When and how does the number of children affect marital satisfaction? An international survey

Kowal M, Groyecka-Bernard A, Kochan-Wójcik M, Sorokowski P (2021) When and how does the number of children affect marital satisfaction? An international survey. PLoS ONE 16(4): e0249516. Apr 22 2021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249516

Abstract: The present global study attempts to verify the links between marital satisfaction and the number of children as well as its moderators in an international sample. Data for the study was obtained from our published dataset and included 7178 married individuals from 33 countries and territories. We found that the number of children was a significant negative predictor of marital satisfaction; also sex, education, and religiosity were interacting with the number of children and marital satisfaction, while there were no interactions with economic status and individual level of individualistic values. The main contribution of the present research is extending our knowledge on the relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children in several, non-Western countries and territories.

Discussion

Our findings are in line with other research [26, 28], which showed that the number of children can be considered as a global, negative correlate of marital satisfaction. Even though some previous studies found that being a parent (as compared to non-parents) is linked to increased overall well-being [1, 2] (and that there are pronounced, cross-cultural differences within this matter, e.g., between American and Chinese adults [62]), the current analyses seem to refute the notion that such beneficial influence of parenthood extends to marital satisfaction. Moreover, as much greater share of variance can be attributed to individuals than to countries, one can reasonably conclude that marital satisfaction depends more on the individual characteristics than on the values promoted in the country. At the same time, we found that the association between marital satisfaction and the number of children vary substantially across countries, what necessitates further investigations.

Our study provided evidence for the complexity and the influence of other variables on the link between marital satisfaction and the number of children, namely, sex, education, and religiosity. We observed that a higher number of children was associated with decreased marital satisfaction only among women. According to the social role theory [37], it is women who are culturally pressured to fulfill tasks related to childbearing and housekeeping, while men provide for their families outside of the home. In such a situation, having more children generates more home duties for mothers than fathers [6, 34]. At the same time, as caring for children and their safety is a typical female role [37], men may solely focus on having fun and playing with the offspring [2], and thus, men may experience less distress and, in turn, more positive emotions regarding their spouse. Considering the imbalance between spouses’ duties related to having more children, results of the present study are in line with the equity theory [35], which predicts that partners, who invests more in the relationship than their spouses, experience more severe distress.

In addition to the sex differences, our analyses showed the interactive effect of the number of children and the level of parental education on marital satisfaction. Previous findings suggested that higher level of parental education should facilitate family size planning and achieving a balance between familial and personal life goals by both parents [63]. However, our results advocate for the opposite–we observed that the more education parents receive, the lower levels of marital satisfaction they experienced. When higher educated parents have more children, they may encounter more difficulties in balancing various social roles. This situation may result from the limitations of time and personal resources necessary to reconcile satisfyingly fulfilling parental, partner, and professional roles at the level determined by generally available knowledge [64].

We hypothesized that material status may be interacting with the number of children and marital satisfaction. Surprisingly, we found no support for this hypothesis. Parents of more children, regardless of their material situation, reported lower levels of marital satisfaction. Two complementary mechanisms may explain these findings. First, according to the restriction of freedom model [26], parents of high material status may more severely perceive a greater restriction of their free time. Instead of pursuing desirable careers or fulfilling dreams that would otherwise be financially affordable, parents focus on their offspring (who require time and attention). Second, according to the financial cost model [26], having children entails a myriad of expenses. With more children, it is even more difficult to make ends meet. Also, economic problems may be associated with husbands’ increased hostility and decreased supportiveness, both leading to wives’ perceptions of lower marital quality [39]. On the other hand, Twenge et al. [26] showed that when a couple becomes parents, a relationship between the transition to parenthood and the decline of marriage satisfaction may be stronger for individuals of higher socioeconomic status. Thus, we conclude that when the number of children increases, neither good nor bad material situation protects spouses from experiencing decreased levels of marital satisfaction. Similarly, in case of individualism. Previous studies found that parents from Western countries, usually recognized as more individualistically oriented [49], experience a decrease of marital satisfaction upon birth of their children [26], and thus, we hypothesized that more level of individualistic values may interact with marital satisfaction and the number of children. However, we found no evidence for the influence of individualism on this relationship.

Analyzing the impact of religiosity on the number of children and marital satisfaction, we observed that religiosity may be a protective buffer against a marital satisfaction decrease in larger families. Many religious communities stress positive marital and family relations [65, 66], offer different forms of support to parents [67], and value parenting likewise bringing up children through religious teachings, ceremonies or accommodations to families with children [65, 68]. Furthermore, religious people may not consider maternity in terms of inner conflict between individual aims and parent obligations [6, 69]. On the contrary, religiosity may promote traditional roles (i.e., being a parent, a spouse), and thus, positively influence the link between parenthood and marital satisfaction [70–72].

The correlations between the number of children and marital satisfaction differed across countries (see Fig 1), being positive in few cases (only among men) and negative in others. However, these correlations were never strong. The plot suggests no emerging patterns that could condition the direction and intensity of these relationships (e.g., a positive relationship in men in Germany, Nigeria, and Mexico). However, a positive effect of individualism on marital satisfaction suggests that it remains dependent on culturally determined issues. Although individualism did not differentiate the relationship of our interest, some country-level or other culturally relevant aspects of spouses’ functioning should be tested in future studies. For example, work culture [73], country policies [74] or social equity norms shared within a society [36] may explain to a higher extent the cultural differences in the role that number of children play in marital satisfaction. Nevertheless, due to the limitations described below we want to stress that the present results should be treated with caution until future cross-cultural studies provide further support.

Strengths and limitations

Results of the present analysis are not free of limitations. Most importantly, the statistical significance of the observed relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children was very close to the conventional threshold of 0.05. We cannot exclude the scenario in which the significance of this predictor might have been a result of a large sample size, what required caution in drawing any general conclusions. Furthermore, the data samples are not fully representative for the whole world’s population, as the majority of participants inhabited more urbanized regions. We were also unable to analyze interdependent marriage dyads or non-married, cohabitating couples. Moreover, religiosity appeared to be a moderator of the link between the number of children and marital satisfaction, but, unfortunately, it was assessed only by a single question in the survey (“Are you religious?”), which makes further interpretations difficult. The partial, declarative knowledge of participants economic status also limits our conclusions. It would be insightful if future studies focused on the age of the children, as it may also affect the relationship between the family size and marital satisfaction. Finally, our study did not focus on very complex relationships between our variables of interest (i.e., three-way-interactions). We suggest that building upon sound theoretical backgrounds, future studies could form more detailed hypotheses on the interplay between several predictors of marital satisfaction and their temporal dynamics.

On the other hand, in the present analysis we used a large-scale sample database from different regions of the world. All participants answered the same questionnaires, which tried to capture numerous important variables, previously shown to correlate with marital satisfaction. The data was collected in the same period of time and originated in different regions of the world. The main contribution of the present research is extending our knowledge on the relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children and variables that are frequently hypothesized to influence this relationship (i.e., sex, religiosity, age, education, level of individualism, material situation, and marriage duration) in several, non-Western countries and territories. Such insight may be especially important when considering the importance of marital satisfaction on health and well-being both of spouses [75] and their children [76].