When you are a parent, you must know some things so that you can pull off this task with flying colors. First, you must develop your patience level before planning a baby. Raising a baby requires a very high level of patience, especially when your baby will turn around 2 years old. The time when your child enters a development phase widely known as ‘terrible twos’ (usually from 18 to 30 months of age), he/she will start exhibiting aberrant behavior marked by tantrums, defiant behavior and lots of frustration.

Parents often find it difficult to get along with such behavior as the child may not be so acquiescent and deny to fall in line with your instructions. This is a very tricky stage for both the parents and the child. As parents you will need a lot of patience to handle this stage as your child will cut loose by breaking things, crying for reasons unknown, circumventing parental control and demanding anything ranging from as small as a toy in the rhymes to as big as a beautiful car plying the roads. If you lose your composure, you will end up scolding the child and even some parents resort to beating the tiny tot as well.

Second, you must be prepared to accept the fact that life will never be the same after you become a parent. Once you accept parenthood, you are no more footloose and fancy-free. For instance – remember those nights when you used to go to the roof whenever there is rain and get yourself drenched to rejuvenate your soul or the nights when you and your beloved used to go out in the middle of the night and enjoy a walk down the street. Once you are a parent, forget these things as you cannot leave your kid behind at home alone or you cannot get wet in the rain with your child (if you do so, your child may get sick inviting additional stress for you).

Third, you will rarely get me-time. It is especially true for mothers. Once you become a parent, the concept of having the time of your life will go out of the window, at least for the first few years because your child will constantly need someone to keep an eye on him/her. You can leave your child to someone else’s care, but you will feel restless in that case.

Fourth, if you want to be a good parent, you must be psychologically prepared that your career will go into hibernation – a period when you may have to compromise with your ambitions and career goals. Given the phallocentric viewpoint of our society, this applies for mothers particularly. Your career will either bite the dust or be in the doldrums since parenting comes with lots of duties and activities like taking care of the baby, feeding him/her and other associated tasks (which are literally quite a lot).

After spreading yourself too thin by managing all those household chores, it’s really difficult to take care of the baby and your career as well in full glory. Of course, you cannot compromise wellbeing of the baby, so naturally your career will bear the brunt. Fathers also have to face it as responsible ones remain a bit offhand in the workplace (especially when the baby gets sick) that hampers their performance.

Last but not least, it is more often observed that mothers have to face most of the fallout when it comes to experiencing the blowbacks of being a parent. Actually, fathers need to extend not only mental support, but they must lend a hand to the mothers. If a father empathizes with the new mother, it will take the edge off the mental trauma she has to endure. When both the father and the mother are ready to share the pains that come with the greatest blessing on earth, it gets easier for the parents to find their feet in this new journey of childrearing.