Everyone has heard of research (and many new parents can attest) showing that marital quality goes down after the birth of the first child. This has been especially true for women as they transition into their new roles and responsibilities as a “mother.” But while many women experience decreases in marital well-being, others actually show improvements, or at least remain stable. New research out of Canada shows that one factor might by the timing of the transition, specifically union length. Timing has typically referred to the age of the mother, but the reasons in which women conceive later are so diverse that the results are often inconsistent. This heterogeneity was the catalyst for University of Moncton researchers Genevieve Bouchard, Mylene Lachance-Grzela, and Amanda Goguen to look at union length of the couple as a moderator. They interviewed 143 French Canadian women in monogamous relationships (both marital and non-marital) giving birth for the first time. The women filled out the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) in the last trimester of the pregnancy, and again six months post partum. What they found was that union length moderated the relationship between the mother’s age and the quality of her relationship following childbirth. Those that were older AND had been in a relationship for at least nine years had relationships that fared much better over the transition to parenthood than those new mothers who were just older, younger or had shorter relationship lengths (or some combination of the three). Even after controlling for education level, income and intendedness of pregnancy, the combination of the increase in age (which the researchers surmised would give the mom increase maturity) with the longer relationship length was the only significant protective factor of the relationship quality across the transition.

This study suffered from several limitations, such as a potential self-selection effect (all the moms were recruited from a special new parent class), and a positively adjusted sample pre-childbirth. It is unclear whether the overall relationship length of those that were married included their relationship length before marriage. I’m wondering if those couples that have been together for years before getting married (and then have kids only a year or two afterwards) experience the same risks over the transition to parenthood. With that said, overall it seems that the longer relationship partners are able to grow and strengthen their relationship, the better they will fare as they transition into their new roles as parents.

Further Reading:

Bouchard, G., Lachance-Grzela, and Goguen, A. (2008). Timing of the transition to motherhood and union quality: The moderator role of union length. Personal Relationships, 15, 71-80.