Relationship quality in couples with children

Delo se osredotoča na kakovost partnerske zveze pri parih z otroki in pri parih brez otrok. V teoretičnem delu je opisan partnerski odnos, značilnosti kakovostnega partnerskega odnosa in spremembe, ki nastopijo na področju partnerskega odnosa skozi obdobje zaljubljenosti, po obdobju zaljubljenosti in ob prihodu otroka v družino. V raziskovalnem delu so prikazani rezultati primerjave udeležencev z otroki in brez otrok. Področje je avtorica raziskovala kvantitativno z vprašalnikom medsebojne prilagojenosti (angl. Dyadic Adjustment Scale – DAS, Spanier 1976). V raziskavi je sodelovalo 572 udeležencev, od tega 525 žensk in 47 moških. Povprečna starost udeležencev je bila 31 let, ki so bili v partnerskih odnosih v povprečju osem let in pol. Brez otrok je 207 udeležencev, ostalih 365 udeležencev ima otroke. Pri primerjavi udeležencev z otroki in udeležencev brez otrok se razlika v kakovosti odnosa ni pokazala. Rezultati so pokazali, da kakovost odnosa pri parih z otroki nujno ne upade ali se zviša. Prav tako naj pari z otroki ne bi imeli pogostejših konfliktov in manj stika, kot partnerji brez otrok. Rezultati so pokazali, da imajo udeleženci, ki imajo otroka starega manj kot eno leto v povprečju celo bolj kakovosten odnos kot udeleženci, ki imajo starejše otroke. Na kakovost partnerskega odnosa lahko vplivajo tudi drugi dejavniki, kot npr. kakšen odnos sta partnerja vzpostavila še pred rojstvom otroka, kako dolgo traja njuna zveza, motiv na podlagi katerega sta se odločila za otroka in kako se spoprijemata s spremembami. Tako kot pri dosedanjih raziskavah, se tudi v tej nalogi niso pokazali enoznačni rezultati glede vpliva otrok na kakovost partnerskega odnosa.The master\u27s thesis is focusing on couples\u27 relationship quality in couples with children, compared to couples without children. The theoretical part describes the partnership relationship, the characteristics of a quality partnership relationship, and the changes, that occur in a partnershipin the period of falling in love, in the period after falling in love and after the arrival of the child in the family. The empirical part presents the results of the comparison of participants with children, and participants without children. The author is using quantitative research with the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS, Spanier 1976). The research involved 572 participants525 women (91.8%) and 47 men (8.2%). The average age of the participants is 31.13 years, the duration of the participants\u27 partnership is 8.54 years on average. There are 207 participants (36.2%) without children, while the other 365 participants (63.8%) have children. Due to demographic differences between participants, the criteria for the age restriction and the duration of the partnership were used for specific hypotheses, so the groups were more comparable with each other (in this case, there were 265 participants included). The results showed that the quality of the relationship for couples with children does not necessarily improve or decrease. Furthermore, couples with children also do not have any more conflicts or less cohesion than partners without children. The results showed that participants who have a child under the age of one, on average have a higher quality of partnership than participants who have older children. The couples\u27 relationship quality may also be affected by other reasons, such as: what kind of a relationship had the partners have before the birth of a child, how long are they in a relationship, the motive on which they decided to have a child and how they are coping with the changes. As in the previous studies, the results of this study also did not show any uniform results regarding the effect of children on couples\u27 relationship quality