Who today could disagree that couples should stay ‘trapped in an unhappy marriage’? The only problem with this narrative is that it’s a myth.
Undoubtedly couples feel trapped … but they don’t stay trapped.
Unhappiness is mercifully rare and almost never permanent. In my study covering the first fourteen years of parenthood, one in twenty mothers were unhappy with their relationship soon after becoming parents. Figures were similar for fathers. Undoubtedly some of these mothers felt ‘trapped’. But they did not stay trapped. One third split up. Among the two thirds who stayed together, not one mother reported that they remained permanently unhappy.
I used a sample of some 3,161 couples in the Millennium Cohort Study whose children were born between 2000 and 2002. Parents were asked how happy they were with their relationship when their child was aged 9 months, 3 years, 5 years, 7 years, 11 years and 14 years old.
I found 155 mothers* who said they were ‘unhappy in their relationship’ at the initial survey (rating 1-2 out of 7). Of these unhappy mothers, 100 mothers remained together in their relationship for the next 14 years. (*Numbers are weighted to represent the UK population as a whole)
No mothers at all in this sample reported being persistently unhappy over 11 years of parenthood. Only one mother was persistently unhappy in the first three surveys up to five years. Thankfully she reported that she was happy at 11 years. Between 4 and 13 of these initially unhappy mothers ever reported being unhappy again in any of the subsequent surveys.