Why So Many Couples Start Fighting After Having Kids

When people talk about equality in relationships, many assume they are starting from the same place. But as Alex Trippier points out, parenting has a way of exposing a very different reality.

Alex Trippier, podcast host, writer, teacher, and speaker, shared his thoughts on the most common mistakes couples make in relationships, especially after children enter the picture. What followed was an honest and nuanced conversation about mental load, resentment, conflict, praise, modern parenthood, and why so many couples struggle once they become parents.

Alex’s insight comes not from theory alone, but from lived experience. He explained that he got married young, had three children by the time he was 30, and truly loved being a dad.
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“I just loved it,” he said. “I loved having young children.”

He was deeply involved in daily parenting. He worked with children professionally, spent a lot of time with his own kids, and was convinced he was doing fatherhood well. “I felt like a great dad,” he said. “I felt like I was nailing it.” The world seemed to agree. He was praised by strangers, by friends, and by other people in his life. But at home, things felt very different.

“The only person who seemed to disagree with my top dad status was my wife, who was really underwhelmed by my kind of fathering.” That disconnect became painful. Their relationship suffered. They argued often, and those arguments had a deep physical and emotional effect on him. “I found those arguments incredibly painful,” Alex said. “They would sort of stay with me in my body for days. They made me feel sick.”

The breakthrough that changed how he saw his marriage

The turning point came when Alex and his wife tried a Gottman exercise focused on understanding each other’s perspectives. The task was not to agree, but to understand the other person well enough to say their perspective back in their own words.

For Alex, it was mind-opening. “It was just so illuminating to realize that A, that my wife saw the world completely different to me, but also that two people could be doing what they thought made them good parents and those be completely different things.”

That insight widened as more of his friends became parents. He began noticing that many of them were having the same arguments. “I basically looked around at all my mates having kids and realized that everyone was having identical arguments.”
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That realization led him to a deeper understanding. The issues were not just personal. They were cultural. They were about the very different expectations placed on mothers and fathers.

Discovering the language mothers already had

Alex described picking up The Motherhood Complex by Melissa Hogenboom and immediately realizing there was an entire conversation happening that many men never entered. “From the second I opened it, I was like, wow, there’s this kind of huge debate raging amongst mothers. There’s all these words, mental load, maternal gatekeeping, like all these things that describe the things that I can see going on around me. But no one expects dads to read these books.”
That was a major part of the problem. The information existed, but it was not assumed to be relevant to men. Alex was struck by how much of motherhood involved guilt, shame, and judgment in ways that simply did not apply to fathers.
“All of that stuff is just completely absent for men.”

Once he began to understand those patterns, it changed the way he responded. Instead of seeing the issue as personal criticism, he could see it as something much bigger than himself. “Because they weren’t about me, I didn’t have to be defensive about them. Because it was everyone,” said Alex. “It was just enormously freeing.”

What mental load actually looks like

One of the clearest parts of our conversation was Alex’s explanation of mental load. He was not absent. In fact, he was doing many of the visible parenting tasks. But he was not carrying the invisible planning behind them. “I was taking my kids to the doctor. I was taking my kids to school. I was going to parents’ evening. I was cooking dinner.”

But then he explained what he had missed.

“What I hadn’t done was book the doctor’s appointment. I didn’t know when the shots were for the kids. I hadn’t kind of ordered the food to make the dinner. I hadn’t been the one who’d done the research for the school.”

That distinction matters. A parent can look highly involved while still relying on the other parent to do the anticipating, planning, scheduling, and decision-making that keeps everything running. Alex summed it up plainly: “I was showing up, but only once everything else had been sorted out for me.”

And that led to the kind of misunderstanding that many women know well. One partner is stressed, overextended, and mentally carrying the whole operation. The other is confused because, from their point of view, family life looks manageable and even enjoyable.

“I was like, what’s your problem? Why are you so stressed? This whole thing is really, really fun. The problem is you and your attitude.”
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Then came the truth he had not been seeing. “My wife was working just as hard as me outside of the home and then twice as hard in it.”

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Why do so many couples struggle after having kids? How can wives ask their spouses for help? Why is complaining about mental load and household chores often a really bad pitch for men, and how can you ask for help in a way that is constructive and more likely to be received positively? Why is there still a huge imbalance in societal expectations when it comes to parenting, and how can spouses support each other instead of fighting?

For these insights and more, tune into Trust Me Mom Podcast, Episode 36 with Alex Trippier, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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“You’ve rented space in your wife’s brain”

Alex has spoken online about the everyday ways men end up relying on women’s mental tracking systems. One of his most viral examples is simple but revealing.

