Sharing Childcare Spices Up Sex Life: Study

A study on marital relationships has confirmed the new-age mantra for a successful marriage and sex life; fathers should share childcare responsibilities.

According to BBC News, a research team led by Georgia State University academic Dr. Daniel Carlson studied 487 couples only to find that those families where women performed more than 60 percent of the childcare fared worst on scores of relationship satisfaction, conflict and quality of sex life. Contrastingly, if men shared the responsibility, such couples reported having higher quality sex life.

"What we find is that there's generally little to no downside to men being largely responsible for child care. We conclude that being an engaged father is very important to men. If it weren't, we wouldn't see such a high level of satisfaction. It suggests that father engagement and sharing child care with one's partner is important to both sexes," Dr. Carlson said in a press release.

Like mothers who reported being dissatisfied with sex life if childcare was primarily a woman's job, men in the study too reported lower satisfaction levels when burdened with childcare.

Dr. Carlson also admitted that the study was limited as it defined childcare as playing or entertaining the child but did not include other chores like feeding and cleaning children. Nevertheless, researchers are keen to delve into what makes couples who reported being happy, happy.