According to new information that was presented at the meeting of the American Sociological Association, couples where the women performed more than 60% of the childcare such as praise, playing and rule-making, had the worst scores on relationship satisfaction and conflict. This also included being the least happy about the quality of their sex life.
STUDY PUT ALL COUPLES IN ONE OF THREE DIFFERENT CATEGORIES
The study suggests that the father’s engagement and sharing of the childcare with their partner is more important and beneficial to the overall relationship. The couples were split into three categories: ones where women did most or all of the childcare, relationships where men did most or all of the childcare, and relationships where they split the work.
There were very few reverse traditional couple arrangements, where women are the breadwinners and the men are primarily responsible for looking after the house and the children, however, they proved to be happier with the quality of their sex life and their relationship.
WHEN FATHERS TAKE MAJORITY OF CHILD CARE, THE RELATIONSHIP WAS BETTER
When men took on the majority of the childcare responsibility, the sexual frequency, relationship quality, and satisfaction were just as high as the couples who shared the childcare responsibilities among themselves. Unlike many mothers, fathers that are in a heterosexual relationship could take on most or all of the childcare responsibilities without any negative effects on the quality of the couple’s relationship.
THE COUPLES IN THE RELATIONSHIP WERE ALL SELECTED AT RANDOM, WITH CERTAIN CRITERIA
Out of the 487 couples in the study, they were selected at random and included both low to moderate income couples who had children living with them and where the woman was under 45 years old. For these couples to have some of the highest quality relationships as well as the best sex life, they needed to have divided the tasks by 40 percent and 60 percent, if not 50/50 equally.
Child care was defined in the study with three dimensions, physical and emotional child care, passive child care, which is monitoring and supervision, and interactive child care.
The research was conducted by Dr. Carlson of Georgia State University, where his contribution was presented during the most recent psychological conference of the American Sociological Association.
