I have never felt the joy that my daughter brings me when I wake up and see her . . . when you are laying there and . . . and feel this little hand tapping on your hand . . . that has been the most joyful thing I ever have experienced. . . . I’ve never been able to get that type of joy anywhere else.

(quoted in Palkovitz, 2002, p. 96)

Poll parents and you will hear similar comments: “The love and joy you have with children is impossible to describe.” The great benefit of the 1960s lifestyle revolution is that more people than ever can participate in this life-changing experience, from stepparents, to gay couples, to never-married adults.

At the same time, people have freedom not to be parents—and more adults are making that choice. One sign of the times is the decline in fertility rates, or the average number of births per woman, in many developed countries. And whatever happened to those huge Spanish, Italian, or Greek families? As Figure 11.4 shows, adults in these southernmost European nations have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world.

Why has fertility dropped well below the level to keep the population constant (2.1 births) in every European nation, as well as in Russia and Asia? (See Li and others, 2011.) A major cause, in Europe, lies in the stalled progress people are making toward adulthood. Remember from Chapter 10 that, in Italy, Spain, and Greece, most twenty-somethings don’t have the financial resources to get married and have children.

Are people who decide not to have children more materialistic and narcissistic than their peers? The answer is no! (See Gerson, Posner, & Morris, 1991.) Childless adults—especially if they have freely chosen this path—are just as happy as parents (Nelson, Kushlev, & Lyubomirsky, 2014). Moreover, the stereotype that having children makes a relationship stronger (or that having a child saves an unhappy relationship) is equally false. How does having a baby change people’s lives?

To see how becoming parents affects a marriage, researchers conduct longitudinal studies, selecting couples when the wife is pregnant, then tracking those families for a few years after the baby’s birth. Understanding that parenthood arrives via many routes, social scientists have explored how having a child affects the bond between gay partners (Goldberg, Smith, & Kashy, 2010) and cohabiting couples, too (Kamp Dush and others, 2014). Here are the conclusions of these studies exploring the transition to parenthood:

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This tendency to get less satisfied (and certainly less romantic) applies equally to heterosexual couples and gay couples who are adopting a child (Goldberg, Smith, & Kashy, 2014; Tornello & Patterson, 2012). Still, in one tantalizing U.S. study, heterosexual men in cohabiting relationships felt especially hemmed in and unhappy after a child’s arrived (Kamp Dush and others, 2014). We need to be cautious about interpreting these results, because recall that unmarried U.S. cohabiting couples are apt to be less economically secure. However, these findings clearly imply that—in the United States—a wedding ring can heighten our commitment to family life.

What compounds the sense of over-sacrificing are clashes centered on differing parenting styles (recall Chapter 7). One unhappy wife described this kind of disagreement when she informed her husband: “What’s really getting to me . . . is that we hardly ever agree on how to handle [the baby]. I think you are too rough, and you think I’m spoiling her, and none of us wants to change” (quoted in Cowan & Cowan, 1992, p. 112).

These examples show exactly why we can’t expect having a child to draw people closer together, whether the partners are gay or heterosexual, married or not. (Here the most relevant saying may be, “Three is a crowd.”) However, after becoming parents, one classic study revealed that about 1 in 3 spouses did report more love for a husband or wife (Belsky & Rovine, 1990).

To predict which relationships are prone to develop serious problems, survive, or flourish, we need to adopt a developmental systems approach—looking at everything from the family’s financial situation, to the baby’s temperament (recall Chapter 4), to whether the couple really wanted this child (Chapter 2).

The pre-baby attachment dance matters most (see Feeney and others, 2001). How did the couple cope with disagreements before the child arrived? In the words of pioneering researchers, “The transition to parenthood seems to act as an amplifier, tuning couples into their strengths and turning up the volume on existing difficulties in managing their . . . [love]” (Cowan & Cowan, 1992, p. 206).

Now that we’ve looked at its impact on the couple, let’s turn to parenthood from mothers’ and fathers’ points of view.

I’ve already talked about the love that mothers feel for their children, especially in the infancy section of this book. Drawing on the previous section, children are our prime vehicles for expressing compassion. They embody the joy we get from sacrificing for a beloved person’s well-being.

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Still, the downside of this 24/7 sacrifice—lack of sleep, financial strains, spending hours in less than fun (aka boring) activities, a messy house, dealing with tantrums, time taken away from being with our partner, and so on—can tip the balance from pleasure to pain. In surveys, mothers rank child care on an emotional par with housekeeping, and it’s far less enjoyable than shopping and watching TV. Studies routinely show mothers are no happier (and sometimes far less happy) on a daily basis than their counterparts without children or people in the empty nest (Nelson, Kushlev, & Lyubomirsky, 2014).

Table 11.3 offers a research-based checklist for parent readers, listing forces that make the motherhood experience “better or worse.” Now, let’s turn to a decades-old interview study, to get insights into that experience in the flesh.

