Heterosexual mothers' experience of mutuality and quality of marriage during the transition to parenthood

This study of heterosexual married women with at least one child age five or younger explored women's experience of mutuality and marital satisfaction after the birth of a child. One hundred and forty-one women completed demographic information, the Mutual Psychological Development Questionnaire (MPDQ), and the Quality of Dyadic Relationship (QDR36) online through Survey Monkey. The results of this survey demonstrated the important relationship between mutuality and marital satisfaction for women after the birth of a child. Women who are younger and have a shorter length of marriage had greater marital satisfaction after the birth of a child than women who are older and have been married for a longer period of time. An inverse relationship of dyadic consensus with mutuality was identified. This result lent strength to mutuality as a flexible concept that supports Relational Cultural Theory's (Jordan, 2010) main paradigm that relationships grow through connections built on independence, comprise, and conflict that resolved honestly and productively.