Childlessness and Marital Adjustment

A number of researchers have found that individuals report a higher level of marital adjustment/satisfaction than do people with children. Unfortunately, the category childless in these studies included voluntarily and involuntarily individuals as well as people who were simply postponing childbearing. The purpose of this study was: (1) to examine the relationship between voluntary childlessness and marital adjustment and (2) to eliminate the possibility of certain alternative explanations that could account for any difference that might be observed. To accomplish this aim, each of 50 voluntarily wives was precision-matched with 50 mothers on three variables-education, religion, and participation in the labor force. All were between 25 and 40 years of age. Consensus, cohesion, satisfaction, and affection expression were four components of marital adjustment that served as the bases for comparing these women. The findings reveal that the women who were by choice scored higher in overall marital adjustment but that this difference was not uniform across all areas of adjustment. The component that possessed the greatest discriminatory power was cohesion.