Dealing With a “Tempermental Baby”? Strong Relationship Helps

We all know that new babies put tremendous pressure on relationships. I’ve admitted it, commentors on this site have admitted it, and even movie star romances aren’t safe.

If you’ve been blessed with someone called a “tempermental” or “spirited” baby, the challenges are even greater. With a baby who cries constantly, won’t go to bed and knows exactly how to express his or her own mind from the earliest age, you may find yourself with less patience, more stress and even less sleep than most new mothers.

Your success in dealing with these challenging infant behaviours, researchers say, is dependent on one thing: the strength of your marriage.

<>“When couples with a supportive marital relationship have a difficult baby, they tend to rise to the challenge,” Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan said in a press release. “Couples who don’t have a strong relationship with each other are more likely to undermine each other and get into conflicts when they have to deal with a particularly challenging baby.”

Couples who were determined to have poorer-quality relationships before the birth of their children were seen to criticize each other for how they relate to the baby and to compete for the baby’s attention. Those were two ways in which couples in weaker marriages undermined each other and their efforts to work with their babies issues, the researchers found.  Parents who were determined to be in better relationships before the birth tended to co-parent (cooperate, communicate) more constructively when faced with a tempermental baby.

Supporting each other with encouragement is especially important when babies go through difficult phases.

“It is not just what the mother is doing, or just what the father is doing, but how they handle parenting together,” Schoppe-Sullivan said. “Even if you have one parent who is very good with their children, if the other parent is undermining their partner, or not being supportive, the outcomes for their children may not be as good.”
In other words, criticism and competition in a marriage makes life more difficult for a baby whose trying to learn his or way through a difficult stage.

Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, assistant professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University, conducted and co-authored the study with Sarah Mangelsdorf and Geoffrey Brown of the University of Illinois, and Margaret Szewczyk Sokolowski of Minneapolis. The results of the study were published in a recent issue of the journal Infant Behavior & Development.