A student once asked me, "Why would a couple want to have children when kids mess up a marriage so much?" He had just been exposed to the well-documented roller coaster of marital satisfaction reported in many textbooks on marriage and family life.1 This roller coaster-an irregular V-shaped line (usually called the "U-shaped curve")- plots a significant decrease in marital satisfaction beginning early in marriage. Husbands' and wives' satisfaction with marriage appears to continue sliding downhill to the time when teenage children are at home. At that point in time, parents' satisfaction with their marriage apparently reaches its lowest point. Later, when children leave home, the curve turns dramatically upward, showing increased satisfaction with marriage.
One of the most widely cited studies supporting the research described above was published in 1983 by Olson and his colleagues. The study included couples at various stages of family life, but all the information was gathered at the same point in time. (This is called cross-sectional research.) So a couple whose oldest child was 4 years old filled out the same questionnaire in the same month as did another couples whose youngest child just left home. The graph they created to illustrate their findings (Figure 1, to the right) has been reproduced in several textbooks.
This generally accepted finding has led family scholars to conclude that this "roller coaster" of marital satisfaction is reality for the majority of marriages.4 However, these conclusions are based on research not appropriate to the issue of marital satisfaction over the life span. Couples who have divorced are not part of the samples used in this research. Their absence causes the average scores to go "up" in the later stages of marriage for the remaining couples, because only the more satisfied, still-married couples are left to participate in the study. Thus, the U-shaped curve appears to take an upward turn.
It would be better to do longitudinal research, where the same couple would fill out a questionnaire every few years to measure how their attitudes and perceptions of family life change over time. Recent longitudinal research, which follows the same couples over a period of time, has raised some important questions about the U-shaped curve.
One of the most widely cited studies supporting the research described above was published in 1983 by Olson and his colleagues. The study included couples at various stages of family life, but all the information was gathered at the same point in time. (This is called cross-sectional research.) So a couple whose oldest child was 4 years old filled out the same questionnaire in the same month as did another couples whose youngest child just left home. The graph they created to illustrate their findings (Figure 1, to the right) has been reproduced in several textbooks.This generally accepted finding has led family scholars to conclude that this "roller coaster" of marital satisfaction is reality for the majority of marriages.4 However, these conclusions are based on research not appropriate to the issue of marital satisfaction over the life span. Couples who have divorced are not part of the samples used in this research. Their absence causes the average scores to go "up" in the later stages of marriage for the remaining couples, because only the more satisfied, still-married couples are left to participate in the study. Thus, the U-shaped curve appears to take an upward turn.
It would be better to do longitudinal research, where the same couple would fill out a questionnaire every few years to measure how their attitudes and perceptions of family life change over time. Recent longitudinal research, which follows the same couples over a period of time, has raised some important questions about the U-shaped curve.
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