How to: Keep Your Marriage Strong While Parenting

Raising children can put a strain on marriage. Recognizing these pressures and making choices to strengthen your marriage will benefit both the adults and children.

Make Time for One Another
Caring for children takes a lot of time and energy. It is easy for parents to become so involved with caring for their little one that they forget to spend time on their spouse.

To keep your marriage strong, you will need to make time for one another. This can include planned “date nights” on a regular basis. But it can also include slowing down and finding time to be together at other times. Make a point to talk everyday. You can sit together on the couch and catch up while the children play nearby. You can choose at least one night to turn off the television and spend time together at home. You will need to choose to spend quality time with each other.

Communicate with Respect
Differences between husbands and wives that are easy to ignore before children can become major obstacles after children are born. For example, value differences become more noticeable as parents try to decide what to teach the child. Religious differences can become more divisive.

The key to keeping your marriage strong despite these differences involves communication and respect. Communicate your beliefs, listen to your partner, and work together in a spirit of respect to make decisions.

Divide Housework
Household chores increase with the birth of a child – laundry, dishes, cleaning. One of the top argument starters in marriage is about who does what work around the house. With more work to do, there is more room for dissatisfaction and resentment.

Your marriage and your children will benefit from finding agreement about how to divide household chores. When it comes to marital satisfaction, it is less important who does how much work and more important that both people think it is divided fairly. Don’t complain to other people about your spouse. Have an honest conversation about what you each would like to see. Are there any chores that may not be necessary? How can the necessary jobs be divided? Work towards an attitude of teamwork.

Appreciate One Another
One more hint: appreciate your partner for what they are contributing already to the household. It is easy to focus on what we see as our spouse’s failures or lapses, but more difficult to acknowledge what they are accomplishing. Let your partner know that you appreciate what they are already doing for your family. Many people avoid doing certain chores because they have learned from experience that when they do the work, they are criticized.

Did you know? Here are some Ideas, information, and some intriguing thoughts.

Research on How Marriages Change with the Birth of a Child

Having a baby always has a big impact on the couple’s relationship with one another. There are new stresses, worries, responsibilities, and joys affecting everyone in the family. Initially, most couples report feeling less satisfied with their relationship and some relationships never really recover. The good news is that many couples are able to adjust to these changes in such a way as to actually strengthen their marriages.

Research that followed 250 married couples from the late pregnancy through their child’s 3rd birthday is summarized in The Transition to Parenthood, published in 1994 by Delacorte Press and written by Jay Belsky and John Kelly. This research found that there were 4 categories of adjustment for couples after the birth of their first child.

• 12% were categorized as Severe Decliners with a much divided relationship.
• 38% were categorized as Moderate Decliners with a negative shift in their relationship.
• 30% were categorized as having No Change. They adjusted and their feelings towards one another returned to what it was before they had a child.
• 20% were categorized as Improvers. This group adjusted to the changes of adding a child to their family and their relationship was stronger and more positive than before.

This research found several key strategies for a positive adjustment to having a child. These include:

• Work together as a team.
• Find a way to divide household chores that is satisfactory to both partners.
• Find a way to handle stresses in way that doesn’t harm the marriage or the partner.
• Maintain some common interests.
• Accept that while marriage can be wonderful after a baby it will not be the exact same as before the baby. Be open to change.
• Continue to communicate. After a baby, couples may have to seek out opportunities to talk to one another.