YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR SPOUSE ‘Femi Adekunle on Parenting

YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR SPOUSE

‘Femi Adekunle on Parenting

Some table-shaking here.
Anytime I go speaking on parenting, I usually do an exercise and the result is always the same. I ask the audience consisting of parents how many of them love their parents, and all hands go up. I further ask how many love their children and of course, this is given. I finally ask them that, if they have to choose between the two, how many love their parents more than their children and hardly do hands go up. In other words, it is clear that we all mostly love our children more than our parents, if we have to make a choice. So, this is the outcome of the exercise: it makes people realise that in the same way they love their children more than their parents, the cycle will continue – their children will ultimately love their own children more than them. It is a stark reality.

Let me repeat, no matter the love you show to your children or the affection you lavish on them, when they grow and begin to make their own family, the larger chunk of their affection capital will be lavished on their spouse and children. This does not mean they won’t love you, but that’s just the way it is.

What then is the lesson? Embrace your spouse and enjoy your lives together. I have seen and heard many people say things like ‘no one else matters to me like my children’ or ‘my children are my priority’. And for such people, I see them actually concentrating affection on the children that clearly depicts their spouses as second-class in the home. What then happens? They continue to live with a hurting and broken spouse. They are hurting because they have been emotionally neglected; and broken because they are unable to come to terms with the fact that they are actually envious of or in competition with their own children, but that is what it is. It breeds conflict in the home, the root cause of which is hardly addressed. By the time the children are grown and they exit the home, the laceration is so deep that the damage done to the marriage is irreversible, and for the couples that survive it, it leaves an ugly scar.

This is when you discover, albeit too late, that the children you over-concentrated on have moved on and found love elsewhere, possibly in another end of the globe where they only get to speak with you three times in a quarter and see you only on Skype or WhatsApp calls. This is when concentration risk catches up with you and the devastation is irremediable, making old age anguish and regret inevitable. Now is the time to foresee this late-night misery and avoid it.

Only one solution: make your spouse your priority, the children you prioritise over your spouse will soon make their spouses their priority over you both. It’s an inevitable, cyclical reality.

…. _make your spouse your priority, the children you prioritise over your spouse will soon make their spouses their priority_ _over you both._

‘ Femi Adekunle , a Parenting and Family Coach, writes from Abuja, Nigeria.

Email: femi383@gmail.com

WhatsApp: 08055103512

24th April, 2026