Maintaining Your Romantic Relationship as Parents

A guest post from psychologist and relationship specialist, Dr. Yael Schonbrun, on how to thrive in your marriage or partnership as parents

I am currently on maternity leave after the birth of my fourth child. During this time, I have lined up several amazing guest posts. Today’s newsletter is written by Dr. Yael Schonbrun. Dr. Schonbrun is a psychologist, professor at Brown University, relationship specilist, and a mother to three. She writes about parenting and relationships and provides therapy for individuals and couples in her clinical practice. She also writes a newsletter called Relational: The Art and Science of Connections, in which she shares science-backed ideas for thriving in our most important relationships. Today, she’ll be sharing some science about thriving in a marriage or partnership as parents.

Source: Jonathan Borba/Pexels

You can listen to the audio version of this newsletter here:

Many people know either from personal experience or because they’ve heard about these research findings— the transition to parenthood can be rough on a partnership! Between sleep deprivation, the high anxiety of caring for a tiny infant, persistent demands, and the dizzying changes that accompany the transition to parenthood, many couples experience a rapid decline in relationship happiness once a baby enters the scene.

On the one hand, this may simply be the price we pay to parent teeny humans. Your adult partner can feed and clothe themselves and get themselves to sleep, after all (we hope). It seems reasonable to place them and your relationship with them far down the priority list while you focus on keeping your defenseless infant alive.

Yet partnerships are crucial for both our happiness and our ability to endure the rougher patches of life. Connection to our partner during this vulnerable period protects our wellbeing, and by protecting our wellbeing, offers protection to our baby. Being angry, or simply disconnected, from your partner contributes to a much harder experience for you, as an individual. And it makes it that much harder to meet the demands of parenthood.

Here’s where insights and practices supported by the research can help. First, becoming parents doesn’t spell D-O-O-M for your marriage or partnership. For one thing, not all couples experience that notorious drop in relationship satisfaction. One study following couples prenatally to 24 months deliberately looked past average trends of marital satisfaction to see if there were unique trajectories for couples. They found that although, on average, relationship quality declined during the transition to parenthood, about a quarter of partners reported equal or increased love toward their partner, and equal or decreased conflict.

And even when relationship happiness does drop during the early years, other studies point to the ways that relationships can recover as kids grow. One study, for instance, showed that relationship satisfaction recovered to pre-baby levels by the time the child turned 7 (not coincidentally, the age at which most kids are fully integrated into school and have less intensive care needs).

Still, lots of evidence points to a less sunny side of marriage after baby, with both heterosexual partners and same-sex couples finding that partnerships, on average, become less satisfying during the transition to parenthood. But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story, even if you and your relationship feel a bit shaky. Research also points to plenty of ways that couples can protect their relationships.

Here are some science-backed, partnership-protecting strategies to try:

1. Communicate.

It may seem like a cliche, but studies show that communication matters. Couples who struggle with conflict management, for instance, struggle more with becoming parents, as well as those with more negative communication patterns. Working on collaborative-problem solving with one another and on being more positive in your interactions can help to ease new co-parenthood.

If you see evidence that you and your partner struggle to be positive with one another, have a hard time negotiating responsibilities or making decisions, then actively working to improve communication can be a helpful step to take. Here are some strategies to try:

·       Be clear about your talk agenda. Couples who struggle with communication often find that it’s helpful to separate talk time that is for connection versus talk time that is for problem-solving or renegotiating responsibilities. Having an agenda that’s clear to both of you helps you be more effective.

·       Set aside time each week to “check in.” In the early weeks of baby, this might be a few minutes here and there. But as sleep consolidates, it’s helpful to find a chunk of time each week to check in. Make it a date – and put it on both your calendars so it doesn’t get forgotten in the baby chaos!

·       Get tips from the pros in book form. This book written by marital researchers from the University of Denver offers a host of terrific advice, as do famed marital researcher, John Gottman’s books, like this one focused on the transition to parenthood.

·       If you find yourselves locked in irresolvable conflict, seek professional help. Research shows that couples, on average, wait years after identifying a problem before seeking treatment. Of course, the longer we wait on tough relationship problems, the more calcified those problems become. So, if you and your partner are not making headway with strategies on your own, are close to giving up, or have given up, don’t wait longer. Prioritize seeking help. If you don’t know where to begin, Psychology Today has a terrific search engine for therapists that you can use to filter by zip code, insurance, and treatment type.

