Any new parents will tell you that having a baby can put a great strain on the relationship between a mother and father.
Now, a study has revealed how, for first-time dads, it takes a staggering two years to recover a happy relationship.
Thankfully, there’s good news for blokes hoping to have a larger family.
Second-time dads see satisfaction with their relationship improve after just two months, researchers found.
The study, which involved surveys of more than 600 fathers in Germany, is part of an increasing number of studies that look at parenthood from the man’s point of view.
A new study has revealed how, for first-time dads, it takes two years to recover a happy relationship (stock image)
It was led by Judith T. Mack and Lena Brunke, researchers at the Technische Universität Dresden in Germany, who describe having a satisfying relationship ‘as one of the most important individual life goals’.
‘Similar to first-time mothers, first-time fathers seem to experience a stronger relationship satisfaction decline during the transition to parenthood than second-time fathers,’ they say in their paper, published in PLOS One.
‘Especially couples becoming parents for the first time should be prepared for expected changes in their relationship.’
The authors had noticed that research on the link between the transition to parenthood and relationship satisfaction has mainly focused on mothers with their firstborn.
They therefore wanted to investigate fathers – with a particular focus on differences between first- and second-time fathers.
For the study, they analysed survey data from 606 fathers, nearly all of whom were German nationals.
In all, there were 500 first-time fathers making up the sample and another 106 second-time fathers.
Data was collected between 2017 and 2020 as part of the ongoing Dresden Study of Parenting, Work, and Mental Health (DREAM) project.
The survey asked about relationship satisfaction two months before the birth of the child, as well as two months after birth, 14 months after birth and two years after birth.
Altogether, it was revealed that the birth of a child – regardless of whether it is the first or second – is linked with a decline in relationship satisfaction among fathers.
But there were key differences in how long it took first-time and second-time fathers’ relationship satisfaction to climb back up towards a ‘baseline’ level (where it was at the start of the surveys before the birth).
One crucial difference was that for first-time fathers, relationship satisfaction continued to decline after the two-month mark.
Before and after birth, relationship satisfaction (RS) decreased for both first-time and second-time fathers. First-time fathers showed a higher level of RS before birth. A crucial difference was that for first-time fathers, RS continued to decline after the two-month mark, whereas for second-time fathers it improved – and kept improving right up to the end of the study period (24 months)
Meanwhile, for second-time fathers, relationship satisfaction improved after two months – and kept improving right up to the end of the study period (24 months).
For first time fathers, after 14 months, relationship satisfaction stopped declining, but it didn’t rise either; it simply plateaued until the 24-month mark.
It’s possible first-time fathers show a steeper decline in relationship satisfaction after birth due to the shock of experiencing parenthood for the first time.
The team also found first-time fathers generally had a higher level of relationship satisfaction before birth, compared with second-time fathers.
This may be due to the relationships of second-time fathers still being in recovery mode after the tribulations of having the first child.
But after the birth of a second child, relationship satisfaction recovers quickly, which could be linked to a greater confidence in raising a newborn second-time round.
In the surveys, the researchers had accounted for factors such as age, education, income, relationship duration, marital status, child’s biological sex and the child’s temperament.
By 14 months after the birth, second-time fathers tended to see satisfaction in their relationship go back to normal
But they found no significant association between reported relationship satisfaction and these other variables, apart from relationship duration.
Interestingly, couples in longer relationships tended to report lower relationship satisfaction initially.
For fathers who are still struggling in the many months after the birth of their first child but still want to have a second, the results will be welcome news.
Meanwhile, blokes who are becoming a father for the first time ‘should be prepared for expected changes in their relationship’, according to the authors.
‘The transition to parenthood can negatively affect the relationship satisfaction of fathers, more so for first than for second-time fathers, however, this can recover over time,’ they say.
‘Preparation and anticipation may be key.’
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk
