Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Book 2)

by Emily Oster

The answer to the first question is yes, things are, on average, systematically worse in marriages after kids. It is probably an exaggeration to say you’ll “hate your spouse,” but people (women in particular) do seem less happy after kids. We can see this in a variety of studies that look at the relationship between parenthood and marital satisfaction. These go back as early as 1970, with a paper showing that between the pre-childbearing period and the period of having school-aged children, the share of mothers reporting low marital satisfaction rises gradually from 12 percent to 30 percent, with an abrupt jump in the first year of the child’s life. The marriage does not recover until parents become grandparents.3 Meta-analyses of more recent data show similar things—parents are less happy with their marriages than nonparents. The changes seem to be most abrupt in the first year, and then there is some recovery, although not complete.4 As one study helpfully notes, “In sum, parenthood hastens marital decline. . . .”5