Husband Hypothesis

Cameraphone shot of my daughter at 5 days...wicked cry, stylish hair.

I've heard a few people say that the first year of the first baby is the hardest in a marriage. I would probably agree. I recently did a review on an article called Contribution of Infants' Sleep and Crying to Marital Relationship of First-Time Parent Couples in the 1st Year After Childbirth. They found two key things in the study. One, the worse the mother's insomnia, or insomnia-like sleep, the worse the marital satisfaction rating (which supports the theory: happy wife, happy life). They also found that the one thing that has a dramatic impact on marital satisfaction is the husband hypothesis, which states that the higher the self-efficacy and willingness to help in the child-care, the higher the marital satisfaction score...UH OH.

After reading the article a few times and writing my review, I felt both good and bad. Overall, I would say that I've done pretty well with fatherhood. I'm attentive, I have fun with my kids, and I think I carry my own weight, but there are mornings that sometimes arrive brutally early when I pretend to stay asleep a moment longer than I really am. I do it because I know what a great mom Denise is. She is so devoted to our kids.

So...I felt pretty challenged after reading the article and reflecting on the past few years. I need to step it up and let my wife get some sleep.

Meijer, A. M., & Wittenboer, L. H. (2007). Contribution of Infants' Sleep and Crying to Marital Relationship of First-Time Parent Couples in the 1st Year After Childbirth. Journal of Family Psychology, 21(1), 49-57.