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While “family” isn’t the topic of this series and “marriage” is; yet it would be an injustice to any description of the marital system to assume that the child plays no role in the making or breaking of the marriage.’ To have children is one of the explicit reasons for marrying; indeed, in some religious groups, sexual intercourse between spouses is supposed to occur only for the purpose of procreation. It is easily observed that some spouses are totally child-oriented: they live for their children. In return, the children keep the marriage alive by providing the parents a raison d’ etre for the marriage, and help fill the emotional and physical distance between the spouses, so that the expression of tension and friction between them is kept at a minimum. When the children leave home, these marriages typically are in serious difficulties-unless the parents are fortunate enough to have developed outside interests sufficient to maintain the protective distance between them.
Certain basic questions, propositions, and observations concerning the effects of children on marriage merit special discussion. Let us consider, first, whether childless marriages are less successful than marriages which beget offspring. This is a real yes-and-no proposition despite the public’s general belief that marriages which result in children are more successful. For example, spouses who marry relatively late in life tend not to have children and yet appear to have a higher average of functional marriages than couples marrying earlier. But it is the fact that they do not marry until later than their peers that has most to do with how the marriages turn out; the fact that they do not have children is accessory. Several studies also indicate that professional women who marry later than their peers and choose not to have children have a better marital record than their undergraduate college classmates. Successful professional women who marry later than their collegiate peers tend to hold satisfying, well-paying jobs, so they do not rush into marriage for financial reasons and feel they must have children, in part, to hold their husbands. In the lower classes, a father may desert his family when he staggers under the realization of how many mouths there are to feed. Here the presence of children is clearly a liability.
Thus, one cannot generalize with certitude about the proposition that children help or hinder a marriage. Instead, the question becomes meaningful only when specific types of marital interaction within varying ethnic and socio-economic groups are studied. It is obvious, for example, that conventional, middle-class Midwesterners in agricultural areas are quite likely to marry, to stay married once they have said “I do,” and to have children-because their values teach them to do so. Again, one cannot say that they have more successful marriages than other groups because they usually have children; having children is just part of their larger cultural context and value system.
Another observation often made is that it is desirable for married couples to wait a year or two before starting a family. This statement, for a number of reasons, deserves a nearly unequivocal yes. Now that we have “the pill,” family planning should be as frankly discussed as the budget, and it should be as forthrightly carried out as the inevitable purchase of a television set.
Young people who marry because the girl is pregnant are very often doomed to find themselves parties to a divorce or an annulment. Marriages in which the wife becomes pregnant on the honeymoon seem to be much less risky than those beginning with a shotgun wedding. However, though there is no convincing set of statistics to indicate that these couples divorce more frequently than couples who postpone pregnancy, marriage experts agree that early pregnancy destroys (or at least maims) the important “getting-to-know-you” period of the first year or so of marriage.
Often serious problems result from the purely fiscal or physical aspects of early pregnancy. For example, the husband may have to quit school and get a job because there is an unexpected mouth to feed. Correspondingly, if pregnancy forces the wife to leave a job from which she derives a great deal of satisfaction, she may have a good many negative feelings about her new role as a mother. Pregnancy may throw the couple’s beginning sexual adjustment out of whack because the girl is resentful of what he “did” to her, and the young husband may feel trapped because of what she “allowed to happen.”
But what about couples that have been married for a number of years? Can a correlation be found between their chances for marital success and the number of offspring?
In Puerto Rico, India, and other countries where devices preventing pregnancy have been in use for five or more years, statistics are becoming available. These indicate that most couples do not wish large families, and that there are a higher percentage of happy, productive marriages among couples who have no children. Recent research suggests that the same situation exists in the United States, and that the parents of five or more children who so proudly point to their huge brood may be putting on an act.
In countries where the new contraceptives (pills and intrauterine contraceptive devices) are utilized, evidence is accumulating that not even those who traditionally have large families such as Catholics, Negroes, and the poor-necessarily want a great many children. In the United States the difference in family size between poor .people and the well-to-do used to be sizable. Now it is diminishing rapidly.
Our picture of the large, happy family (the poor and shoeless) was based on myth. Instead, it appears that desertion rate among fathers diminishes when family size is controlled-when the very size of the family doesn’t panic the father into leaving.
These facts do not mean that the presence of children reduces the chance for success of any particular marriage. However, it is clear that the begetting of children is not a magic which will improve an already shaky marriage; instead, it will help to destroy it even further.
One aspect of the myth that children will automatically improve a marriage stems from the parent’s unconscious (sometimes even conscious) belief that he can experience through his child the things he was denied or failed at as a child. Or, perhaps, from the belief that he can develop in the youngster those desirable qualities lacking in the other spouse. For example, a man who is secretly ashamed of his wife’s dowdiness may work extra hard to earn money to buy attractive outfits for his infant daughter. His wife may share his enthusiasm for their “cute little girl” and take pride in the neighbor’s comments about the daughter’s outfits, but she also understands (often unconsciously) her husband’s opinion that she is dowdy-even though he may not tell her so directly.
