Study Shows Children Ruin Marriage (maybe)

Today’s post is a little different from my usual fare, but I think it’s something you’ll find interesting.

I spend all day at work examining clinical studies – really examining them.  The members of my department are responsible for deconstructing medical research in order to justify/negate regulatory claims.  This leaves no room for error, as the minor details of medical research make ALL the difference.  One caveat can effectively nullify all practical value of a study, and oftentimes the important findings of a study are completely lost on mass media looking for a sensationalist headline.

As you can imagine, my job has made me really disappointed with mass media’s portrayal of legitimate scientific research.  Many ignorant reporters bastardize good research by reporting data incorrectly, and whenever I get the chance I like to delve into actual research papers and see what studies have REALLY discovered.

Today’s paper comes from the March 2009 edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  The title of the article is “The effect of the transition to parenthood on relationship quality: An 8-year prospective study.”  Popular media has cherry-picked various aspects of this study, and depending on the source of the information (left-wing or right) the conclusions are all over the map.

So I’m going to give you the actual findings of the study, and if you’d like to examine the paper yourself you can purchase it from this link: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2009-02415-008.

First, the study parameters: the research comes out of the University of Denver (although researchers worked with Texas A&M), where researchers examined 218 couples (134 of which had kids) in Denver over 8 years.  Most of the interesting data was compiled from yearly questionnaires submitted by study participants, where they were asked to rate their happiness on a scale of 1 to 7.

Known limitations to the research include:

• Most participants were well-educated
• Most participants were white
• Most participants were married in religious ceremonies
• Almost all participants were from a metropolitan area

Also, the study only looked at the birth of first children.

Knowing that, here are the highlights.  Take from them what you will.

• For 90 percent of couples, marital bliss dives within a year after the birth of the first child.  To quote a professor from Texas A&M, “the take-away message is probably that for the average couple, having a child is a strain on the relationship.”
• While 90 percent seems like a lot, it’s not universal – in fact, 15 percent of fathers and 7 percent of mothers ended up more satisfied with their marriage after the birth of their first child.
• Couples who were the most romantic before children experienced the sharpest decline upon the birth of their first child.
• Couples who had babies within a year (approximately) of getting married and couples with lower incomes experienced larger drops in marital satisfaction.
• Couples who do not have children also show diminished marital quality over time. However, having a baby appears to accelerate the deterioration.
• The research also correlated steeper declines in happiness with the mother’s parents being divorced, the couple living together before marriage, and the first baby being a girl.  (As one story correctly reported, a reasonable theory about the girl factor is that couples tend to struggle more when they have a daughter because the father may be less involved in child care.)
• Want to minimize any decline in happiness from having a child?  If so, this study showed that among those couples who reported increased happiness after the birth of their first child, the correlating factors were 1) higher incomes 2) being married longer before having the child.

All-in-all, I think this was one of the best study write-ups I’ve seen from a psychological journal.  Kudos to these researchers, and as always – remember the qualifications of this data before rethinking your plans for life.  :)

P.S. If you’re feeling sad about children, perhaps you’ll find comfort in this comment from Scott Stanley, one of the paper’s authors:

“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.  This type of happiness can be powerful and positive but it has not been the focus of research.”

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