Marital Satisfaction in Relation to Age and Number of Children

Abstract

Previous research on marital satisfaction has shown that while children help to stabilize marriages, they have a negative impact on the satisfaction within the marriage. To understand whether this finding coincides with the rural areas of Northeast Georgia, the authors studied the impact of number and ages of children, as well as stress level of the parents on happiness within the marriage. All three of these factors predicted a diminished marital satisfaction in the couple. Results found that the more children a couple has, the higher their level of parental stress. Age and number of children as well as parental stress levels negatively impacted marital satisfaction. In addition, couples who were younger when they started having kids also seem to have a higher parental stress level, compared to couples who were older when they started having kids. This suggests that marital satisfaction is impacted by children in the same basic ways, regardless of the couples’ location.