Sex Is Better For Couples With More Egalitarian Relationships

Previous studies have shown that even in modern day society, some men in heterosexual partnerships aren't always the best about equally sharing some of the household duties.

Yet new findings presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association reveal that men who take up more of the child-care duties via splitting them equally with their female partners could have more overall relationship and sexual satisfaction in their lives. Researchers specifically examined five different kinds of tasks across three dimensions of child care.

"The important point to be made is that when we're looking at child care, the difference that we find is really between arrangements where the mother is largely responsible for child care and everything else," study author Daniel L. Carlson, said in a news release.

In the study, researchers used data from more than 900 heterosexual couples' responses from the 2006 Marital Relationship Study (MARS).

Researchers noted that when women were responsible for most or all of the child care, both parties reported both the lowest quality relationships and sex in their lives.

The study authors actually found that besides just splitting child care responsibilities, fathers in heterosexual relationships could actually take on the majority of child-care responsibility without negative effects on the quality of the couples' relationships. In fact, these couples had just as much sex as couples with egalitarian arrangements, and were just as satisfied with the amount of sex they were having.

However, the drawback is that men in these circumstances reported the lowest overall satisfaction with their sex lives-while women reported the highest.

Though research was limited in some aspects, including the fact that only heterosexual couples and not same-sex couples were studied and that the measures of child care were fairly limited.

"We only had one physical task, and that task revolved primarily around playing with the child, including sports and games, but nothing about who feeds or bathes the child," he said. "The latter physical, instrumental tasks have traditionally been the responsibility of women."

With future studies, researchers hope to determine more specifically why couples with more egalitarian child-care arrangements report better relationship quality and sex lives.

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