IN PRAISE OF CO-PARENTING

LIA-BELLE KING ON THE JOYS AND CHALLENGES OF RAISING A DAUGHTER AND SHARING MOTHERHOOD.

Image courtesy of @lottebarnes

They say the days are long and the years are short, and it’s true. We have been a family of three for nearly two-and-a-half years, and as we watch our little girl learn to count to 10, to write her name, to dress herself, to assert herself physically and verbally, we are floored at how quickly the evolution from baby to now has happened. Even more confronting is what that means of our own aging, and how quickly time slips away in the presence of children.

We were always going to be a little bit different, gender aside, we entered parenthood consciously, wanting to create a unit that not only defied the norm but spoke loudly and clearly about our values behind co-parenting and challenging the traditional roles within the family unit. As parents, we shared our time within the business and the home equally. For the first year of Ophelia’s life, we juggled sleepless nights with a growing business and worked from home in order to both be contributing equally to the family and the payroll. Night feeds were done together, Lotte sitting on the floor beside me as I fed Opi 4, 5, 6 times a night. Lotte rocking, shushing, singing Opi to sleep during the day whilst I did the bare minimum cooking and cleaning duties, and then we would swap. Equality was, and is, an integral value within our parenting model and in a relationship free from traditional gender roles we assigned our own in harmony with our family's needs.

Motivating us to continue to evolve our family unit and roles within it is the picture we want to create for our daughter. A family where one parent isn’t more responsible for cooking and caring than providing. A family where both parents contribute equally in time and effort to ensure their children grow up with an expectation that both parents are equally as responsible for the mental, financial and emotional well being of each other, the children and the home.

Sometimes our efforts to maintain this goal faltered greatly, with both of us being sleep deprived and depleted, unable to lend strength to the other from an equal degree of burnout. But mostly, our goal to create and nurture the new family unit empowered us, allowing us to move through the changing dynamics together with complete understanding of what we were both going through.

I think it’s fair and honest, if not cliché to say that nothing could have prepared us for parenthood. It is by far the most challenging responsibility you could ever take on, but also the most rewarding and perhaps the most important when defining who you are as a human being. When you have been given the task to project the best version of yourself in the effort of raising another person to be better than you, your short-comings are so loud you’re forced to confront the layers of yourself you never knew, and perhaps never liked, on your journey through self-growth as a parent.

Ophelia is the brightest, beaming balance of hard and soft, loud and quiet, independent and dependent. She is everything good we hoped she would be and then some. She’s so brave and so empathetic. She’s emotional and creative, extremely logical and loves heights and to run, ride and slide fast. She’s shy in groups and holds a commanding presence around those she knows well. For a two-year-old, she knows herself and doesn’t tolerate anyone trying to bend her to conform or compromise. She is a product of an extremely loving, balanced and supportive environment, and only recently we as parents are beginning to see that we’re doing a good job. And for two women making it up as we go along, that feels really good.