When parents pull in different directions

Each time the child's father and I discuss schools, I take a quiet moment to thank whoever is responsible for these things for giving us at least one topic we can be in perfect harmony over.

Even before our daughter reached school-going age, we were both sure of what kind of education we ‘didn't’ want her to get, and that's not changed now when we are frantically short-listing schools with a grim determination not to miss the bus this time around (we got a little lazy last year). The process is harrowing and I can't imagine the anxiety I would go through if husband and I were fighting over the kind of school we wanted to send our daughter to.

Parents are rarely in complete agreement about many aspects of parenting. With a very small baby, parents fight over really basic stuff. One may be an anxious over-feeder whose peace of mind depends on how many spoonfuls of Cerelac the baby had for dinner (it's frighteningly easy to let that particular obsession catch you) while the other pooh-poohs this anxiety and thinks (logically) that the baby must decide how much she wants to eat.

Safety can be another sore point. No two people's idea of how paranoid you need to be in order to ensure complete safety for a child — an impossible task anyway — will ever match. And if they are married, much bickering may ensue with one parent accusing the other of stifling the child's natural curiosity and the more cautious one calling him or her negligent.

I've noticed that as kids grow up, these arguments tend to centre around two important aspects of child-rearing: education and discipline. Decisions about education are, of course, possibly life-altering. One can't spend a lifetime complaining about the decision to select a certain school with a certain philosophy and it is of course desirable that both parents want the same thing. But often, they just don't. I have friends whose spouses think sending a child to a school that gives precedence to personality over processes, amounts to ruining her chances in the 'real world'. In such arguments, often the more vociferous of partners wins or the parents find a middle-of-the-road option that keeps both semi-happy.

As I mentioned, this is not an issue in my family, both of us being more or less sure that our daughter sees enough 'real life' in the real world to be unprepared for its harshness, and we believe if she has to go to school she might as well have fun doing it. But discipline is an issue. My husband, the calmer and infinitely more patient one of us, is a stickler for discipline and the one laying down the rules strictly, often harshly. I like to think of myself as a no-compromises sort of person but find myself being uncharacteristically indulgent at times.

That's parenting for you, then — it throws up all these sides of your personality that you never knew
existed.