unhappy marriage

Brett Burgess
9/24/2014
11:00-11:50
Journal #2

Most of today’s marriages are unhappy. There may be several reasons to an unhappy marriage, but the most common seems to be children. Yes, we children may be causing our parents to have an unhappy marriage. It is not really our fault though, for it is their own for having us. In today’s society, parents are basing their marriage more and more around their children. They are putting their children before their marriage. There was a study conducted on 130 newlywed couples. The researchers were John and Julie Gottman. Two-thirds of the new parents self-reported that they were “very unhappy after the birth of their first child.” They taped couples interacting in a lab. Couples with children treated each other worse than couples with no children but still married for the same amount of time. “More than a hundred studies show that marital satisfaction falls off a cliff after the birth of the first child and doesn’t get much better until the last child leaves for college.” – From article. Back in the 50’s, people married for love. Divorce was rare. Men and women had separate roles. Children had more freedom to go out and play. Marriage seemed to be good back then and both the wife husband was ultimately happy. In the 70’s, marriage underwent a second transformation. Our marriage expectations were raised while the resources we put in our relationships were diminished. By then, Americans had discovered the female orgasm. It had produced better sex lives for both the men and women, but made post baby adjustment a more shocking disappointment. Some couples are still happy after their children are born. The Gottmans found that these couples are not as child-centered as the unhappy couples were. Couples who do things alone together are found to be happier. Today’s parents spend less time with each other and more time catering to their children. “We expect more from our marriages but feed them less.” Back when, parents would go out on their own and do things together. Today, children basically rule their parent’s life. They find it hard to go out and do something alone, both parents and their children. The last few paragraphs are basically opinion-based from the writer. Although, John Gartner does state a nice quote from Julie Gottman – “The love between the couples is the real cradle that holds the baby.” This shows that if the parents have a happy marriage, then their children will most likely be happy as well. She conducted tests to prove this theory. She also was able to prove that a depressive marriage was bad for both parents and their children. I personally really enjoyed this article. I can relate to this article in some ways. I also disagree with the article. I feel as if it were biased towards getting people to not spend as much time with their children. History does tell, though, that kids have been happy with their parents having a happy marriage. My dad always says how back then he was taught to keep to himself, not interrupt his parents while they were speaking, and not get in their business. But my mom grew up in a sport playing family. She was always very close with her parents and brothers. They always knew each other’s business. So I can relate to both sides of this article. It seemed as if my dad’s parents had the unhappy marriage, but my mom’s parents had a happy marriage. My dad’s parents divorced, even though they spent more time with each other, but my mom’s parents stayed together even though they were involved with their kids more than their own marriage.