Couples who raise their children together are happier
Raising children It is a task as complicated as rewarding, although it has many hard moments. Now, who is responsible for the upbringing? According to a study developed in the United States,couples who take care of children together and share responsibility equally are happier than those in which one of them is in charge of children.
This is the result of a survey of 500 couples from all over the United States. All of them were married or lived together and the goal was to know the way they divided the responsibility of caring for children, how to play and enforce the rules, as well as see their level of satisfaction about their relationship and joint life.
Through this work, the researchers found that The vast majority of respondents (73 percent of women and 80 percent of men) He assured that they divided equally the care of their children with their partners. Among the rest of the women, 24 percent responded to the survey saying that they did most of the work. As for men, only 10 percent said they assumed most of the responsibilities, while another 10 percent said their partner was the one who did it.
Division of tasks in the couple
In this regard, the assistant professor of sociology at Georgia State University (United States) and lead author of the study, Danial L. Carlson, explains that they found it "definitely interesting" thatMany couples assured that they divided the tasks of taking care of children "as equals".
Through this work, researchers discovered that couples who claimed that foster responsibilities were divided also showed the highest levels of satisfaction about their relationship and intimacy and that they fought less. "Being satisfied is a strong indicator of the stability of the relationship, so these things are a good omen for couples to stay together," argued Carlson.
As regards the cases of couples in which it was the woman who carried out most or all of the child-rearing work, they had lower satisfaction and the highest level of conflict in the relationship. On the other hand, the few couples in which the man was in charge of these tasks showed an intermediate level of satisfaction.
Different tasks of parents
Despite the interestingness of these results, the author of the research mentions a small "lagoon" in the study or explanation to such a high percentage of parents who cooperate in the tasks of raising children: the surveys asked for tasks (play, praise, create and enforce the rules) that are "typical" in parents, so it is not clear if the men also perform other tasks related to the upbringing of children such as cooking or cleaning up what they dirty, he said.
Despite this, the research suggests that women and men could be dividing tasks more evenly Well, while women are the ones who spend more time with children, men increasingly contribute more hours per day: 7.2 hours on average in the United States versus 2.5 hours in the 60s.
Upward trend: more time for children
This trend observed in the North American country is present, but it is not known if it will continue to the point that women and men invest the same amount of time in the care of children, according to the CNN, the research professor of family and children studies at Syracuse University Margaret L. Usdansky. In fact, this expert tells that there is evidence that this process has stopped, something that could be explained by factors such as wage inequality between men and women.
This study corroborates other previous studies that say that couples who are more egalitarian in their child care responsibilities tend to have better relationships. "Not everyone wants to share, but most couples need two tickets of moneyIt is not a choice, and when two people work, then I think that in most cases couples will be happier when they share more different types of work, "she argues.
Finally, another interesting topic of this work is that lCouples who shared the care of their children equally did not necessarily spend more time together. "It is plausible that you can have a positive impact on satisfaction [in the relationship] without having to change the amount of time couples spend together," says Usdansky about it, although she has not participated in the study.
Angela R. Bonachera
