Kids bring happiness into a relationship, but when you can’t get a normal night’s rest or find time for yourself (or your hubby) sometimes your marriage can take a hit. The silver lining? Twenty percent of couples say their kids have actually strengthened their relationship. How do you keep your marriage strong without letting the stresses of parenthood gert to you? Tara Parker-Pope’s book For Better shows you how to keep those vows and the marriage strong. Kids’ effect on marriage Children are a blessing, but as you show in this book, they are really rough on a marriage. It’s hard to talk about, because our children bring us so much joy. Overall, children enhance our life. But they do bring a lot of challenges to a relationship. They take time and energy away from your partner. They add stress. You have disagreements over how to raise them, how to distribute chilldcare and chores. It’s important for couples to recognise that having kids is going to change your marriage in both positive and negative ways. It helps to know that this is normal. Finding alone time Many working parents wish they had more time with their kids, but you suggest they should worry more about time with each other. I think it’s surprising to parents today that we’re actually spending more time together as a family than past generations, because one of our biggest complaints is tha we don’t have enough time. But that time has to come from somewhere, and often it comes from time alone with a partner. When you ask kids, they aren’t worried about having more time with their parents. They just say they want their parents to be less stressed out. The lesson is that we can say: “I may not be there all the time, but when I am there I’m going to be really there.” I think I often feel guilty about bringing in a sitter, but when the marriage is strong the kids do better. They get better grades in school, they have more friends. The time that you invest with each other, even if it means getting a babysitter, is time well spent for your child. How to fight fair You talk about bad and good ways to fight and say eye-rolling is a strong predictor of divorce. What else do we need to look out for, and what does the way we fight teach our children? Even disagreements can be positive. You just want to watch the general tone of your discussions. Are they accusatory? Are they laced with criticism or contempt? Are there gestures like crossed arms and eye-rolling? These are red flags. The goal of conflict in a marriage is not to defeat the other person: it’s to find a middle ground. When the fight is getting how or out of control, you need to know how to de-escalate it before damage is done. Specifically: speak in a slow, quiet voice. Look your partner in the eyes. Keep legs and arms crossed. If needed, take a time-out to collect your thoughts. Children model what they see their parents doing. If you want your child to have a good relationship with his father, he needs to see you having a good relationship with his father, too. Conquer commitment fears There’s been a lot of press around the idea of “setting”. Do you agree that single, childless women are too picky? The science shows that people who have higher expectations have better marriages. But I do think marriage doesn’t work. There is that old statistic about the 50% divorce rate. The truth is: Marriage is getting stronger. Divorce is less common now. The divorce rate has been dropping since it peaked in 1981, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. According to the US Centre for Health Statistics, only 3.5 per 1,000 people now divorce in a given year, so people who have married in recent years have a better-than-average shot at staying together. You need to know that if you’re managing conflict well and have similar values and there’s passion and happiness, marriages can and do last. There’s a difference between settling for someone who’s just good enough and not getting married because you’re afraid of marriage. I think knowing that a lot of people are making it work helps you get through rough patches. Marriages can and do succeed, so we should not be afraid of commitment. Connect with your partner Hillariously, you report that men say they fight with their wives most about sex and women say they fight with their wives most about sex and women say they fight most about children. Who’s right, and what’s the best way to resolve those problems? They’re fighting about intimacy and time together. Children detract from that. Men will say, “Our sex life is not as good as I want it to be.” Women will say. “You’re not helping with kids. I’m exhausted. It’s really the same conversation. In studies of couples with empty nests, you see that they are happier even though they’re not spending more time together. The difference is that the time they are spending together is less stressful. They’re checking in with each other. They’re connected. So the lesson is: After the soccer and dance class and dinner and homework, even though you’re wiped out, just check in with your partner. Ask how they are. Find those moments. That’s what intimacy is all about. Balance your responsibilities There are books called “porn for women,” which contain photos of guys vacuuming and making dinner. You suggest that’s not far from making dinner. You suggest that’s not far off the mark. There really is truth to that. The more men contribute to the domestic chores, the more active their sex life is with their wives. And I don’t think there’s a woman out there who can’t see why that might be. It’s not just about having a clean house. It’s about showing your partner that you share her burden. It doesn’t take a lot of extra work around the house to really make a difference to the contentment and happiness a wife feels. The key is that the wife thinks the division is fair. And translates into more sex. Don’t micromanage And yet, you say, women aren’t always good at letting men help. Women are not always good at communicating what they want. They need to say, “Will you please pack the lunch?” Women think he should know it. But he doesn’t know it. Nine times out of ten he’ll say, “Sure.” They’ll say, “Honey, can you get the kids dressed?” Ad then the kid will come out of the room wearing patent leather shoes with blue jeans and the mother will say: “That’s all wrong. My kids aren’t going out of the house like that,” and she’ll redo it. If you ask for help, you have to accept the way men do it. It may drive you crazy when you see the kids playing the playground in their Easter clothes, but you don’t have to yell. You can say, “just so you know for nest time, the jeans are in the bottom drawer.” Weigh your options Our generation of lathekey kids seem especially terrified of divorce. How bad is divorce for kids? There’s a lot of mixed data on that. A really bad marriage is bad for children. The gray area is when you have a not-so-satisfying- marriage and you think you can find a better relationship outside of it. Sometimes women think the grass is greener and they forgot that their probably going to have to deal with a stepmother and not seeing the kids as much. Relationship research suggests that in that case it’s usually better to try to work it out. I’m divorced and I have a daughter. It was an incredibly difficult decision. There are many things about my life that are better now that I’m divorced. But there’s always the part of me that wonders what the best choice would have been for my daughter. She’s thriving and she’s great. I’m lucky that my ex-husband and I have managed to make her life good. Let parenthood bring you closer So we’ve established that children are so hard on a marriage, but what’s the good news? Well, for all the people who say their marriages got harder after having children, about 20 percent of couples report that their marriage become much stronger. If you address the challenges children bring together, it can bring you closer. Parenthood goves you something big in common. In some ways, having a child can make you more focused on the relationship, because there is so much more at stake. You have so much more to lose once you’ve started a family. The good news is that children can make us focused on strengthening our marriage.