2. Establish Flexible Expectations.

Most people are overly optimistic about how marital realities will unfold—for instance, most people predict they will not divorce, yet 40% of couples do). This same naïve optimism applies in the transition to parenthood, and the violation of expectations as new parents can result in less happy marriages. For example, one study showed that violations of expectations for division of labor, financial contributions, ability to achieve career goals, relationship with the in-laws, and sex life was associated with decreased relationship satisfaction after couples became parents.

Given that you will have expectations and that it’s likely that some of them will ultimately prove difficult to meet, this research can help you set expectations wisely. And by wisely, I mean set expectations that expectations will likely need to change.

·       Discuss your ideal expectations. Begin by discussing your ideal hopes for how to share baby care, financial stress, responsibilities for household chores, and practices to support one another during periods of exhaustion.

·       Then get real. Then, discuss expectations for revisiting plans when (not if!) you discover they need tweaking. Make a plan to check in each month, particularly in those early months, to see which expectations need to be tweaked, subtracted, added, or re-committed to.

3. Make Time Together.

Not surprisingly, time together also matters and is not easy to find after baby. In one study, having less quality time as spouses explained the decline in women’s marital satisfaction during the transition to parenthood. But let’s be honest: if you haven’t slept or showered, spending time with your partner may seem a ridiculous goal.

Rather than giving up on time together, however, this data suggests that couples find the small moments and make them count.

·       Savor the minutes you do have. Find the small moments and make them count until you can gather more consecutive moments of quality time together. For example, in the minutes before you both pass out, have a snuggle.

·       Set realistic, small goals and be deliberate about meeting them. Make an effort once a week or once a month to go for a walk, watch a show together, or have a glass of tea.

·       Make it a habit. It is much easier to follow through on time together if it’s simply a part of your routine. Plus, weekly traditions can be especially connecting because they offer comfort in their predictability. Make an end-of-day or end-of-week ritual that you look forward to together with your partner.

4. Recognize That Sometimes, It’s Not Your Partner’s Fault (Even When it Feels Like It Is).

Sometimes our marital dissatisfaction has less to do with our partner than it does with our lack of sleep and general stress. In fact, having kids with more disrupted sleep patterns and/or more reactive temperaments is associated with steeper drops in relationship happiness. It probably isn’t a shock to realize that exhaustion and stress can lead us to feel more aggravated with our partner, even when our partner hasn’t doesn’t anything terribly, horribly wrong.

That doesn’t mean, however, that your partner couldn’t afford to be a wee bit more helpful. But there are more (and less) helpful approaches. Here’s one that tends to be more helpful for couples:

·       Notice your thoughts. Sometimes thoughts of blame come fast and furious, and all of a sudden, we are off to the races in telling a story that paints our partner as the big, bad villain.

·       Pause. No matter what your partner did (or didn’t do), it’s worth pausing to give yourself a moment to breathe. Calming your mind before taking action can help you to be more effective than allowing your emotions to run the show entirely.

·       Rather than complain or demand, make a request. The message of what’s bothering you will be received better if you can share it as a request rather than a demand or complaint. For instance, “I’m really frustrated, can we talk about how to do nights in a different way?” will be much easier for your partner to be responsive to than “You are never wake up with the baby! How can you be so selfish?!?”

Ultimately, I advise couples transitioning into parenthood to go easy on yourselves, and, whenever possible, go easy on your partners, too. And stay optimistic. The exhaustion of the early months and years of parenting can take a toll on relationships. But this period is also a part of life that is rich with possibilities for growing your partnership in deeper, more rewarding ways.

Plus, who else is going to find the baby gurgles as sweet or the fact that the baby pees every time you remove the diaper as funny?

If you love Cara’s newsletter as much as I do, and are interested in a newsletter that tackles relationships between partners in the same data-driven way, you can subscribe to my newsletter, Relational: The Art and Science of Connections here.

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Welcome to the Parenting Translator newsletter! I am Dr. Cara Goodwin, a licensed psychologist with a PhD in child psychology and mother to four children (currently a newborn, 3-year-old, 5-year-old, and 8-year-old). I specialize in taking all of the research that is out there related to parenting and child development and turning it into information that is accurate, relevant, and useful for parents! I recently turned these efforts into a non-profit organization since I believe that all parents deserve access to unbiased and free information. This means that I am only here to help YOU as a parent so please send along any feedback, topic suggestions, or questions that you have! You can also find me on Instagram @parentingtranslator, on TikTok @parentingtranslator, and my website (www.parentingtranslator.com).

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