One of the greatest challenges to a marriage is co-parenting, especially when the parenting styles of each of the parents are quite different, or worse yet, in direct opposition to each other. In my work with couples, this issue comes up more than any other single issue that couples bring in to marriage counseling. I have also noticed that the article on "parenting styles" is one of the most read articles on our website. So what makes this issue such a hot topic among couples?

Each of us has our own parenting style that is unique to our particular personality characteristics and philosophies on how children should be raised. Generally, these styles encompass some basic ideas on discipline, relationship building, and expectations. Often our parenting styles are greatly influenced by those we experienced at the hands of our own parents when we were children. We are likely to incorporate into our own style some aspects of our parents' styles. For example, most of us have had the experience of finding ourselves repeating key phrases our parents used, or maybe employing a disciplinary technique that is most familiar to us.