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A new study presented at the American Sociological Association’s 110th annual meeting has revealed that couples who divide their child care duties equally have better sex and stronger relationships. They are also known as egalitarian couples.
If the man and the woman in the relationship divide parental tasks by at least 60 percent (60%) and 40 percent (40%), or better yet, 50 percent (50%) and 50 percent (50%), researchers from Georgia State University say that they enjoy the most high quality relationship of all couples, as well the best sex life of all couples.
Parental tasks include things such as reading bed time stories, taking the child for a walk in the park, changing diapers and arranging carpools, to name a few.
Dan Carlson, sociologist from Georgia State University and co-author on the study, offered a statement informing that “In nearly every case, compared to having the female partner doing all the child care, we found that couples who split it equally had better outcomes across the board”.
He went on to add that “Egalitarian couples fought less”, they had relationships of higher quality and were much happier with their overall sex lives as well as “the amount of sex they were having”, compared to traditional couple arrangements.
Carlson explained that egalitarian couples are couples where women and men share their responsibilities equally, whereas traditional couples are couples where women are mainly responsible for taking care of the children and for cleaning the house, and men are mainly responsible for the financial side of the home.
He stressed that both type of couples had more or less the same amount of sex in the study he and his colleagues conducted, however egalitarian couples enjoyed better sex, so they were a lot more satisfied with it.
The co-author also pointed out that the differences between egalitarian couples and traditional couples are not minor at all, but rather “gulfs of difference between egalitarian and traditional couples”. And they apply to everything from relationship conflict, to relationship satisfaction, to quality of sex.
Out of all the couple arrangements that the research team looked at, traditional couples proved to be the least satisfied with the quality of their relationships as well as the quality of their sex lives. These feelings were reflected by both men and women in traditional couples.
Carlson and his colleagues only looked at a few examples of reverse traditional couples – arrangements where men are mainly responsible for taking care of the children and for cleaning the house, and women are mainly responsible for the financial side of the home.
But even the men and women in these reverse traditional couple arrangements reported being more satisfied with the quality of their relationship as well as the quality of their sex life.
The new study is turning older studies on their heads as 20 years ago researchers found that egalitarian couples spent very little time together and had less sex, compared to traditional couple did. They were also less happy with the quality that their relationship had, and the quality that their sex life had, and were the most likely couple arrangement to get divorced.
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