Does having kids make a marriage happy or hopeless? One study claims to have the answer and the results aren’t exactly encouraging for parents.
According to the study of more than 5,000 people to be published later this week by Open University in the U.K., childless couples ranked the quality of their relationships higher, felt more valued by their partners, and (shocker) spent more time maintaining their relationships, going on dates, and having intimate conversations — undoubtedly easier to do when you’re not racing through dinner to relieve the sitter or halting that crazy-deep conversation when the baby starts crying.
Yet, there was also a fascinating gender divide: Mothers were happier than married women without children, but the opposite was true for men — fathers were slightly less content than their childless counterparts.