The Inner Motherhood Experience

One downside of motherhood, women in this U.S. national poll reported, is that it destroys cherished fantasies people have about how they expected to behave (Genevie & Margolies, 1987). One in two mothers admitted that they had trouble controlling their temper. Disobedience, disrespect, and even typical behaviors such as a child’s whining might provoke reactions bordering on rage. When confronted with real-life children, these mothers found that their dream of being the ideal calm, empathetic, and always in control mother came tumbling down (Genevie & Margolies, 1987).

Given the bidirectional quality of the parent–child bond, it should come as no surprise that a main force that affected how closely a woman fit her motherhood ideal lay in her attachment with a given child. Children who were temperamentally difficult provoked more irritation and lowered a mother’s self-esteem. An easy child evoked loving feelings and made that mother feel competent in her role. As one woman wrote:

Lee Ann has been my godsend. My other two have given me so many problems and are rude and disrespectful. Not Lee Ann. . . . I disciplined her in the same way . . . except that she seemed to require less of it. Usually she just seemed to do the right thing. She is . . . my chance for supreme success after two devastating failures.

(quoted in Genevie & Margolies, 1987, pp. 220–221.)

These emotions destroy another motherhood ideal: Mothers love all their children equally. Many women in this study did admit they had favorites. Typically, a favorite child was “easy” and successful in the wider world. However, most important, again, was the attachment relationship, the feeling of being totally loved by a particular child. As one woman reported:

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There will always be a special closeness with Darrell. He likes to test my word. . . . There are times he makes me feel like pulling my hair out. . . . But when he comes to “talk” to mom that’s an important feeling to me.

(quoted in Genevie & Margolies, 1987, p. 248)

Not only does the experience of motherhood vary dramatically from child to child, it shifts from minute to minute and day to day:

Good days are getting hugs and kisses and hearing “I love you.” The bad days are hearing “you are not my friend.” Good days are not knowing the color of the refrigerator because of the paintings and drawings all over it. Bad days are seeing a new drawing on a just painted wall.

(quoted in Genevie & Margolies, 1987, p. 412)

In sum, motherhood is wonderful and terrible. It evokes the most uplifting emotions and offers painful insights into the self. Now that we understand the individual situations that make motherhood more challenging, let’s explore how the wider world can amplify mothers’ distress.

Expectations and Motherhood Stress

Society provides women with an airbrushed view of motherhood—from the movie stars who wax enthusiastic about the joys of having babies (“much better than that terrible old career”) to the family members who gush at bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived new mothers: “How wonderful you must feel!” By portraying motherhood as total bliss, are we doing women a disservice when they realize that their own experience does not live up to this glorified image? (See Douglas & Michaels, 2004.)

What compounds the problem are unrealistic performance pressures. Good children, as you saw in the above quotation, make a mother feel competent. “Difficult” children can make a woman feel like a failure. Despite all we know about the crucial role of genetics, peers, and the wider society in affecting development, mothers still bear the responsibility for the way their children turn out (Coontz, 1992; Crittenden, 2001; Douglas & Michaels, 2004; Garey & Arendell, 2001).

Single mothers face the most intense pressures as they struggle with financial hurdles, working full time, plus trying to fulfill the “blissful” mom ideal. But every woman is subject to the intense pressures of contemporary motherhood: be patient; cram in reading; provide enriching lessons; produce a perfect child. To what degree is the so-called epidemic of “helicopter” mothers a by-product of these intense demands, which compel women to go overboard in their hovering to prove that they are not slacking off in the motherhood role?

I’m sure you’ve heard that today’s moms are not giving children the same attention as in “the good old days.” Figure 11.5, below, proves this “obvious” assumption is wrong. Notice that twenty-first-century mothers spend more time with their children than their counterparts did a generation ago (Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006). In particular, notice the dramatic increase in hours spent teaching and playing. This cohort of young mothers—including those remarkable single moms—is spending almost twice as much time engaging in child cognition-stimulating activities as their own mothers spent with them!

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Where are fathers in his picture? Earlier, when I talked about equity issues during the transition to parenthood, I might have given the impression that contemporary dads are slacking off. Not so! Today’s fathers are often making valiant efforts to be involved parents, too.

When women first entered the workforce in large numbers in the 1970s, it became a badge of honor for fathers, in addition to fulfilling the traditional breadwinner role, to change the diapers and to be deeply involved in caring for their children. From Slovakia (Švab & Humer, 2013) to Sweden (Björk, 2013) and from Australia (Thompson, Lee, & Adams, 2013) to Japan and the United States (Ito & Izumi-Taylor, 2013), the nurturer father has become one masculine ideal. Furthermore, according to psychologists, we expect fathers to be good sex-role models, giving children a road map for how men should ideally behave. Sometimes, we want them to be ultimate authority figures, people responsible for laying down the family rules (as in the old saying: “Wait until your father gets home!”).

