Children: A Factor in Marital Satisfaction

Abstract

In order to see what effect, if any, children had on marital satisfaction, an analysis was made of 80 couples who had previously been identified as or in their marriages. It was found that children were given as one of the greatest and the only satisfactions in the marriages of the unsatisfied group; companionship was reliably related to satisfied couples when compared with unsatisfied. It may be inferred that while satisfied couples found their marriages enhanced by the companionship of each other, couples who found little in the way of companionship relied on their children primarily for satisfaction. Other factors relating to children such as size of family, patterns of spacing, and sex of children appeared to be of no consequence when comparing the two groups.