Sex Life, Marriage Better For Couples Who Share Child Care Responsibilities

A study has shown that couples, who share child care responsibilities, are reported to have more satisfaction in both their sex and married life.

As published in EurekAlert!, Georgia State University sociologists Daniel L. Carlson, Sarah Hanson and Andrea Fitzroy used data from 900 couples who responded to a Marital Relationship Study conducted almost a decade ago.

Child care was defined in the study as making and enforcing rules for children; monitoring and supervising; giving punishment when rules have been broken; giving praise when appropriate and playing with the kids.

The researchers divided the participants into three groups: couples where the mom carried more child care responsibilities (60 percent and up); couples where the dad had more share and couples who shared the responsibilities fairly (50-50).

Responses were then evaluated in terms of overall satisfaction, the degree of conflicts and quality of their sex life.

The researchers found that in relationships where the mom carried more child care responsibilities, both the genders reported the lowest satisfaction for both their relationship and sex life.

"The important point to be made is that when we're looking at child care, the difference that we find is really between arrangements where the mother is largely responsible for child care and everything else," Carlson said.

On the other side, they found out that when the dad carried most of the child care responsibilities, both genders indicate that their overall relationship was just as healthy as those who equally shared responsibilities. When dads have more share in child care, the moms reported the highest quality of relationship and sex life.

The men who carried more shares, however, reported that they had the worst quality of sex in comparison to all men involved in the study, despite having no complaints as to the amount of sex they had. The reason for this remains unclear, according to Carlson as per HealthDay.

"But it could be that a relationship suffers when one person feels overburdened, overworked or overtired. Or it could be that a certain degree of dissatisfaction with having to do all the work, while the other isn't doing any of it, undermines the bond between couples. And that can carry over to the bedroom," Carlson said.

Professor Robin Simon of the Department of Sociology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., said the result "isn't surprising at all."

"These findings are supported by decades of research that has examined the mental health outcomes among parents who split up chores equitably. And any way you look at it, by every measure, studies have consistently found that egalitarian marriages end up making for more satisfying relationships," Simon further explained.