The lack of guidelines leaves fathers with contradictory demands. “Should I be strict, or nurturing, sensitive, or strong? Should I work full time to feed my family or reduce my hours at work and stay home to feed my child?” (Björk, 2013; McGill, 2014; Mooney and others, 2013). Given that there may be no “right” way to be a father, how do men carry out their role?

How Fathers Act

As you would expect from the principle that they should be good sex-role models, fathers, on average, spend more time with their sons than their daughters (Bronstein, 1988). They play with their children in classically “male,” rough-and-tumble ways (see Chapter 6). Fathers run, wrestle, and chase. They dangle infants upside down (Belsky & Volling, 1987). Although children adore this whirl-the-baby-around-by-the-feet play (in our house we called it “going to Six Flags”), it can give mothers palpitations as they wonder: “Help! Is my baby going to be hurt?”

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How much hands-on nurturing do today’s fathers perform? Diary studies show that, although in Western countries a genuine father-as-caregiver revolution occurred about 20 years ago, statistically speaking, contemporary child care remains mainly a female job (Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006). On average, Western women do roughly twice as much hands-on child care as do men (Craig & Mullan, 2010).

Furthermore, these studies don’t tell us which parent is taking bottom-line responsibility for the children—making that dentist appointment, arranging for a babysitter, planning the meals, and being on call when a child is sick. Having bottom-line responsibility may not translate into many hours spent physically with a daughter or son, but the weight and worry make this aspect of parenting a 24/7 job.

Based on the earlier discussion of society’s expectations, it seems likely that mothers typically continue to take bottom-line responsibility. When we look at where the parenting buck stops, the gender dimension of being a parent is fully revealed (Lamb, 1997).

In sum, although today’s fathers are doing far more hands-on child care than in the past, their involvement still is skewed toward play activities, particularly of the rough-and-tumble, “Six Flags” kind. Dads are often more involved with their sons than their daughters. Mothers remain the caregivers of final resort.

Variations in Fathers’ Involvement

If you look at the fathers you know, however, you will be struck by the variations in this profile. There are divorced men who never see their children, and traditional “I never touch a diaper” dads; there are househusbands who assume primary caregiving responsibilities, and men who take sole care of the kids. What statistical forces predict how involved a given father is likely to be?

In two-parent couples, a good deal depends on a man’s attitudes. In one U.S. study, researchers found men who cared deeply about being hands-on dads heroically blended 50-hour workweeks with devoting their leisure time to playing with their child (McGill, 2014). Still, physical hours at work make a difference, especially when a man has more traditional fatherhood ideas. Jobless fathers—even those living in male-dominated cultures such as Palestine—ramp up their time spent on child care (Strier, 2014).

Dads in gay relationships are apt to be full caregiving partners (Golombok and others, 2014), as are married heterosexual men who have good relationships with their mates (Perry & Langley, 2013)—giving us another reason why male/female cohabiting parents, at least in the United States, seem most at risk. Liberal family-leave policies, such as those in Sweden, that permit men and women more than a year off with pay after a child’s birth, can seduce dads into giving up the breadwinner role and opting for part-time work (Björk, 2013).

This last consideration brings up the greatest barrier that keeps fathers from being completely involved: the need to be the primary breadwinner. For all our talk about equal family roles, supporting a family is at the core of many men’s identities as adults. Men—like women—complain that working long hours interferes with family time (Bryan, 2013; more about this soon). Still, fathers around the world who cannot fulfill the provider role are apt to feel distressed (Bryan, 2013; Strier, 2014; Thompson, Lee, & Adams, 2013).

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How are things really changing with regard to work for women and men? First, let’s sum up these section messages in Table 11.4, then explore this question as we turn to the third vital adult role: work.

Question 11.7

Statistically speaking, you would expect this couple’s marital satisfaction to decline (same would be true if this couple were gay). If Jenna and Charlie were not married, Charlie might be especially dissatisfied after Jenna gave birth.

Question 11.8

1. Got a less rosy, more accurate picture about motherhood from the media

2. Had more experts giving them parenting advice

3. Had less pressure placed on them from the outside world to “be perfect”

a and c

Question 11.9

Tell grandma that’s not true! Parents are spending more time with their children than in the past. Moms do far more hands-on teaching—even when they have full-time jobs. And of course, fathers are also much more involved. Not only are dads spending more time playing, particularly, with their sons; but depending on their attitudes, they are even doing more routine care.

Question 11.10

My questions (but you can think of others!): (1) Do you think child care is basically a woman’s job, or should couples share this responsibility? (2) Are females basically superior at child-rearing than men? (3) How important is it to you to be the primary breadwinner? (4) How much does your wife earn compared to you? (5) Have you been laid off at work? (6) Do you live in a patriarchal society?