He talked about asking his wife how many potatoes they had in the house. On the surface, it sounds trivial. But beneath it is the whole structure of mental load. “My wife is constantly stock keeping, right? She knows what’s in the cupboard in a way that I’m not.”

These are the kinds of tiny defaults that quietly push family management back onto mothers. And Alex emphasized that even with awareness, this takes ongoing effort.

“It’s constant work for both of us.” Why? Because the assumptions are deeply ingrained. “These assumptions that these things belong to mums, they’re incredibly powerful.”

He gave a concrete example involving their 17-year-old daughter’s trip abroad. When their daughter casually asked him for a ride to the airport, he suddenly realized how much his wife had already done without them ever discussing it. “She booked the tickets. She’d had all the conversations with all the other parents to make sure everything was safe. She’d ordered a shop for her to bring groceries, like just everything.”

Again, the visible task was easy. The invisible work behind it was enormous.

Why women’s anger is understandable, but not always persuasive

One of the most thought-provoking points Alex made was about the way the conversation around mental load is often presented to men.

He was very clear that women are often right. “Most of the time that is what is going on and that is absolutely what I was missing.” But he also explained why anger alone may not move men into action. As he put it, the message often becomes: “The mental load, the running of a household, the being in charge of all this stuff is terrible and painful and I want you to do it instead.”

Then he added, “Now that’s an appalling pitch.” He joked that this kind of pitch won’t “make it through the door” in a corporate environment.

His point was not that women should be less honest. It was that many men do not respond well to being handed something framed purely as misery. So what does work?

He offered one pitch that, in his experience, resonates with a lot of men: “Do you hate being told what to do all the time?” If the answer is yes, then the solution is clear. “If you don’t want to be told what to do all the time, then you’ve got to take charge of some of these areas.”

That means ownership, not passive help. It means taking over a task from start to finish, including the mistakes that come with learning.

Sometimes it is not weaponized incompetence

Alex also addressed a phrase that comes up often in these conversations: weaponized incompetence. He knows many listeners are quick to use it, but he made an important distinction.

“Sometimes it’s just incompetence, all right? Like sometimes it’s just not very good at stuff. No one’s ever told us we’re supposed to be good at it. We’ve never done it before.”

That does not excuse staying incompetent. But it does matter when couples are trying to change patterns. If a man is genuinely new to a task, there will likely be mistakes. The key is what happens next.

Alex shared a memorable story about packing for a family trip. He took responsibility, gathered all the children’s things, and even remembered the kite he was excited to bring. “I spent ages looking for the kite. I remembered the kite, but I forgot their socks.” All three children arrived without socks. What mattered was not that he forgot. What mattered was that he had to solve it. “Now I’m going to fix it.” He found a store that was open to buy the socks and even asked other parents for a spare pair.

That is the formula he keeps returning to. If a husband does the task and gets it wrong, he still has to be the one who carries the consequences and fixes the problem. Otherwise, the job has not really left his wife’s mental load.

Praise matters, but so does seeing the invisible work

We also talked about praise, and Alex was thoughtful about the complicated role it plays in fatherhood.

He acknowledged that men often receive a lot of praise for visible parenting. Dads get admired for things mothers do every day without comment. “There’s just something about dads playing with their kids that I think is lovely,” he said, describing the reaction many people have.

That praise can encourage involvement, but it can also reinforce a very low bar. “The universe thinks I’m a great dad, you’re clearly the problem because you can’t see that I’m a great dad.”

That mindset created real problems in his marriage. At the same time, he realized he was not seeing, and therefore not praising, the unseen labor his wife was carrying. “I wasn’t praising my wife for any of the invisible labor that she was doing because it was invisible and I had to train myself to see it.”

Once he did start seeing it, appreciation changed the atmosphere at home. He gave the example of finally noticing everything his wife had done to organize their daughter’s trip. “You’ve just organized this whole thing, haven’t you?” Then, just as importantly: “Wow, you’re amazing.”

He believes this matters deeply. “If you start noticing the thing your partner is doing, and I think this is men’s job, men should do this, if you start noticing, you will see it, you call it out, you will start getting it back.”

The four horsemen of bad conflict

Alex also reflected on the Gottman Institute’s four horsemen: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt. He described the conflict pattern he and his wife used to repeat again and again.

“Our row was my wife would criticize. I’d get incredibly defensive.” Then it escalated. “We would go back and forth until I said something nasty, like hurtful. And then she would stonewall.” For him, that silence was unbearable. Eventually he would apologize, but not because the issue was resolved. “I would apologize even though I didn’t really believe it. And then so nothing got sorted.”

That cycle is one many couples will recognize. For Alex, one of the most important shifts was learning how to begin difficult conversations without criticism. He knows that is especially hard when you are tired and overwhelmed, but he believes it changes everything.

