Mothers Compensate for Poor Spousal Relationship by Talking Excessively to Their Son

Unhappy Moms Consider Baby Boys to be Mini Versions of their Husbands

Dad’s Interaction with the Infant is Never Dependent on his Relationship with his Wife

The quality of relationship with your spouse has a great effect on your emotional stability. Men and women enter into a marital agreement promising to stand by each other in times of happiness, sadness, health and sickness. Once the ceremonies are over and they start living, marital bliss seems to fade away slowly, expectations from each other rise, the feeling of contentment minimizes and frustrations starts to set. Some way or the other, its mostly women who are unhappy with their partner. Men too feel deceived in quite many aspects but don’t vent it out on their wife but quietly succumb to smoking or drinking. Marriage can lengthen lifespan but it does depend on how successful it is. A failed marriage might only increase stress levels. Read more about marriage and its effect on health by visiting www.firsteatright.com.

Women long for attention and love being pampered. Men can never understand a woman’s wishes howsoever they try to please the lady of the house. Otherwise too, men are completely involved with their office work, board meetings and friends that many of them don’t pay any attention to the so-called love of their life. Working or unemployed, every woman wishes to spend quality time with her husband, maybe go for a dinner, communicate with each other, share their day’s experiences and fall asleep with contentment. Many women are not blessed enough for such pleasures in life which makes them unhappy. During such situations women too look out for other ways to keep themselves engaged which would help them stop thinking about their ruined marriage. Working women focus more on their career, some start becoming shopaholics, some others try spending as much time as possible with their friends and for those women with kids, their child becomes the most important person in their life. It is not a rarity to see married women speak incessantly with their child treating him/her as a grown up.

It is a well-known fact that the quality of a couple’s relationship has a strong impact on the child’s development with respect to behaviour, education and character. Also, the arrival of a child can strain a couple’s relationship as they have lesser time to spend with each other, lesser dinner dates and heart-to-heart conversations as both parents are busy spending time with their little bundle of joy. What remains a mystery is the impact of a couple’s relationship on parent-infant talk.

How a Couple’s Relationship Affects Parent-Infant Talks
Researchers from the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge studied 93 parents and their interaction with their infants. Each of the parents were asked to rate their quality of relationship with their better half and each of the infants were fitted with a ‘talk pedometer’ that recorded all the parent-infant talks that happened over the course of day when both parents were at home. They used a software to analyse the number of words spoken by each parent to the child. Results showed that higher dissatisfied mothers spoke more to their infant. When the mom states the quality of relationship as ‘low’ she used 35% more words than those mothers who stated their relationship to be ‘average’ (they initiated 20% more conversations). But such changes or increased conversation was present only when the infant was a male child. What we don’t know here is the content of the conversation-whether the mom was complaining about her spouse or was carrying on with regular talks that could cheer up the baby.

The surprise element in the study is the fact that moms considered their infant sons to be smaller versions of their spouse which led to more conversation with them while they considered infant girls to be smaller versions of themselves. Dads spent lesser time interacting with kids compared to moms irrespective of the child’s gender or quality of their relationship with spouse despite the fact that fathers these days are becoming increasingly interested in parenting. While dads might spend more time hanging around the child decreased interaction could be because of the basic fact that its women who mostly handle the child’s basic care needs such as changing the nappy, feeding or putting the child to sleep.

Speaking with children is mandatory-it forms the basis for their language development skills. Rather than occupying them with a smartphone gadget spend more quality time talking with your kids sharing your childhood experiences. Use mealtimes and bedtimes to talk to them, laugh together and make them feel happy and comfortable in your presence. 

---