Marriages are falling apart because family life is increasingly revolving entirely around children, parenting guru Gina Ford has said.
In a rare interview, she warned child-centred parenting and a lack of boundaries are stopping couples looking after themselves.
The veteran expert, 71, became a household name in 1999 with the release of her bestselling The Contented Little Baby Book, which advocates firm nap and feeding schedules.
Fans of her no-nonsense advice include Kate Winslet and Jools Oliver, wife of TV chef Jamie.
Today, she said even couples in ‘strong marriages’ are struggling to stay together due to being overstretched by their children.
She told the Sunday Times: ‘So many parents, because they’re trying so hard to bend over backwards to make everything perfect for their children, they forget about themselves.
‘Everything revolves around the children. And then the stress gets so much, and all you’ve got is a child from a broken home.’
She added the combination of ‘troublesome’ children and ‘both parents working’ can add to the problem.
‘If there’s behaviour issues, you’ve got this stress and pressure and parents perhaps disagreeing about how to deal with it,’ she added.
Marriages are falling apart because family life is increasingly revolving entirely around children, parenting guru Gina Ford (pictured) has said
In a rare interview, she warned child-centred parenting and a lack of boundaries are stopping couples looking after themselves (pictured: The Contented Little Baby Book)
Her book, which has sold nearly two million copies, is still prized by parents today for its no-nonsense advice on when to feed, wake and bathe babies to help them sleep through the night.
However, it has divided opinion, with some experts advocating a trendier, child-centred approach.
Ms Ford said that older children also benefit from routine and rules, although she agreed the idea that children should be seen and not heard is ‘totally wrong’.
She said she had previously helped parents who wrongly thought their child would not eat if they took away their iPad at dinner time.
‘It might last 20 minutes, half an hour, and then they’ll eat,’ she added.
‘A lot of parents are frightened to be firm with their children because they’re frightened that the child will not love them or the child will turn against them – but by setting some boundaries and some rules, their children are just so much happier.’
The author also emphasised the importance of manners, saying: ‘We now encourage children to speak more about their feelings and to be involved in family decisions. But it works both ways.
‘To be part of the group, the child must learn that they take it in turns to speak, they can’t just keep butting in.’
It comes after a furore in 2006 when the author sued Mumsnet over users launching ‘relentless personal attacks’ against her because they disagreed with her methods.
She has since complained about being wrongly framed as advocating ‘controlled crying’, stressing that babies should only ‘cry down’ for five to ten minutes when they are settling themselves to sleep, and never when hungry.
This year, she launched a £30 app aimed at a new generation of parents, with notifications to help them keep to their schedule.
Ms Ford has had to scale back her work recently due to her chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, and is awaiting an operation to remove blood clots.
‘Without the operation, I won’t live very long,’ she told the newspaper.
‘And even then, we don’t know if the operation will be successful.
‘My work has been my life. I just would hate to think that there was no one to carry it on.’
The author has no children of her own but became a maternity nurse aged 34, before working with hundreds of families to solve their sleep problems.
