Two Kinds of Love: Why Comparing Them Is a False Contest

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Picture this: it's 11 p.m., your toddler finally fell asleep after the third rendition of Twinkle Twinkle, and your partner is sitting on the sofa quietly scrolling their phone. You sink into the cushions, exhausted — and the thought flickers through your mind: When did we last actually talk? You're not alone. According to research published by the Gottman Institute, approximately 67% of couples report a significant drop in relationship satisfaction within the first three years of having a baby. That's not a failure of love — it's a structural squeeze that almost every family faces.

This article won't ask you to rank your loves like a podium finish. Instead, it will help you understand:

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1. Two Kinds of Love: Why Comparing Them Is a False Contest

The love you feel for your child and the love you feel for your partner are not the same emotion wearing different clothes — they are neurologically distinct experiences, and science backs this up.

Research using functional MRI scans, including work published in the journal NeuroImage (Leibenluft et al., 2004), found that viewing images of one's own child activates brain regions associated with reward, attachment, and threat-detection simultaneously — a combination that mirrors what researchers describe as a near-compulsive protective drive. Romantic love activates overlapping but meaningfully different circuits, with greater emphasis on dopamine-driven reward and social bonding.

In plain terms: the love for your child is wired to feel urgent and non-negotiable because, evolutionarily, it kept infants alive. The love for your partner is wired to feel chosen and reciprocal. Neither is "more" — they serve different functions.

Why Parents Feel Guilty Even Asking the Question

Many parents feel a stab of guilt at the mere thought of ranking their loves. That guilt is socially constructed, not biologically necessary. Cultural narratives — particularly those aimed at mothers — have long equated good parenting with total self-sacrifice, including the sacrifice of the couple relationship. Naming this pressure is the first step to dismantling it.

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2. What Happens to Relationships After Kids Arrive

The transition to parenthood is one of the most reliably disruptive events a couple can experience — and the data on this is unambiguous.

The Gottman Institute's longitudinal research, conducted by Drs. John and Julie Gottman over more than four decades, found that 67% of couples experience a significant decline in relationship quality in the first year postpartum. Conflict increases, intimacy decreases, and partners often report feeling like co-managers of a household rather than romantic companions.

Couples who do not work on their relationship after having a baby are likely to see their satisfaction plummet.

— The Gottman Institute, research summary (2015)

This decline is not inevitable, but it is common enough to be considered a normative crisis — meaning it is normal, but it still needs active management.

The Sleep-Deprivation Factor

Sleep deprivation alone — a near-universal feature of early parenthood — measurably reduces empathy, patience, and the capacity for emotional attunement between partners. When both people in a couple are running on empty, the relationship becomes the first thing to receive the leftover energy, which is often nothing.

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3. How Your Couple Relationship Shapes Your Children's Development

Here is the part that reframes the whole question: your children are not separate from your couple relationship. They are watching it, absorbing it, and building their own internal model of what love looks like from it.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recognises that children's social-emotional development is shaped significantly by the quality of relationships they observe at home. Children who grow up in households where caregivers demonstrate warmth, respectful disagreement, and repair after conflict develop stronger emotional regulation skills and healthier peer relationships.

Conversely, research published in the journal Child Development (Cummings & Davies, 2002) found that children exposed to chronic unresolved parental conflict — even when that conflict is low-level and "background" — show elevated cortisol levels, increased anxiety, and poorer academic outcomes.

The Modelling Effect Across Ages

- Ages 0–2: Infants pick up on parental stress and tension through tone of voice, body language, and the emotional atmosphere of the home. Secure infant attachment is supported when caregivers themselves feel securely connected. - Ages 3–6: Preschoolers are intensely observational. They are building their first scripts for how people who love each other behave. - Ages 7–12: School-age children begin to compare their family to others. A warm, visible partnership gives them a secure base from which to explore friendships and manage social complexity. - Ages 13–17: Teenagers are forming their own romantic identities. The couple relationship they grew up watching becomes their reference point — for better or worse.

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4. Age-Banded Strategies: Nurturing Both Bonds at Every Stage

There is no single formula that works for a family with a newborn and a family with a 12-year-old. Here is what the evidence and clinical experience suggest at each stage.

Newborn to 12 Months

The priority is survival — yours and the baby's. Relationship investment at this stage looks like micro-moments: a genuine thank-you, a hand on the shoulder, taking the 3 a.m. feed so your partner sleeps. Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents is specifically written for this phase and offers grounded, practical strategies for couples who are running on fumes.

Toddler Years (1–3)

Toddlers are demanding, delightful, and relentless. Couple time gets squeezed further. This is when resentment can quietly calcify if left unaddressed.

School Age (4–12)

Children this age benefit enormously from seeing their parents enjoy each other's company. Date nights become more feasible; conversations can be had without a baby monitor on full alert.

Blended Families (Any Age)

Blended families carry additional complexity — loyalty binds, step-parent dynamics, and children who may actively resist the couple relationship. Building Love Together in Blended Families addresses these specific pressures with practical, research-informed guidance.

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5. Red Flags: When One Relationship Is Being Chronically Starved

There is a meaningful difference between a relationship going through a hard season and a relationship being structurally neglected. Here are the signs to watch for in each direction.

