Having a child can be challenging. Studies have found that couples consistently see a reduction in their marital satisfaction when their first child is born. When asked how happy they are with their personal relationship with their spouse, they’ll say that the relationship isn’t quite as strong as it was before. This is so consistent that one study found a reduction in satisfaction in 90% of marriages.
In many ways, this is completely understandable. Children take up a lot of time and couples no longer have as much time for each other. But this also means that having a child could lead to divorce. It may erode the relationship between the two adults to the point that they no longer feel staying together makes sense.
Having a child to save the marriage
This is also an important issue to keep in mind because some couples will notice that they are experiencing marital strife and believe that they just need to have a child in order to save it. Maybe they think that they are unhappy because they haven’t started a family. If they just had a child to focus on, along with their spouse, they believe it would help the two of them cooperate and work together, making them a stronger couple.
But the reality is that, if the level of marital satisfaction was already low before the child was born, it is only likely to decline further afterward. In this sense, having a child doesn’t usually save a marriage, but just makes an eventual divorce more complicated because the couple now has to think about child custody issues.
If you are going through a divorce, especially if you have children, be sure you know about all of the legal options at your disposal.