Pendragons Princess

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090408/sc_livescience/kidscurbmaritalsatisfaction

Kids Curb Marital Satisfaction

April 8, 2009

Parents all know that children make it harder to do some of the most enjoyable adult things.

Bluntly put, kids can get between you.

Now scientists have attached some numbers to the situation.

An eight-year study of 218 couples found 90 percent experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once the first child was born.

“Couples who do not have children also show diminished marital quality over time,” says Scott Stanley, research professor of psychology at University of Denver. “However, having a baby accelerates the deterioration, especially seen during periods of adjustment right after the birth of a child.”

An unrelated study in 2006 of 13,000 people found parents are more depressed than non-parents. Scientists speculate that the problem is partly a modern one, because parents don’t get as much help at home as they did in previous generations.

There are key variables to note in the new study.

Couples who lived together before marriage experienced more problems after the birth of a child than those who lived separately before marriage, as did those whose parents fought or divorced.

However, some couples said their relationships were stronger post-birth. They tended to have been married longer or had higher incomes.

Children don’t ruin everything, Stanley points out.

“There are different types of happiness in life and that while some luster may be off marital happiness for at least a time during this period of life, there is a whole dimension of family happiness and contentment based on the family that couples are building,” he said. “This type of happiness can be powerful and positive but it has not been the focus of research.”

The new research, funded by a grant to the University of Denver from the National Institutes of Health, is detailed in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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A few notes here: according to Ellen Peck’s 1971 book “The Baby Trap”, people who have had children in the past, during the 1950’s to 1960’s, had to get better paying jobs in order to feed their children and provide better for them. It cannot be assumed that just because a married couple has two or more children have a higher income by coincidence, but because they have to have that income because if they do not, they wind up living at the lowest rung of the social ladder. Also, the only reason such marriages last longer is because many times they have to for their kids. It can be very taxing for a married couple to consider separation or divorce if they have children. Second, childfree couples, married or not married, know the value of closeness in a relationship: they do not just automatically assume that because they are close, that closeness will last even if they did have children. Third, and most importantly although never brought up due to the extreme taboo of the matter, children, like that potential affair lingering at the office or elsewhere, are a third party. Marriages as defined by our society are between two people and monogamous. Most people do not consider children to be third paries like that adulterous affair but guess what: they are. Both have the potential to destroy marriages in the same manner. Maybe some people will think this over before they decide to have children. If they can’t tolerate a potential adulterous affair, it is perhaps better that they should not be making babies on any level. And forget about adoption, too.