Posted on 16. Mar, 2004 by Brian Reid in General
Want a happy marriage? Be supportive co-parents. That’s the message of a new study out of Ohio State. Researchers checked in on 46 families both 6 months after a child arrived and then again at 3 years.
Families that had figured out how to have complimentary parenting styles at 6 months were more likely to have happy marriages at 3 years. “This suggests,” said one of the authors, Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, “that the quality of the early coparenting relationship is particularly important for the quality of the marriage.”
I don’t have hard data to prove this, but I suspect (as does American University’s Joan Williams) that parenting roles are more equal and better-spelled-out in families where dad is the primary caretaker. On the other hand, I’m not my feeling squares with the fact that marital strife tends to be higher in non-traditional families.
I received the first review of Spike TV’s This Just In, suggesting that the at-home dad character, in addition to coming off as a wimp, is also “most dishonest of all the characters in the show.”
In other TV news, ABC appears to be looking for at-home dads for a show where families swap parents for 10 days. Let me know if any of you make the cut. I’ll set my VCR.
Also … at-home dad Joe Mozian kicked off “My Life is a Sitcom II” earlier this month. Joe, no dount, would like you all to tune in to ABC Family at 7:30 p.m. eastern on Sundays.
amyknight
19. Mar, 2004
Marital strife may be higher in non-traditional families, but I’ll bet that most of it has to do with one or more of the following:
1. They didn’t bargain for a nontraditional arrangement going in;
2. They did, but had no idea what they were talking about;
3. One spouse went along with the idea to make the other happy;
4. One or both of them have poor negotiating skills;
5. One or both found they couldn’t cede traditional turf without feeling a massive blow to the ego;
6. One or both have no idea what they want past marriage and children.
If you’re going to throw the received structure out the window, you’d better have the wherewithal for making a new one happily, in other words. See Babbitt.
amy