Reuters Health reported on March 30 that parents of twins may be “slightly more likely to get divorced than parents without twins, according to a new study.”
As a parent of twins myself, I can see how that could be. My wife and I have five children, the youngest twin girls. While we are lucky to have a strong marriage, the stress that we endured when the girls were small was pronounced. It certainly took some effort to continue to focus on our relationship. It could have been very easy to focus all of our energy on the twins at the expense of our marriage.
The financial pressures of twin births is real too. I can vouch that double diaper and baby wipe purchases are a real hit to the monthly budget. However, I can also testify as do many other parents of multiples that I know, that having twins is incredibly enriching and adds to a person’s capacity to love.
Finally, I note that the study discussed in the Reuters article only uncovered a 1% greater likelihood in divorce rates between parents with singletons as the first child as opposed to twins as the first birth in the family. Honestly, that seems rather insignificant and could simply be a rounding error. However, as I am no statistician, I will defer to the scientists who noticed the trend.
The moral of the story seems to be that parents of twins simply need to be more aware of the risk. Having twins is certainly not a sentence for inevitable divorce, but it is a risk factor that makes one take note and take preventative measures. I would be very interested in any studies relating to co-parenting in families with twins.
Do you know anyone who had twins and got divorced? Comment and let me know!
Here is a link to the article from Reuters: Divorce News.