Child Density, Marital Satisfaction, and Conventionalization: A Research Note

For most of the history of family research marital and parental variables have been viewed as having effects on the personality and social development of children. The introduction of the opposite perspective, namely, that children influence parents, and particularly the marital relationship, is a relatively new development. In this latter stream of research there have recently appeared at least two articles which relate the concept of child density to measures of marital satisfaction or adjustment. We wish to examine the rationale for using this concept and consider alternative ways of measuring it.