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Any new parent will tell you that having a baby can put a huge strain on the mother-father relationship.
Now, a study has revealed how it takes a staggering two years for new parents to regain a happy relationship.
Fortunately, there is good news for those hoping to have a bigger family.
The researchers found that second-time fathers see improvement in satisfaction with their relationship after just two months.
The study, which included surveys of more than 600 fathers in Germany, is part of a growing number of studies looking at fatherhood from a man’s point of view.
A new study has revealed how it takes two years for new parents to regain a happy relationship (file image)
It was led by Judith T. Mack and Lena Brunke, researchers at the Technische Universität Dresden in Germany, who describe having a satisfying relationship “as one of life’s most important individual goals.”
“Like new mothers, first-time fathers appear to experience a greater decline in relationship satisfaction during the transition to parenthood than second-time fathers,” they state in their article, published in plus one.
“Especially first-time parenting couples need to be prepared for the expected changes in their relationship.”
The authors noted that research on the link between the transition to parenthood and relationship satisfaction has focused primarily on mothers with their firstborn.
Therefore, they wanted to investigate the fathers, focusing especially on the differences between first-time and second-time fathers.
For the study, they analyzed survey data from 606 parents, almost all of whom were German nationals.
In total, the sample consisted of 500 first-time parents and another 106 second-time parents.
The data was collected between 2017 and 2020 as part of the ongoing Dresden Study on Parenting, Work and Mental Health (DREAM) project.
The survey asked about satisfaction with the relationship two months before the child’s birth, as well as two months after the birth, 14 months after the birth, and two years after the birth.
In total, it was revealed that the birth of a child, regardless of whether it is the first or the second, is related to a decrease in relationship satisfaction between parents.
But there were key differences in the time it took for first-time and second-time parents’ relationship satisfaction to rise back to a “baseline” level (where it was at the start of the pre-birth surveys).
One crucial difference was that for first-time parents, relationship satisfaction continued to decline after two months.
Before and after birth, relationship satisfaction (RS) decreased for both first-time and second-time parents. New parents showed a higher level of RS before birth. One crucial difference was that for first-time fathers, RS continued to decline after two months, while for second-time fathers it improved, and continued to improve until the end of the study period (24 months).
Meanwhile, for second-time fathers, relationship satisfaction improved after two months and continued to improve until the end of the study period (24 months).
For first-time parents, after 14 months, relationship satisfaction stopped declining but also did not increase; it just leveled off up to the 24-month mark.
New parents may show a steeper decline in relationship satisfaction after birth due to the shock of experiencing parenthood for the first time.
The team also found that first-time parents generally had a higher level of relationship satisfaction before birth, compared to second-time parents.
This may be because second time parenting relationships are still in recovery mode after the travails of having the first child.
But after the birth of a second child, relationship satisfaction quickly returns, which could be related to increased confidence in raising a newborn for the second time.
In the surveys, the researchers took into account factors such as age, education, income, length of relationship, marital status, the child’s biological sex and the child’s temperament.
14 months after birth, second-time parents tended to see their relationship satisfaction return to normal.
But they found no significant association between reported relationship satisfaction and these other variables, apart from the length of the relationship.
Interestingly, couples in longer relationships tended to initially report lower relationship satisfaction.
For parents who are still struggling through the many months after their first child is born but still want a second, the results will be welcome news.
Meanwhile, kids who are first-time parents “should be prepared for the expected changes in their relationship,” according to the authors.
“The transition to parenthood can negatively affect parenting relationship satisfaction, more so for first-time parents than for second-time parents; however, this can recover over time,” they state.
“Preparation and anticipation can be key.”