THE IMPACT OF HAVING CHILDREN ON MARITAL SATISFACTIONS

So who are happier with their marriages: couples with or without children? Looking at the combined 1973-2000 General Social Surveys of the National Opinion Research Center (n=21,883), we find that, in total, married individuals are more than 9 percentage points more likely to be "very happy" with their marriages if they are childless:

Things don't look too encouraging for the production of society's next generation. Is this why the California-based Child Free Network declared in 1994 the first Sunday in June as Childfree Adult Day? Census Bureau statistics reveal some 16 percent of baby-boom women won't have children, up from 8 percent of the previous generation.

But let's think about these statistics. Comparing those with and without children turns out to be a methodological tricky issue. The table above, for instance, fails to control for such factors as:

• Spouses' ages. Younger respondents are less likely to have children and more likely to feel the glow of the "honeymoon effect." In addition, our sample includes thousands of parents whose children have grown up and left the proverbial nest.
• Spouses' ages when first assuming parental responsibility. According to the 1994 GSS, this range varies from 9 to 40. And let's not forget the 1994 stories of science successfully impregnating post-menopausal women!
• The length of marriage before the arrival of the "little people.". Indeed, according to the 1994 GSS, women who had their first child four or more years after marriage are about 16 percentage points more likely to report being "very happy" with their marriage than those have their first one year or earlier after marriage. And this, not surprisingly, is related to their education: among women with four or more years of college, 39% had their first child four years or later after marriage compared to only 11% of high school dropouts and 20% of those ending their educational career with a high school diploma.
• Ages of children. Research generally shows that parents' relationships typically bottom out when living with teenagers.
• Education, social class, and work status of wives and husbands. Perhaps with increasing education, for instance, entry into the parenthood role is more likely to be intended.

Addressing the matter of spouses' ages, we see in the table below (for the combined 1973- 2002 survey years) that the greater marital satisfactions of non-parent husbands only exists in early adulthood. For wives, on the other hand, this advantage of non-mothers continues through the pre-retirement years.

Okay, okay. So what's the bottom line? If we control for sex, age, education, work status (full-time, part-time, homemaker), the original percentage difference in the percent of Americans reporting being "very happy" with their marriage between childless couples and parents actually increases 21%! Focusing just on women, we find this marital satisfaction advantage of nonparents:

• is greatest among those working full-time (percentage difference=13.4) vs. those working part-time (5.7%) or keeping house (3.5%);
• is roughly constant across levels of education;
• is greatest for those with post-secondary education and working full-time and lowest for those with post-secondary education and who are homemakers;
• is greatest for those 18 to 32 years of age, particularly for those with the least (difference among high school dropouts was 19.5 percentage points) and most (difference among those with four or more years of college was 19.1) education, and least among women who went no further than high school (9.9 percentage point difference)
• was greatest in the 1976-80 period.

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