During class this week we discussed the effect that children have on the common marriage within the United States. What is interesting is that when the first child is born and every subsequent child who follows actually brings with it a decrease in the amount of marital satisfaction that a couple shares. This information was very interesting to me because being raised in the LDS faith, i have been taught since the can remember that children are what brings true happiness to a family and was led to believe that if your marriage is struggling that a child would help to strengthen it. Before i go on i need to clarify that it is not a doctrine of the church that in order to fix a faltering marriage one should have a child; this was just an idea that was popular in the Mormon culture in my area. The statistics and research on this topic have been extremely interesting to me because they show that for the general population, having a child is not a good way to save a marriage.
Generally speaking, marital satisfaction takes a dramatic down turn for most couples after having there first child. After the birth of the first child, marital satisfaction tends to level out a little bit as the couple becomes accustomed to having this new addition into their family and the new responsibilities it brings. Then comes the birth of the second child and with it, another drop in marital satisfaction. This pattern tends to continue until there are no new children brought into the family. At this point, the couples marital satisfaction levels out at this lower level for a long and consistent period of time which typically lasts until the first child leaves the home to go off to collage or pursue other endeavors. When this first child leaves home, the couples level of marital satisfaction seems to have a sharp curve upwards, or in other words, it begins to improve or get higher than it had been in a fairly long time. This tends to happen consistently until every child has left the home. When all the children have left home the couple are now not only empty nesters but typically are experiencing as much if not more marital satisfaction than they shared within the first couple of years of their marriage before they had there first child.
I don't know about you but when i first heard these statistics and findings i was a little nervous. i had no idea that for most couples in the United States that children actually brought with them a decrease in marital satisfaction. I don't want this to happen in my family, and thankfully, with this knowledge of what typically happens to marital satisfaction along with having children, i can prevent the drop in satisfaction from occurring.
My solution is not to never have children, although that may seem like a very valid solution. What can be done to prevent this down turn is to know why the drops in marital satisfaction occur with each child. Typically, mothers have a giant increase in their work load which brings more stress, less sleep, less time to yourself, and less time with your spouse; Fathers find that their wife is more occupied with the little one so they can no longer spend as much quality time together, their bond with their wife has changed because there is a new "charmed circle" of mother and baby that they may not feel a part of, and they simply find it hard to relate with what their wife has gone through and is doing while in they are at work.
Now that we can understand where some of the stress in a marriage can come from, as well as the decrease in marital satisfaction we can come up with ways of how to prevent that decrease and actually make it so that with every child born there is actually a sharp increase in marital satisfaction. my question for you is what are some of the things we can do to prevent the decrease in marital satisfaction and have a sharp increase instead? if you are married and have children, what are some things that have worked for you and your spouse or that you wish you would have done or plan to do with your next child?
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