Category: Marriage and Children

If you are from my generation you know about the sitcom “Married with Children“. This show aired from 1987 to 1997. It depicted the stereotypical “white trash” american family. Al Bundy, played by Ed O’Neill, was a shoe salesman married to a lazy wife, played by Katy Sagal, and had two dysfunctional teenage kids, David Faustino and Christina Applegate. I would say that many men would tell us they can relate to the stresses Al Bundy goes through. Are men really miserable when they are married and have children? Is it true that children decrease marital satisfaction significantly?

An article titled “The effect of the transition to parenthood on relationship quality: An 8-year prospective study.” from the March 2009 edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology  gives a good overview of marriages with children. Here is a quick summary of the research results:

• 90 percent of couples see that marital bliss decreases within a year after the birth of the first child.
• 15 percent of fathers and 7 percent of mothers were more satisfied with their marriage after the birth of their first child.
• Romantic couples also experienced a 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 a higher drop in marital satisfaction.
• Even couples with no children show diminished marital quality over time, but having a baby seems to accelerate the deterioration.
• A higher decline in happiness was seen with mothers of divorced parents, couples that live together before marriage, and when the first baby is a girl.  (A Denver Post article reported this theory about the girl factor being that couples tend to struggle more when they have a daughter because the father may be less involved in child care.)
• Those couples who reported an increase in happiness after their first child had two common factors, 1) higher incomes and 2) being married longer before having the child.

All the studies in the world can tell me that a child decreases marital bliss, but in reality I feel it is not the children that are to blame. I think that children just make us face problems that we have overlooked before. We can be a perfect couple without children because we can still act as if we were single, with some exceptions. If you are bad communicators before children, it will just be enhanced when there are children in the mix. A child brings you together and forces you to see that you are now one unit. Deciding to go to happy hour after work now involves planning and agreeing together who will babysit. Taking care of that new bundle of joy, becomes a battle of the sexes. If before you would argue about who had to do the dishes, now you would be arguing who will change the diapers. It’s not the child that brought new problems, it’s the same problem just in a different scenario.

I can relate to those couples that say that having a child adds strain to a marriage, but we survived it and with our second child it has been much easier. The fact that we worked on our issues with the first child, makes it much easier with the second. I feel that if you ignore any communication issues, and then have a second child, it’s a recipe for disaster because you are adding even more strain to the marriage. All I can say is that having a child is a learning experience for both of us and has made our marriage stronger. We are still learning and working on our issues. You learn every day and there will be good days and bad days; but we have learned to communicate better and not sweat the little things that at the end of the day are not important. Remember that children will eventually leave the nest and you will only have each other. Your marriage is worth working for if there isn’t bigger issues like abuse. A happy marriage will result in happy children. I believe that if both men and women work together in the adventure of parenthood, it can make a marriage stronger. Step back and look at the relationship and don’t focus on who’s turn it is to change the diapers or do the dishes.

 

I knew that becoming a mom was going to change my life. Some people would comment and say – “Get ready to give up your freedom.”, but is it really true that you are no longer in control of your time when you become  a mom and there is no time for being the sexy woman your husband fell in love with?

I didn’t know what a Date Night meant until the first few months with my first child. There wasn’t a reason for date night because every weekend was a date night. Now things were different, we had to plan a date night because we had to find a babysitter for the 2 hours we wanted to have dinner alone as a couple. My whole life became my daughter, and I was starting to forget to be a woman.

It didn’t occur to me to ever leave my daughter with anyone overnight, even my own mother; even less to leave her a whole week. Then as she got a little older, about 1 1/2 years old, a friend suggested I should consider taking a week vacation just my husband and I to recharge and be a couple again. I was hesitant about the idea and after discussing it with my husband I became even more hesitant. He told me – “My parents never left me anywhere when they went on trips. We are a family, and now we are parents. Our daughter is a part of our lives, we just make her part of the trips.” That made me feel even more guilty of the idea of leaving her with my parents or his parents for any time span.

The idea has been lingering in my mind ever since I heard of two friends of mine doing the Week vacations without their child. Both couples found it hard at first but then don’t regret doing it. One of my friends said, “It was nice being able to have a nice expensive suite. It was like a second honeymoon. And our son didn’t even miss us.”

I know I am a mother, but can I also be a wife and relive our days as a couple without feeling guilty about leaving the kids behind?