice, or said with heat, is a line your partner will not compromise on, so treat it as fixed rather than as an opening position.
When our kid is having a meltdown in a shop, what do you want us to do?
Why ask it
A concrete public scene tests abstract principles. Couples who agree entirely about discipline often turn out to disagree about who carries the child outside and who finishes the shopping.
Which of us do you think will end up being the strict one?
Why ask it
Reveals assumptions about roles that neither of you has said aloud. If you both name the other, someone is expecting their partner to do the unpopular half of the work.
What behaviour would you never let pass: lying, hitting, rudeness, something else?
Why ask it
Every parent has a couple of non negotiables and they differ more than people expect. Knowing your partner's stops you undermining them in the moment without intending to.
Where do you stand on shouting, smacking, and sending a child to their room?
Why ask it
Ask what each of you would default to on a bad night, not what you believe in principle. Almost anyone can describe the calm approach; the useful admission is what happens at eleven at night in week three of no sleep.
If one of us says no and they go straight to the other, what happens?
Why ask it
Children locate the gap between two adults quickly and work it. What matters is less the rule than an agreement to back each other in the room and take the disagreement elsewhere.
How do we handle it when one of us thinks the other got it wrong in the moment?
Why ask it
This is the mechanism that makes the previous answer workable. Agree on a phrase or a signal now, because inventing one mid incident, in front of a child, does not work.
What are screens going to look like in this house, including ours?
Why ask it
The second half is the difficult part. Rules about children's screen time rarely survive two parents on their phones through dinner, and children point that out earlier than you would think.
How are we going to choose a school, and what would rule one out?
Why ask it
Gets at criteria rather than preference: distance, size, religion, cost, who does the drop off. A partner with no view now will develop a strong one the week the deadline arrives.
How much organised activity should a week have?
Why ask it
Couples drift into filling every weekend and then resent it. Naming a number of evenings, or a limit per child, is far more use than a general position on hobbies.
What do we tell them about money, and does pocket money depend on chores?
Why ask it
This is where two family cultures collide, since one of you was probably paid for jobs at home and the other was not. It also settles who ends up chasing the payments every week.
What are we doing about religion: whose traditions, and what do we tell them we believe?
Why ask it
Mixed belief households need this settled before a christening, a naming, or a grandparent raises it. The second half is the part couples skip and then improvise badly in front of a five year old.
How involved are the grandparents going to be, and who tells them when they've overstepped?
Why ask it
Involvement is the easy half of the question. Deciding who does the telling matters more, because the conversation should come from whoever's relatives they are.
What are we going to say about our own pasts when they ask?
Why ask it
Drug use, arrests, previous relationships, mental illness, and at what age any of it gets mentioned. Agreeing the wording in advance stops one of you improvising while the other listens in alarm.
How do we want to talk about bodies, sex, and consent, and who does it?
Why ask it
Naming the person stops each of you assuming the other will handle it. The wording matters as much as the timing, because children repeat what they are told, usually to their friends.
What do we do if one of our children needs much more from us than the other?
Why ask it
Illness, disability, or one child in real difficulty changes the whole balance of a family. It is far easier to agree how you would protect the other children while you have no reason to.
What happens to us in the years when we're exhausted?
Why ask it
The years with small children are hard on couples, and this gets avoided until it is urgent. Concrete answers name a night, a source of help, or something specific you will both stop doing.
What would make you say we need outside help?
Why ask it
Sets a threshold in advance for calling a doctor, a therapist, or a parenting course. Couples who never discuss it tend to wait until one is desperate and the other feels accused.
What do you want them to say about growing up in this house?
Why ask it
A closing question that produces a description rather than a rule. It is also the answer to test the earlier decisions against, since most of them either serve it or do not.
Working This Out as a Couple
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to have the conversation
Two or three questions at a time, with the child elsewhere
These produce long answers. A short conversation with nothing else happening gets you further than an evening spent trying to finish the list.
Test every agreement against a specific scene
Agreement in principle is cheap. Ask what the two of you would do at seven on a Tuesday when he will not get in the bath, and see whether the agreement survives the detail.
Write down the non negotiables
Each of you has two or three lines you would not cross. Written down, they stop being rediscovered in the middle of an argument.
Come back to it after each child
Views on sleep, discipline, and screens change on contact with a real child, and change again with a second one who is nothing like the first.
Common pitfalls
Agreeing in order to end the discussion
Consent given to stop a conversation comes back as resentment the first time the rule gets applied. Say that you are unconvinced rather than that you are fine with it.
Turning it into a verdict on your childhoods
It is easy for this to become an argument about whose parents did better. Keep every question pointed at what the two of you will do.
Speaking for the child
Once one of you claims to be describing what the child needs, the other has no way to answer. Speak for yourself and say what you want instead.
Reading silence as agreement
A partner who says little about discipline or religion may simply not have thought about it. Ask again in a fortnight rather than filing it as settled.
Signs you are less aligned than you think
- One of you can state the rule and the other can only state the goal.
- You agree about the ideal week but not about who cancels work when a child is ill.
- You have never disagreed about any of it, and neither of you has spent a full day alone with a child.
- One of you keeps answering with we will see how it goes.
- Your answers about your own parents are far more detailed than your answers about yourselves.