“Can I watch TV?”

“Can I have a bigger allowance?”

“Do I have to go to chess today?” “Can I stay up late tonight?” “Can I skip practice, just this once?” “Can I have a later curfew?” “I’m going to Max’s house, okay?” “Can I have a PowerBook for my birthday?” “I’m not going to try out for soccer this year, all right?”

This list of requests goes on and on. And the issues get more complicated as our kids get older.

Kids are quick to figure out which parent to address when it comes to a particular issue. My kids know that their father has a weakness when it comes to letting them stay up late. “Pleeeease, can we stay up a little longer?” they whine to him, knowing full well that it would be pointless to address me on this matter, as I would cut them off before the question was even finished.

And similarly, when they need quarters to stick in the gumball machines, they know it would be futile to go to my husband. They march right over to me and before they can say “May I,” I’ve dug out a handful of quarters to keep them quiet.

But bedtime and 25-cent purchases are nothing compared to what’s to come. My friends who have teenagers are struggling to set limits on issues such as money, sex, drinking, and drugs, and are dreaming of the days when they were, like me, setting limits on candy, television, and participation in after-school activities.

And frankly, most of my friends spend less time duking out the issues with their kids than they do duking them out with their spouses.

“It’s much harder for us to agree on what our policy should be regarding our daughter going to a party where we know there’s going to be alcohol than it is for us to provide a unified front to her, once we’ve decided what that front should be,” a friend of mine said.

Ah, the fabled unified front. Without it our children will invariably pit one parent against the other, exploit our differences, destroy our marriages, and then later, when they are older, succumb to a lifetime of failed relationships.

On the Internet, many Web sites, including one by talk-show phenomenon Dr. Phil, speak of the importance of presenting a unified front. “Is the child more difficult with one parent than with the other? It could be that your parenting style is contributing to the problem. Parents need to have a unified front that they both can stand behind and enforce. You must support one another in your actions and discipline. Look at ways that you can change your child’s environment, including avoiding fights in front of the kids or reacting to your child differently,” Dr. Phil writes.

But for most of my friends with children, the unified front is much like a lazy Sunday morning in bed, reading the paper: It is elusive.

“The unified front is bull,” said a close friend of mine who has three children aged 12, 10, and 7. “It’s insulting to children. They’re not stupid. They know that two people couldn’t possibly agree on everything.”

On occasion, she and her husband debate the matter at hand in front of the kids, and with the debate out in the open, my friend will say something like,”I don’t agree with Daddy, but this time we’re going with what he says.” This way, my friend said, “the kids learn about conflict resolution. When they see two people having different points of view, or fighting, they’ll have a road map for a resolution. They understand that a relationship, or specifically their parents’ marriage is not in jeopardy just because two people don’t agree.”

“And besides,” she added, “if we didn’t discuss the issues in front of the kids, we’d be spending more time strategizing in the back room than with our children.”

Couples fight about money and sex, but for sure they also fight about their children. And how could they not? Parenting styles are hardly uniform. Some of us are better at being firm than we are at nurturing; some of us are better at negotiating than others. Some parents are better skilled at handling the 5-year-old, and some at tackling the 15-year-old.

In most couples I know, I see a little yin and yang in action. It shouldn’t be surprising that the opposites that were attracted to each other 20 years ago now have different ideas about how late their 16 year-old daughter can stay out on Saturday night.

Children need to know that they cannot exploit their parents’ differences, but perhaps even more importantly, they need to see – first-hand – that differences between their parents are respected rather than criticized. Ultimately, it’s not that elusive unified front that matters as much as the process by which parents create a bottom line and stick to it.

So don’t feel depressed if the unified front is more reminiscent of a liberation army in a faraway land than your approach to handling your spouse’s different parenting style. Teaching our children to listen and compromise through example is far more powerful than speaking about it in the abstract. And whether the negotiations are made in front of the children or summed up for them after you and your spouse have worked out the details, your children will be better off knowing that in the real world satisfying marriages and successful families take hard work.