So many women today have become so focused on their children, they’ve developed these romantic entanglements with their children’s lives, and the husbands are secondary. They’re left out. And the romantic focus is on the children.

Waldman is criticizing a modern parenting culture in which a mother’s emotional and imaginative energies become centered on her children to the point that the marital relationship is demoted. By calling the attachment “romantic,” she suggests a displacement of adult intimacy—attention, longing, and identity—onto the child’s narrative and achievements. The quote implies costs for spouses (who feel excluded) and for family balance, arguing for clearer boundaries between parental devotion and partner-focused intimacy. It also gestures toward broader social pressures that reward intensive mothering and treat couplehood as optional once children arrive.