One of the main difficulties facing newly-married couples in Dublin is "time poverty", according to new research. This was typified by couples working long hours with relatively little time together. Other problems include who does what around the house; both partners being overloaded with work; financial worries, and disagreements about the place of in-laws in their lives.
The research by Dr Anne Ryan of NUI Maynooth was commissioned by the Catholic Church's Dublin marriage agency Accord. Her finding, titled "How was it for you? Learning from couples' experiences of the first years of marriage", investigated the day-to-day marital experiences of 77 couples in the greater Dublin area. The findings were presented at the launch of Accord's annual report in Dublin yesterday.
The research also found that couples who coped best with the demands of married life took steps to avoid "overload syndrome". They resisted allowing paid work to be the central issue of their lives, with both partners agreeing to take responsibility for earning money and doing housework, while appreciating the difficulties each type of work involved.
They also avoided rigid gender roles and were prepared to cut back on paid work by job-sharing, part-time work or other creative solutions, to undertake childcare and other unpaid caring work.
They avoided personal debt and did not stretch their finances too much for a mortgage, even if this meant renting. They also actively resisted consumerist pressure to judge themselves and others according to material possessions.
Last year 6,704 people availed of Dublin Accord's services. It provided 13,000 client contact hours in marriage counselling to over 4,000 people. The main difficulties encountered included communication problems between couples, followed by domestic violence, depression, separation issues and infidelity.