The relationship after the birth: what the research really shows

After the birth of the first child, relationship satisfaction drops for most couples, and it does not drop slowly but suddenly. This has been shown in longitudinal studies spanning several years, it affects mothers more than fathers, and it has nothing to do with whether the child was planned. If you think at this stage that something has gone especially wrong for you, you are usually mistaken.

I am writing this because again and again I have couples sitting across from me in sessions who bring, on top of their exhaustion, the feeling that they are the only ones failing. The figures below do not take that feeling away. But they put it into context.

The central finding

The most meaningful study on this comes from a research group led by Brian Doss, published in 2009 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It followed 218 couples through the first eight years of marriage. 132 of these couples had their first child during that time, 86 remained childless. So there was a comparison group, and that is exactly what makes the study so useful.

What it showed:

The drop comes suddenly, not gradually. Satisfaction did not decline over months; it fell sharply immediately after the birth.

Mothers were hit harder than fathers. For mothers the effect was considerably larger, for fathers still clearly measurable.

Communication got worse for both. Not only by their own assessment. This was observed in recorded conversations.

It stayed that way for at least four years. During that period none of the areas studied recovered, not even partially.

The comparison group did not show this. Among the childless couples, satisfaction declined only slowly, as is usual in long relationships. The quality of their conversations even improved over the same period. So the sudden drop really is linked to the birth and not to the relationship getting older.

On average, not a single area improved. That is the most sobering sentence in the whole study.

Three findings almost nobody knows

This is where it gets interesting in practice, because these three points contradict what you usually hear.

First: whether the child was planned made no difference. You would expect planned parenthood to protect the relationship. The data did not show this. The decline in satisfaction was independent of it.

Second: the couples who were happiest beforehand experienced the biggest drops. At first this sounds illogical, and on closer inspection it makes a lot of sense. If you had a lot of closeness, time and attention before, you lose more of it. For mothers this link was clearly pronounced.

In practice this means: if you were a very good couple before the birth and now barely recognise yourselves, that is not a contradiction. It is the expected course.

Third: different things collapse for fathers and mothers. For mothers it was above all their confidence and their sense of being able to deal with conflict, and problems felt heavier. For fathers something else dropped suddenly, namely their conscious commitment to the relationship, that inner yes to this shared project. Their confidence and their sense of problems tended to worsen gradually, but kept doing so over years.

That explains a pattern I come across often. She says she can no longer reach him. He says he does not know himself when he checked out inside.

What adds to it in Germany: the division of labour

The study above comes from the USA. For the German-speaking countries there is another data source that explains a second piece of the picture.

The German Family Panel pairfam (Beziehungs- und Familienpanel) has followed several thousand people every year since 2008. An analysis by Dechant, Rost and Schulz from 2014 looked at 1,173 couples from it, 280 of whom became parents during the observation period.

The figures on housework are clear:

• shared roughly equally: before the birth 47 per cent, after the birth 24 per cent
• mostly the woman: before 37 per cent, after 49 per cent
• almost entirely the woman: before 13 per cent, after 25 per cent
• mostly or entirely the man: before 3 per cent, after 2 per cent

The share taken on by women rose on average from about 53 per cent to 74 to 80 per cent.

And now the part that counts: it did not go back. Even around three years later the figure was still at this level. For the childless comparison couples, hardly anything changed over the same period.

That means: what arises out of necessity in the first weeks after the birth usually stays. Nobody decides it, nobody negotiates it, and years later it is the normal state of affairs that people then argue about.

Fathers go through crises too

A finding that almost never appears in German advice literature.

A meta-analysis by Paulson and Bazemore, published in 2010 in the journal JAMA, combined 43 studies with a total of 28,004 participants. The result: around 10 per cent of fathers are affected by depression in the period from pregnancy to one year after the birth. In the window between the third and sixth month after the birth, the proportion in the included studies was considerably higher.

On top of that there is a link that matters for couples: the strain on fathers and the strain on mothers were measurably connected. If one of them is struggling, the likelihood rises for the other.

In practice this means two things. If you have the feeling right now that your partner is withdrawing, it is possible that he himself is not doing well and has no words for it. And it means that it is worth looking at him too, not only out of consideration, but because it affects you directly.

A figure I am cautious about

There is a claim that appears in almost every article on this topic: that 67 per cent of couples become unhappy in the first three years after the birth. It comes from the work of John and Julie Gottman.

The figure is probably not wrong, and it fits everything I see in my practice. Even so, I only mention it here with reservations, because in the publicly available accounts of this research I can find neither the sample size nor a clear statement of how “unhappy” was measured.

This is not a criticism of the Gottmans, whose work on couple conflict is very well documented. It is just an indication of how this topic is discussed in public: with a catchy figure that nobody traces back any more.

The studies above do not need this figure anyway. They show the same thing, only in a way that can be checked.

What I take from this for my practice

Research says what happens. It does not say what to do. Here are three things from my work.

The drop is not the problem. Not negotiating is. The fall in satisfaction can hardly be prevented. What does make a difference is what gets negotiated during this time and what is merely endured. Couples who negotiate come out of it as a team. Couples who only endure come out of it with a silent bill that gets presented years later.

Practise beforehand, do not improvise when it matters. The most common advice is to pause for a moment in an argument, breathe and put yourself in the other person’s shoes. In that moment it is too late for that, and that is true for everyone. What works is something you have practised beforehand and can therefore call on when things get tight.

The division of labour needs to be discussed before it takes shape. Given the German figures, this is the most concrete lever there is. The distribution of the first weeks lasts for years. If you discuss it during pregnancy, you are negotiating something that would otherwise be left to chance.

Where these figures do not belong

Everything described here applies to couples who both basically mean well and are in a very stressful phase.

It is no explanation for violence, physical or verbal. Exhaustion does not explain belittling, control or isolation. If you are experiencing this, it is not the transition to parenthood, it is something else. The German helpline for women affected by violence (Hilfetelefon Gewalt gegen Frauen) is available around the clock, free of charge and anonymously, on 116 016.

And if for weeks you no longer feel any joy, feel cut off from yourself or your child, or thoughts come up that frighten you, then this is not a relationship question. Talk to your midwife, your gynaecologist or your GP. The same applies to your partner.

What I would like you to take away

The figures above are often read as if a child were bad for a relationship. That is not how I read them.

They say that almost all couples hit a low at this point, that the drop comes from outside, and that it does not reverse on its own. Three statements: the first brings relief, the second takes away the blame, and only the third asks something of you.

You are not the couple for whom things are going wrong. You are the couple who is in the middle of the part nobody talks about beforehand.

Sources

• Doss, B. D., Rhoades, G. K., Stanley, S. M. & Markman, H. J. (2009). The effect of the transition to parenthood on relationship quality: An 8-year prospective study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 601 to 619.
• Dechant, A., Rost, H. & Schulz, F. (2014). Die Veränderung der Hausarbeitsteilung in Paarbeziehungen. Zeitschrift für Familienforschung, 26(2), 144 to 168. Data source: Beziehungs- und Familienpanel pairfam (German Family Panel).
• Paulson, J. F. & Bazemore, S. D. (2010). Prenatal and postpartum depression in fathers and its association with maternal depression: A meta-analysis. JAMA, 303(19), 1961 to 1969.