The conventional wisdom among psychologists and sociologists studying marriage has long been that marital satisfaction, on average, declines with marriage length. This is not to say that there haven’t been some scientific challenges to this idea. When it comes to children, however, the effects on marital quality have not proven to be entirely upbeat in the eyes of science.

Beginning in the 1970’s, some researchers began suggesting that marital satisfaction may actually follow a “U” shaped curve across marriage length. The developmental dip was largely attributed to the “family life cycle” (i.e., the changing demands and challenges associated with becoming an adult, a spouse, a parent, etc.). Most importantly, the demands of parenthood appeared to be onerous to marital bliss. By the early-80s the life-cycle theory was falling out of favor, but research on marriage had consistently shown that satisfaction reached its lowest point when the oldest child was between 7 and 17. In a paper which later proved somewhat paradigm-shifting, Steven Nock (1979) found that the lions-share of changes in marital satisfaction were predicted by length of marriage and the simple presence or absence of children, an effect and conclusion that have gone largely unchallenged to this day. Similarly, the “lift” in marital satisfaction among the longest lasting marriages has been largely attributed to reduced work and parental responsibilities associated with children leaving the home and retirement (Orbuch, House, Mero and Webster, 1996).

Unfortunately, most of this conventional wisdom was based on cross-sectional studies which rely on the simultaneous measurement of marriages of different lengths. Such studies confound the length of relationships with a number of factors. One of these factors is marital quality itself, since it is strongly related to the age of marriages existing to be sampled at any given time. Simply put: If the most unhappy marriages divorce within 5 or 10 years of marriage, then comparing 15 year-old marriages to 5 year-old marriages may result in data which spuriously suggest that marriage gets happier over time. The pitfalls of using time-related differences to denote developmental changes can be less than obvious. For example, one longitudinal study suggested that having a baby was likely to keep “bad” couples together in spite of their differences, and thus spuriously increase the appearance of the famously negative relationship between the presence of baby and marital satisfaction in cross-sectional data (White, Booth and Edwards, 1986).

Overall, longitudinal studies which track a recruited group of marriages have not observed the U-Shaped curve in marital satisfaction over time. Instead, longitudinal research suggests that marital satisfaction over the life of the marriage generally either remains relatively stable, or declines. Many researchers have focused on trying to determine what factors present at the outset of a marriage can predict which of these paths of marital satisfaction a couple will follow. For example, Karney and Bradbury in 1997 unsuccessfully tested the hypothesis that an individual’s level of neuroticism, which has been strongly associated to marital satisfaction in cross-section studies, would predict the course of marital satisfaction over time. More successfully, Clements, Stanley and Markman (2004) demonstrated that a discriminant model based on the presence of deficits in communication skills at the time of marriage, particularly around emotional or conflicted themes, along with females age at marriage, could correctly classify 77% of the marriages in terms of whether they ended up happy, distressed, or divorced 13 years later.

However, perhaps the most famous longitudinal prognosticator of the marriage course in recent years has been John Mordechai Gottman, who in the 2005 book by Malcolm Gladwell Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and the television series The Human Face described a model by which he claimed predict with 90% percent accuracy which newlywed couples will remain married and which will divorce four to six years later. The factors that power Dr. Gottman’s prediction method are the quality of behaviors arising between couples when observed interacting early in their marriage. Couples who displayed strong negativity during conflict were most likely to divorce within 7 years. Couples who were disengaged or displayed a lack of positive emotions in events-of-the-day and conflict discussions were most likely to be among the group of divorces that occurred later in the relationship.

Unfortunately, what has long been lacking in regards to the reassessment of cross-sectional theories using longitudinal data has been a considered analysis of the effects of children. However, in next month’s Journal of Marriage and Family, Shawn Whitman, Susan McHale and Ann Crouter present an article which examines the course of husbands’ and wives’ reports of marital love, satisfaction, and conflict over a 7-year period. In general, they report that marital love declined over time, with wives’ reports declining more sharply. Husbands and wives reported similar declines in marital satisfaction at the beginning of the second decade of marriage followed by a plateau toward the end of that decade. These results were interpreted to suggest that marital quality may often decline from the first years of marriage until children are grown and prepare to leave the home.

Drilling deeper into the issue of the effect of children on marital quality, Whitman et al. also explored how the pubertal development of first and second-born children was related to couple’s reports of marital love, satisfaction, and conflict. The onset of puberty among first-born children was related consistently to declines in marital love and satisfaction for both mom’s and dad’s. With respect to marital conflict, it is interesting to note that same-gender parents experienced more fighting with their spouse associated with their child’s transition through puberty. In other words, mother’s of first-born daughters and father’s of first-born sons reported the largest increases in marital conflict.

The bad news here is that this longitudinal study seems to validate the conclusion based on cross-sectional data decades earlier: Children are wonderful, but they don’t make marriage easier. The good news? Whitman et al. also analyzed the effect of second-born children entering puberty and there found no significant negative effect on marital quality. So, maybe practice makes perfect. If you can survive the first child…

Further Reading:

The U-Shaped Curve

W. R. Burr (1970). Satisfaction with various aspects of marriage over the life cycle: A random middle class sample. Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 32, 29-37

Nock, S. L. (1979). The family cycle: Empirical or conceptual tool? Journal of Marriage and the Family, 41, 15-26.

Vaillant, C. O., & Vaillant, G. E. (1993). Is the U-curve of marital satisfaction an illusion? A 40-year study of marriage. Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 55, 230-239.

T. L. Orbuch, J. S. House, R. P. Mero & P. S. Webster (1996). Marital Quality Over the Life Course, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2, 162-171

Predicting Marital Course

B. R. Karney & T. N. Bradbury (1997) Neuroticism, Marital Interaction, and the Trajectory of Marital Satisfaction, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1997, Vol. 72, No. 5. 1075-1092

M. L. Clements, S. M. Stanley & H. J. Markman (2004). Before They Said “I Do”: Discriminating Among Marital Outcomes Over 13 Years, Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004): 613-626

J. M.Gottman, R. W. Levenson (2000), The Timing of Divorce: Predicting When a Couple Will Divorce over a 14-Year Period. Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 62, No. 3

Effects of Children on Marriage Quality

L. K. White, A. Boothe & J. N. Edwards (1986). Children and Marital Happiness Why the Negative Correlation? Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 7, No. 2, 131-147

S. D. Whiteman, S. M. McHale & A. C. Crouter (2007). Longitudinal Changes in Marital Relationships: The Role of Offspring’s Pubertal Development, Journal of Marriage and Family Vol. 69: 1005-1020