Having a Child does Reduce Marriage Satisfaction Essay

Children should be source of happiness to a family, but that is not necessarily the case. The addition (or even removal) of a person from a family may cause the family to require a lot of reorganization in order to maintain its normal system [LeMasters, 1957 cited in Twenge, Campbell and Foster (2003)]. The inclusion of a new person into the family is usually a kind of crisis since it has to be supported by a reorganization of the family that would strive to restore normalcy while accommodating the new person. LeMasters (1957) likened the reorganization process to a crisis since it must involve making of concrete decisions to solve problems in old patterns of the family, which become somehow insufficient with the incoming of a new parson, especially a newborn. Insufficiency in a family due to the arrival of newborn arises due to several factors, which may be directly linked to the infant or indirectly affecting the parents. Nevertheless, babies at different ages have different requirements, and thus affect family systems in different ways. Twenge, Campbell and Foster (2003) noted that parents with children under the age of five years experience persistent lack of sleep due to the infants’ need for close attention particularly at night. In addition, such parents may also experience chronic tiredness, some form of guilt that they are not offering the best care (particularly if the infant keeps on crying), and a feeling of too much confinement at home to care for the baby. At the individual level, mothers may be concerned about their appearance, both in terms of the stress involve in taking care of the baby and in the physical attributes of the body after birth. According to Foley, Kope and Sugrue (2001), first time mothers are particularly prone to this kind of stress. For the fathers, a research recorded by Gottman (1994) revealed that becoming a father was partly the cause of declines in wife’s sexual responsiveness and ultimately, dissatisfaction in marriage. Moreover, fathers usually become burdened with a role to be sole breadwinners for the family since the women (even those who are working) have to be reduced to the role of housewives as they take care of babies in their early stages of growth. In general, when a married couple gets a baby, there is a tendency that the couple may be affected in number of ways. To begin with, there may be an increase in household chores and stress (since the baby has its own requirements in addition to the routine duties) (Twenge, Campbell and Foster, 2003). This may be amplified due to lack of adequate time for discussion between the couple as much of the time is directed to the baby. Secondly, the lack of discussion would result in poor companionship of the couple. Thirdly, as the gap between the couple and the baby becomes the center of focus, the couple’s sexual life may be annihilated (Twenge, Campbell and Foster, 2003). In addition, as a married couple gets distant due to the arrival of a baby, they may seek solace in their daily activities but this is likely to confer a number of disadvantages to the family since there may be an overload in accumulated roles of each parent (partner). McCary (1975) and Morgan (1988) have shown that in case the wives are not working, the arrival of a baby exacerbates depedendecy of the wife on the man hence the man feels more superior at the expense of the demoralized wife. Hence, birth raises inequity between married partners. Finally, having a child generates negative assessments of marriage, especially among the non-traditional women who may look at giving birth and taking care of a baby as too tedious and involving a task (Twenge, Campbell and Foster, 2003). In spite of the many challenges faced by families in having children, some authors (such as Foley, Kope and Sugrue [2001]) have noted that having a child may decrease marriage satisfaction, increase it or have no effect at all. Hence, all the aforementioned effects of having a child cannot be generalized to all families since different facilities have different levels of socialization and economic standing among other factors. It is thus worth noting that having a child confers various effects on the family setting. This paper will focus on the effect of having child in marriage but will be biased towards the preposition that having a child or children does reduce satisfaction in marriage. The paper will involve a review of past works on the concept accompanied with concise discussion based on the findings. In order to come up with a deduction on the topic, conclusions will be derived from the discussion to justify if the perception indeed holds water.