What Kinds of Challenges Can a Parent Face?

Financial Difficulties

• It's hard to fully understand the financial impact having children can have on your bank account until it's staring you in the face. HealthyChildren.org points out that finances can be one of the toughest problems, particularly for single parents. However, this can also be an issue for couples. Diapers, wipes, formula, baby food and tiny clothes can get expensive, as can toys, high chairs, nursery furniture, and child proofing your home. In addition, if your children are in daycare or preschool, that can also get expensive. If you decide to stay home with your children, your family will likely be living on less as well, so any way you go, there is a chunk taken out of the budget. Later, if your children are involved with sports or hobbies, these can also get expensive.

Hearth and Home

• While a studio apartment or a one bedroom may have been fine for you alone or you and your spouse, that is probably not going to cut it once you have a child or two. Finding a place to live that is big enough for your family can be a challenge, and making sure that your home is kid friendly can also be hard. For instance, you may love an open floor plan with a loft, but if you have a toddler that loves to jump off of things, you may not sleep well for a year if you're constantly worried that your little one will make it past your baby gates and child proofing and be trying to hurl himself from the half wall of the loft into the living room below.

Emotional Changes

• Becoming a parent can be exciting and wonderful, but even so, it can also mess with your emotions a bit. Before children, your life belongs to you. You feel sick? Take the day off work and lay on the couch watching bad television in your pajamas. Extra money in the budget one week? Great! You can afford a pedicure and massage. But once you're a parent, you quickly realize that nothing is about you anyone. When you're sick, you still have to change diapers and make peanut butter sandwiches. If somehow you happen to have extra money, your child will need orthodontic work, or it will go to a college fund. Even the most devoted parents sometimes have moments of feeling overwhelmed by this, and miss the pre-parent state.

Relationships Sometimes Change

• One thing parents sometimes face is changes within their marriage or relationship. When it was just the two of you, there was time for date nights and no reason not to go away for romantic weekends. Saturday mornings were for sleeping in and relaxing, enjoying time together. Parents, however, often have a different schedule than that. There is less time for romance and dates and alone time, and this can be stressful and depressing for parents at times. You may find that most of your conversations revolve around discussing soccer practices or discipline rather than world news or your own hopes and dreams, and that can be a big challenge.

  It can also be hard to work out schedules -- for instance, who will drop kids off at school and pick them up and who is available in the evening to handle helping with homework.