Contents
Sharing child care responsibilities leads to a more harmonious marital and sexual life.
Sociologist Daniel L. Carlson and his graduate students at the University of Georgia (USA) analyzed data on 487 couples (some of them were formally married, some were in a civil union) collected as part of a study of marital relations in 2006 . They divided the couples into three groups – in one, childcare responsibilities mainly lay with the woman, in the second – on the man, in the third – they were divided more or less equally. The researchers took into account the physical and emotional involvement in the child’s life (non-participation implied passive control and observation), the participation of parents in such matters as teaching children the rules of behavior and monitoring their observance, praise and encouragement, joint games.
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The quality of marital relations was assessed on the basis of spouses’ answers to questions about how satisfied they are with the relationship and how often conflicts occur. The researchers also looked at how often couples had sex and how satisfied they were with their sex lives. In cases where the majority of childcare responsibilities were borne by women (at least 60%), the quality of marital and sexual relationships was the lowest.
When men took on most of the care of children, the quality of relationships and satisfaction with the frequency of sex were at their highest level. Women in these couples were completely satisfied with the quality of their sex life, which cannot be said about men – in this version of the distribution of duties, they were satisfied with the quantity, but not the quality of sex. In general, couples where responsibilities were distributed equally were the most prosperous in all the indicators considered.
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“We found the biggest difference between families in which the majority of childcare falls on the mother, and families where responsibilities are shared. Which allows us to conclude that the participation of the father in the care of the child ultimately improves the quality of life of both parents, ”says Daniel Carlson.
Подробнее см. D. Carlson et al. «The division of childcare, relationship quality, and sexual intimacy in couples», доклад на конференции 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.