Newly married couples planning kids or expectant parents, please take note! A new study has revealed that you must address any and all relationship anxieties and insecurities before your first born arrives. The reason? Well, the crux of the study revealed that a new child can spark feelings of jealousy in a person who already fears being abandoned by his or her partner.
Indians and their “baccha karlo” advice to dysfunctional couples is invalid now
The study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, found that partners who showed signs of relationship anxiety before the birth of their first child were more likely to be jealous of the child after it was born.
“You might think, who could be jealous of a baby? But if you already have fears of rejection, it may be scary to see how much attention your partner showers on your new child,” said the lead researcher Anna Olsavsky, a doctoral student in human sciences at Ohio State University.
It is a common advice amongst Indians for a couple experiencing a rough patch in their marriage or considering separation, “Baccha karlo, sab theek ho jayega (have a kid, everything will fall into place).” If you didn’t already know that this is pretty bad advice and always ends in misery for both the couple and the child in the long run, this study backs our claim.
Not only is it difficult for a child brought up in a tense situation, but this jealousy can make an already difficult period for couples’ relationships even more stressful.
Parenting proves to be a roadblock in improving a relationship
The study found that when either partner was jealous of the baby, couples experienced a decline in their satisfaction with their relationship after becoming parents.
Co-author Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, a professor of psychology at Ohio State, said, “This jealousy can erode a couple’s relationship. There has been a lot of research that shows couples’ satisfaction with their relationship goes down after the birth of a baby, and this could be part of the reason for some people.”
All about the research and the material behind it
The researchers used data from the New Parents Project, a long-term study co-led by Schoppe-Sullivan that is investigating how dual-earner couples adjust to becoming parents for the first time. In all, 182 couples, most of whom were married, participated in this study.
Taking it from the top, parents were made to answer a questionnaire during the third trimester of pregnancy. A part of the study included an examination of ‘attachment anxiety.’
They were asked how much they agreed with statements like “I’m afraid that I will lose my partner’s love” and “I worry about being abandoned.”
Then came the second half of the study where the new parents completed a “measure of jealousy of the partner-infant relationship” after three months since the birth of the child.
They reported how much they agreed with statements like “I resent it when my spouse/partner is more affectionate with our baby than s/he is with me.”
The expected results are here to teach and not shock
As predicted by the researchers themselves, they found that people with relationship anxiety before the child’s birth were more jealous of the child three months after arrival.
But it wasn’t just the anxious partner who felt jealous of the baby, even their spouses felt higher levels of jealousy than before. “There may be two things happening to the spouses of people with relationship anxiety. It is not just that you aren’t receiving all the attention that you used to receive, but also that the child is receiving that extra devotion that once was given to you,” Schoppe-Sullivan said.
The researchers went into the study believing that anxious fathers may be most vulnerable to feeling jealousy of the new child because dads tend to spend less time with infants than moms do, Olsavsky said.
But things did not turn out as the head researcher had assumed them to be! Anxious moms and dads were equally likely to be jealous of the time their partners spent with the new baby, seeing this as a reflection on their own decreasing value in the relationship.
Here’s the major takeaway from this research and how you can change things in your own relationship
The results point towards several solutions, seeing the pattern of behaviour of insecure partners. One of the suggestions being, expectant parents should be aware of their relationship style before their first baby is born. “There are a lot of programs for expectant parents, and attachment anxiety might be a good thing to assess beforehand,” Olsavsky said.
Trying to turn the discourse towards a more optimistic end, Olsavsky added, “If you make people aware of their relationship patterns, it may help them deal with the feelings more constructively.” So here’s to staying woke and independent even in loving relationships, ladies and gentlemen.
Here are more articles to read on parents, parenting and parent-child relationship:
My Strict Parents Dictated My Childhood Friendships And It Affected My Adulthood
The Myth Of The “Perfect Mother” Is Being Busted By Modern, Independent Women
