Graphs are misleading

 When talking about marital satisfaction this kind of graph will often be shown. After having children it shows a dramatic decrease in the score. I don't know about you, but when I look at it it seems to show that marriage will have times when you hate it and then you will just come to love it. Really it is stabler than that. Also the crater in the graph is really only a speed bump when you look at it and see that 1.80 differences for wives and 1.75 difference from husbands because it numbers 0 to 54, not 1 to 6.  This was a cross sectional study (take a bunch of people at different stages in life and survey them then) which excluded divorced couples.  Which could be a confounding factor or later satisfaction. However longitudinal studies (survey the same couples over a long period of time) which shows that marriage satisfaction steadily increases over time. So having a child don't make your marriage a misery, but is an added stress you must learn to function with in marriage. DON'T BLAME THE KIDS!PS: information cited from Do Children Make a Marriage Unhappy?, by Richard B. Miller