Parenting satisfaction and marital satisfaction in mothers and fathers with young children.

This study examined parenting satisfaction (PS) and marital satisfaction (MS) in married couples over 4 years (ns ranged from 59 to 87). There was little evidence of interdomain spillover in that, for both husbands and wives, PS and MS were generally unrelated at each assessment and change in PS was unrelated to change in MS. With regard to interparent spillover, the link between spouses' MS tended to be stronger than the link between spouses' PS at each assessment, and the link between spouses' change in MS was stronger than the link between spouses' change in PS. A typology of satisfaction with family life is proposed as one way of integrating the study of marital relationships and parent-child relationships. One area of current interest in family psychology is the identification of the processes that regulate family life. From a structural perspective, the family life of most married persons consists of two subsystems. The parental subsystem is relevant to the parent-child relationship, whereas the marital subsystem is relevant to the husband-wife relationship. In their metaanalysis of the literature relevant to the link between these two subsystems, Erel and Burman (1995) found that the two subsystems were generally positively—albeit not very strongly— related to each other. They interpreted this positive relation as evidence for a spillover effect such that affect and behavior from one subsystem directly transfer to the other subsystem. One important clinical implication of this finding is that troubled marital relationships are likely to coexist with troubled parent-child relationships.