Childless couples can sometimes reconcile their marital differences and disappointments by ignoring the discords, pretending they do not exist. They can seek compensating gratifications elsewhere, perhaps in their work-it is simple for both of them to have jobs. However, when there is a child, this shift of emphasis is impossible, and the child becomes living evidence of the dissatisfaction in the marital relationship.
Children by their presence may aggravate an already unhappy marriage by virtue of the role which they play in the relationship between spouses that may be labeled the battle of the sexes. The power struggle between the sexes often focuses upon the question of who-husband or wife-does the more important work. Should the husband have certain prerogatives because he earns the money? Should the wife, who stays at home doing routine work and does not meet new people daily as her husband does, have some compensating rewards? Should she be taken out often, or have several nights off to attend motion pictures, or to play bridge with the girls? By finding some chore which the father may logically be expected to do for the child, the wife may be indicating to the husband that he is neglecting an important part of his function and that even if he earns the money and is important in his office, he is no better than she is. Conversely, the man who wishes to put his wife one down can always find some instance of child neglect, particularly if the child becomes noisy or ill.
It is obvious that sacrificing or compromising one’s personal desires in order to meet the needs and wishes of another can create a sense of deprivation and become abrasive in any relationship. Children require a great deal of care and attention which often conflicts with their parents’ own needs and desires. Yet in our culture fathers and mothers cannot often admit their sense of personal deprivation. Therefore, since they cannot feel guilty about having children, they end up blaming each other.
If when a child is conceived the parents hope the infant will mend a fractured marriage, the disappointment may be excruciatingly painful. The child’s presence in a discordant union, therefore, may instigate new troubles and the marital relationship may deteriorate even more.
For example, a young woman feels that her amorously adventurous husband will be “steadied” by becoming a father. Within a year she gives birth to a baby girl. The husband is pleased and proud of the little girl. He pours the majority of his affection on her, thus rejecting the wife in a blatant manner. The mother begins disliking the child almost to the point of hate.
At first the wife thinks it cute when the little girl (at eighteen months of age) refuses to obey her and waits for Daddy to come home and arbitrate matters between her and her mother. It is not so funny when the little girl becomes an accomplished enough actress to stage tearful scenes. If her mother appears adamant, the daughter, now four years old, dramatically tells other adults how bad Mommy is and declares that she and Daddy are going to live somewhere else. The father is usually flattered by this behavior and rarely interferes. Occasionally he becomes embarrassed and even frightened by the situation, and in a rage, punishes the child. The mother then attempts to protect her daughter and again the parents are caught up in mutually destructive behavior.
In another situation, common in white upper-middle-class marriages, the wife uses the children to undermine the husband’s authority and power. She manages this by unwittingly encouraging or assisting the children to break the rules established by the father when he is trying hard to be “in charge.”
For example, as the father backs out of the garage on his way to work, he notices the children’s toys in the driveway. He gets out, throws bicycles, skates, toys, and baseball bats out of the way, then dashes to the kitchen and shouts, “Coddamn it, Martha, you tell the kids to put their stuff in the playshed and the next time anyone leaves anything out he’ll spend the day in his room.”
That night he is late for dinner. When he drives into the garage, he hears the crunch of wheels rolling over a skate board and a bicycle. He storms into the house. His family has begun eating. Martha is looking fresh, clean, and relaxed.
He screams, “Martha, who in the goddamn hell left the toys in the garage? This morning …”
Martha replies, “Oh dear, that’s probably my fault. I chased the twins in to get their baths and didn’t think about the bicycle and toys. Dear, is that such a terrible crime?” The husband turns on his heel and leaves, loudly slamming the back door. Another devastating battle has begun with the usual first act, “The Defeat of Dad.”
All these examples illustrate Haws in the basic myth that when two people are about to be married and there are potential problems (caused, for example, by little money, different racial backgrounds, or different cultural levels), these major problems will be solved by the couple’s sheer joy in having a child. True, they may find pleasure in the youngster, but the presence of the child probably will not eliminate existing difficulties. The adults must find solutions on their own. And unfortunately, the child may well aggravate the problems.
The truth of this observation becomes apparent when one considers that the family is a system and that every person in a system is equally important in maintaining it. Just when Martha has forgiven John for one of his occasional temperamental outbursts, John junior puts on an act which Martha associates with his father, and she is angry at her husband all over again. When John senior comes home that night seeking solace, his wife attacks him for being temperamental; he feels, “But I haven’t done anything,” and has a temper tantrum. John junior, watching this outburst, has his own temperamental behavior reinforced. The three individuals are caught up in a system which will repeat itself, and Martha’s blaming John’s heredity for his being temperamental-or John’s blaming Martha’s physiology for producing “bad times” each month-will only obscure the nature of the system in which they are caught.
