When a couple becomes parents, they tend to lose time for themselves as individuals and as couples, one doing most of the child caring and the other having to spend more hours working to be able to sustain a family. Sex tends to become the least of all priorities.
For some parents who still find time to be intimate, it still becomes a challenge making sex satisfying.
A new study conducted by researchers at the Georgia State University (GSU) found that if couples want a better sex life and a happier relationship, men should take on more childcare responsibilities.
It's not so much as giving all the work to the dad, but more of equally dividing tasks between two parents.
In the study, assistant professor of sociology Daniel L. Carlson and graduate students Andrea Fitzroy and Sarah Hanson took a look at data gathered 487 heterosexual couples from the 2006 Marital and Relationship Survey (MARS). Findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association on Aug. 23.
"One of the most important findings is that the only childcare arrangement that appears really problematic for the quality of both a couple's relationship and sex life is when the woman does most or all of the childcare," Carlson said [pdf].
In their study, the researchers divided the couples into three groups according to childcare, relationships where 60 percent or all the work was done by women; relationships where 60 percent or all the work was done by men; and relationships where neither men nor women did most or all the work but where work was equally split, with each covering 40 to 60 percent of childcare. Factors that the researchers considered were quality of relationship (relationship satisfaction and conflict) and frequency and quality of sex.
Three dimensions of child care were highlighted - physical and emotional; interactive and passive childcare; and included monitoring and supervising. Along with these were four tasks that determined who was responsible for making rules for the children; enforcing the rules (including punishing when rules are broken) on the children; praising them when they accomplish something; and playing with them.
In relationships where women did most or all of the childcare, the researchers found the relationships and sex life for both men and women to have lower quality, compared to those of couples splitting childcare responsibilities.
According to the researchers, when dads in a heterosexual relationship take on most or all of childcare, there aren't negative effects on the quality of the relationship, unlike when women take on all of most of the work. Also, where men did most or all of the childcare, couples were reported to have just as much sex and be just as satisfied with the frequency of having sex as couples with equal arrangements.
When asked about the quality of sex, however, men who did most or all of the childcare were less satisfied than women were. In the scenario, qualities of sex lives were lowest in men and highest in their female partners.
Carlson did say that the measures of their study were "fairly narrow." In the future, he hopes to be able to dig deeper into how and why couples with egalitarian arrangements, when it comes to division of childcare tasks, have higher quality sex lives and happier relationships.
Photo: Richard foster | Flickr