Instead of starting with accusation, he recommends starting with something more honest and vulnerable: “I’m really hurt. I’m really upset when this happened.”

And then adding, “I know you’ve not done it to hurt me, but this is how it feels to me when this happened.” That kind of opening makes it much harder for the other person to become instantly defensive.

A fight about chairs was not really about chairs

One of the best examples Alex shared was a recurring fight about dining room chairs. Their chairs were too big for the table, and when he did homework or school projects with the children, he would leave them out because they were awkward to move. His wife would come in and loudly push them back under the table.

They fought about it repeatedly.

But when they did the Gottman exercise and listened carefully to each other’s perspective, they realized the chairs represented something much deeper. For Alex, sitting with his children to help with homework was emotionally significant. “It was this big deal for me that I was gonna sit and give my kids this thing that I never got.”

For his wife, neatness and order were closely tied to her sense of safety and what it meant to be a good mother. “For her neatness and order and everything being where it was supposed to be was her way of being a good mum.”

Then came the larger realization. “You’re not bad, I’m not bad. This is us doing the best that we can … really, really trying for our children. And we just see this thing differently.”

And yes, the practical outcome was simple. “I am now gonna put the chairs back.”

Why being home with young children is so exhausting

We also discussed modern motherhood and why caring for young children is often underestimated, especially by people who compare it to traditional masculine work.

Alex said that when he talks about motherhood, many men respond with a list of the difficult things they do, often jobs involving the car, DIY, drains, repairs, or finances. But he sees a major difference between those responsibilities and the work mothers are typically carrying.

“These masculine jobs tend to be completable. They have a start and a finish and they’ll come up sporadically.” By contrast, he said the work often falling to mothers is “daily grind.” “It’s just constant meal prep. It’s laundry. It’s not even the doing of the laundry, but it’s like, where do all the clothes live in the house?” That kind of work never really ends. It renews itself every day, every season, every stage of childhood.

He also made the important point that expectations around parenting have risen dramatically. The standard for what makes a good mother is far more intensive than it was decades ago. “The expectations on what motherhood is,” he said, “have just got harder and harder and harder.”

Then he offered a blunt conclusion that many women will immediately recognize as true: “Being a stay-at-home mum is actually much harder than it was in the 70s.”

The case for paternity leave

Alex also spoke powerfully about the importance of fathers having time alone in full charge of their children. Not time supported by systems their partner quietly set up, but true sole responsibility.

Reflecting on his own experience, he admitted that for a long time he only thought he understood what his wife was doing. “I was living off systems, I was living off things you put in place and finding it really easy.”

Only later, when he had to manage without those supports, did he fully grasp the strain. “I’m really quite stressed and not having, this isn’t just kind of a great party time with the kids. I’m really shattered.”

He connected this to paternity leave policies in places like Norway, where fathers spend dedicated time alone caring for their child. In his view, that kind of experience changes men profoundly because they are finally forced to understand what caregiving really requires.

Rethinking masculinity

Toward the end of our conversation, Alex challenged the idea that older, more authoritarian models of masculinity are the answer to modern relationship struggles.

He dislikes the phrase “traditional masculinity” because he does not believe the world has always looked the same. But he was clear that the old model, where men are obeyed, emotionally distant, and dominant, is not the solution. “That is the disease,” he said.

What has brought him closer to his children, his partner, and his friends is not emotional hardness. It is emotional courage. “Being vulnerable and going and talking to someone that you love about the things that aren’t going well in your life, the things that you think might be wrong with you, the things that you’re scared of, that has led to me having incredibly deep relationships.”

I his view, vulnerability is not weakness - it takes strength. “Those things I’m describing, being vulnerable, being emotional with people, that’s what they take, right? They take bravery and they take resilience. They take toughness.”

The most important thing couples need to understand

As we wrapped up, Alex offered what may be the most important insight of the whole conversation. “You may come from a culture where you think that men and women are equal. But what becomes really apparent when you have children is that no culture at the moment feels that way about moms and dads.”

That is not about blame. It is about seeing reality clearly. “Once you can acknowledge that there is this real imbalance in what’s expected of your partner and that she is going to respond to those expectations,” he said, “then that becomes an external problem that you can both deal with together rather than it being this war that’s between you.”

That reframing is powerful. It shifts the conversation away from personal failure and toward shared responsibility. It gives couples a chance to stop fighting each other and start understanding the larger forces shaping their lives.
And that matters, because as Alex noted, the years of raising young children should be a season of shared purpose. Instead, they are often the period of greatest marital dissatisfaction.
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His message offers a better path. Awareness. Ownership. Appreciation. Vulnerability. Teamwork. Not perfection. But partnership.