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Don't forget the marriage!

A recent New York Times op-ed piece discussed the impact of having children on marriage quality.  Not surprising - to some - is the fact that having children may hurt happy marriages. 

In many ways, having children may bring people closer together.  Having a child with a partner can create a lifelong bond with another person.  One of the greatest pleasures of marriage and child rearing is sharing the pleasure of watching a child grow. 

But it often comes at a cost.  According to Stephanie Coontz's analysis in The New York Times, more than 25  studies over the last 20 years have concluded that marital quality suffers after children come into the relationship.  Further, couples whose children have left home for college, military service, or jobs, report an increase in marital happiness.

There's no question that children can be a source of joy in a marriage.  But the cost of parenting on today's marriages may be too high.  Coontz points out that today's parents spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago.  Citing the work of sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie, Coontz details that married mothers in 2000 spent 20% more time with their children than in 1965.  Married fathers spent more than twice as much time.

The increased time with children is coming from the "couples time" bucket, apparently.  Married parents are spending less time with friends, with each other, or alone for the  purpose of spending more "quality time" with their children.  However, Coontz observes "in the long run, shortchanging such adult-oriented activities for the sake of the children is not good for a marriage." 

Coontz goes further, pointing to the work of researcher Ellen Galinsky that shows that most children don’t want to spend as much time with their parents as parents assume; they just want their parents to be more relaxed when they are together.

Ask yourself - should I be spending more time with my spouse?  Do my children really need me to spend as much time with them as I do?

Coontz closes her article by noting that "couples need time alone to renew their relationship. They also need to sustain supportive networks of friends and family. Couples who don’t, investing too much in their children and not enough in their marriage, may find that when the demands of child-rearing cease to organize their lives, they cannot recover the relationship that made them want to have children together in the first place."