The effects of children on marital satisfaction Parenthood is a significant event in the life of a couple, marked by many changes that can influence marriage. Depending on how couples handle this new adversity, it could mean the difference between stability and divorce for their family. This is why “For decades, there has been much discussion in the marital and family literature about whether having a child causes a substantial decline in the average couple's relationship” (Doss, Rhoades, Stanley, & Markman, 2009). Additionally, during the first 5 years of marriage is when couples go through parenthood which has been seen as the time when divorce is most important in a relationship. To prepare new parents for the challenges of parenting, it is important to explore the effects of children on marital satisfaction. The results of previous studies are often contradictory to each other. LeMasters' (1957) study demonstrated that the onset of parenthood will be a crisis event for families. However, other research by Russell suggests that the transition to parenthood can be both a positive and negative event (as cited in Keizer, Dykstra, & Poortman, 2010). The purpose of the study reported below was to see whether the transition to parenthood is truly associated with a decline in marital satisfaction. Unlike previous research, this one will include some added changes to improve the validity of the result. Changes include the addition of a controlled group (couples without children), so that changes that normally occur in a relationship over time will not be attributed to the transition to parenthood (Lawrence, A. Rothman, Cobb, M. Rothman and Bradbury, 2008). For the controlled group, only voluntarily childless couples were accepted. This is because couples without......middle of paper......od.This information is very beneficial for couples because they will now be better prepared to deal with this inevitable problem that happens to everyone. Some limitations of this experiment are that all subjects came from the same place. A better sample subject could be obtained by selecting samples from all countries in order to achieve better representation. The duration of this experiment was also 5 years. It is possible that marital satisfaction could improve in a longer experiment. While this experiment helps confirm some of the questions about the transition to parenthood, many other questions arise from the result. One such question is: If nonparents have more marital satisfaction than parents, why do they divorce more than parents? In the future it would be interesting to test the advantages of having children and compare them with the negative aspects.