Signs Your Couple Relationship Is Being Neglected

Signs Your Children's Needs Are Being Sidelined

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6. The "Kids First" Myth and What to Replace It With

The idea that good parents always put their children first — in every moment, above every other need — is not supported by developmental science, and it can quietly corrode both the couple relationship and the children's own development.

Dr. John Gottman, psychologist and founder of the Gottman Institute, has written extensively about how a strong couple relationship is the "master relationship" in a family system — not because it outranks the parent-child bond, but because its health radiates outward to every other relationship in the home.

The single biggest thing you can do for your children is to have a loving relationship with your partner.

— The Gottman Institute, research communication

Child and adolescent psychiatrists at the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK) similarly note that children thrive when they feel the adults around them are stable, connected, and emotionally available — and that adult emotional availability is harder to sustain when the couple relationship is in chronic distress.

What to Replace "Kids First" With

Replace the hierarchy with a systems frame: the family is an ecosystem. When the couple relationship is nourished, it produces more patient, present, emotionally regulated parents. When parents are more regulated, children feel safer. When children feel safer, they are easier to parent. The whole system rises.

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7. Comparison at a Glance: Relationship Investment Strategies by Family Stage

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Expert Insights

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Frequently Asked Questions

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The question "Do you love your kids more than your partner?" is really asking something deeper: Are you paying attention to all the relationships that matter? The answer to that question is not a ranking — it is a practice. Every small act of turning toward your partner, every moment of genuine presence with your child, every repair after a rupture — these are the building blocks of a family that feels safe to everyone inside it. The most honest and hopeful answer is not "I love one more than the other." It is: I am choosing, every day, to love them both well. If this resonated, save it, share it with a partner or a friend who needed to read it, and come back to it when the season gets hard — because it will, and that's okay too.

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Sources & References

1. Gottman, J. & Gottman, J.S. "And Baby Makes Three." The Gottman Institute. 2007. https://www.gottman.com
2. Leibenluft, E., Gobbini, M.I., Harrison, T., & Haxby, J.V. "Mothers' Neural Activation in Response to Pictures of Their Children and Other Children." Biological Psychiatry, 2004.
3. Cummings, E.M. & Davies, P.T. "Effects of Marital Conflict on Children: Recent Advances and Emerging Themes in Process-Oriented Research." Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2002.
4. American Academy of Pediatrics. "Promoting Children's Healthy Social-Emotional Development." AAP Policy Statement, 2023. https://www.aap.org
5. Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK). "Parental Mental Health and Children's Wellbeing." 2022. https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk
6. Siegel, D.J. & Hartzell, M. Parenting from the Inside Out. Tarcher/Penguin, 2003.
7. Johnson, S.M. Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown Spark, 2008. (Foundational text for Emotionally Focused Therapy)

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it normal to feel closer to your child than your partner after having a baby?

Yes, and it is extremely common. The hormonal surge following birth — particularly oxytocin — is biologically calibrated toward infant bonding. Many parents, especially those who gave birth, describe an intensity of feeling for their newborn that temporarily eclipses everything else. This is normal and does not mean your relationship is broken. It does mean the couple relationship needs conscious, gentle tending during this period.

Can prioritising your partner over your kids damage your children?

Context matters enormously. Regularly modelling a loving, respectful partnership is beneficial for children at every age. What harms children is not being prioritised as a couple, but being genuinely neglected — having their physical and emotional needs consistently unmet. The two are not the same thing. A date night is not neglect.

What if my partner and I have very different parenting styles — does that affect our relationship?

Yes, significantly. Disagreements about parenting are among the most common sources of couple conflict after children arrive. The research of Drs. John and Julie Gottman suggests that couples who can discuss parenting differences with curiosity rather than contempt — and who present a reasonably united front to children — fare better on both the parenting and relationship dimensions.

How do I reconnect with my partner when I'm genuinely exhausted from parenting?

Start smaller than you think you need to. The goal is not a romantic weekend away (though that helps when possible). It is five minutes of genuine, non-logistical attention. Ask how they are feeling. Say something specific you appreciate about them. Physical touch — a hug, a hand held — activates the same bonding neurochemistry as longer connection rituals. Consistency matters more than intensity.

Does loving your partner "more" than your kids make you a bad parent?

No. As this article explains, the comparison itself is neurologically and emotionally misleading — the two loves are not the same thing and cannot be meaningfully ranked. What matters is that both relationships are nourished, and that children's physical and emotional needs are consistently met. A parent who also actively invests in their couple relationship is not loving their children less. They are building a more stable home.

What should I do if I feel my partner loves our children more than they love me?

Raise it directly and gently, using "I" statements rather than accusations. "I've been feeling like we're more co-parents than partners lately — can we talk about that?" If the conversation is difficult to have, or if this is a longstanding pattern, a couples therapist can provide a structured, safe space. The Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) both have strong evidence bases for exactly this kind of reconnection work.

At what age do children most benefit from seeing their parents in a loving relationship?

Every age, in different ways. Infants benefit from a calm emotional atmosphere. Toddlers and preschoolers absorb relationship scripts. School-age children use the parental relationship as a secure base. Teenagers use it as a template for their own emerging romantic lives. There is no age at which it stops mattering.