Surreal article from the Atlantic Online promotes the radical idea that parenthood and marital happiness can co-exist.
The article How to Keep Parenthood From Making Your Marriage Miserable engages material from:
a new report “When Baby Makes Three: How Parenthood Makes Life Meaningful and How Marriage Makes Parenthood Bearable” (PDF), just published in the latest issue of the State of Our Unions, we examined nationally-representative survey data, including a new, nationally-representative study of more than 1,400 married couples (18-46), to respond to these questions.
Moving towards its conclusion, the article claims to be surprised by the stunningly obvious:
But we also found something that surprised us. A substantial minority — about 35 percent — of husbands and wives do not experience parenthood as an obstacle to marital happiness. These couples seem to navigate the shoals of parenthood without succumbing to comparatively low levels of marital happiness. What is their secret? We identified ten aspects of contemporary social life and relationships — such as marital generosity, good sex, religious faith, thrift, shared housework, and more — that seem to boost women’s and men’s odds of successfully combining marriage and parenthood.
Our findings go beyond the tired, old debates about gender roles and marriage. In the 1960s and ’70s, in part as a consequence of the feminist movement and the therapeutic revolution, many wives understandably rejected what was then a heavily-gendered ethic of marital sacrifice and instead took a more individualistic approach to marriage, focused on meeting their own needs. But if the 1970s divorce revolution taught us anything, it was that heavy doses of individualism and a good marriage aren’t very compatible.
Our report suggests, in contrast, that in today’s marriages both wives and husbands benefit when they embrace an ethic of marital generosity that puts the welfare of their spouse first. That is, both are happier in their marriages when they make a regular effort to serve their spouse in small ways — from making them a cup of coffee, to giving them a back rub after a long day, to going out of their way to be affectionate or forgiving. So the lesson here is not for wives now to throw off an other-centered ethic as a relic of an ancient era, but rather for contemporary husbands to embrace this ethic for themselves and their families.
Read the whole article and experience its breathless bemusement that people who are prepared to take pleasure from putting the needs of others first can experience a happy and fulfilling life.
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