I see a lot of parents, especially mother's who believe that the children should always come first, before themselves, before their marriage, before everything. When clients bring this belief to me, I always ask them about the safety instructions they receive when flying. Try to remember what the flight attendant said to people traveling with a small child. If the plane hits turbulence and the oxygen masks drop down, who do you put the mask on first, yourself or the child?
The correct answer is: yourself.
Now most people get this totally wrong. Because we are told from day one that children must always come first. But this is not true. If you put the mask on your child first and pass out yourself from lack of oxygen, who will then protect the child for the rest of the ordeal? No one.
This is the same concept with your relationship with your partner. If you so compromise your relationship with your partner by putting the children ahead of everything and everyone else, you may destroy your relationship and no longer have a two parent household. And how will that ultimately affect the child? You can also compromise yourself by putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own that you have nothing left for your child. I see mothers at their absolutely wits' end losing their tempers with their children because they have so compromised their own mental health to try to keep everyone else happy.
It sometimes helps to think about a mother or father like a bank account. If you only make withdrawals and make no deposits, what happens? You're soon overdrawn. That's when the yelling, screaming, hitting and general breakdown of good parenting intentions start to occur.
Obviously, it is possible to go too far in this direction and become so involved with fulfilling your own needs that the needs of the children are neglected. And this is problematic as well. Therefore, like most things in life the ideal is a healthy balance somewhere in the middle.