What effect does having kids have on your relationship with your significant other?

BINGHAMPTON (NEWS 1130) – Your kids may be the apples of your eye, but they may not exactly be great for your relationship.

New research suggests having little ones is actually a bit of a double-edged sword.

“A lot of couples think that having a baby will make them stronger as a couple and bring them closer together — or at least not make them worse off,” says Matthew D. Johnson, the director of the Marriage and Family Studies Laboratory at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

That’s not necessarily the case.

“Couples’, generally speaking, relationship satisfaction drops following the wedding. The catch is for couples with children, that drop is twice as steep as it is for couples without children,” says Johnson.

But that doesn’t equate to more separations.

“If you have babies, you’re less likely to divorce,” says Johnson. “In fact, having children is one of the very few things that will make you less satisfied with your relationship but also less-likely to divorce.”

“In that way, couples are closer together in that they’re less likely to break up the marriage but there really is almost no data that suggests on average, [for] couples who have children, their marriage or their relationship gets stronger.”

He says that decrease in marital satisfaction can affect general happiness, as the biggest predictor of overall life satisfaction is a person’s satisfaction with their spouse.

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