Can Children Affect Body Language?

They can, but not in the way your wife thinks. A team of seven researchers at the University of Minnesota went out during the summer of 1972 and observed 440 couples with and without children at shopping malls, in business districts, at the zoo, outside churches and at the beach. They watched very closely and without being noticed to see whether each person in the couple was touching, smiling at, or talking to the other.

The Minnesota researchers found that when men and women were with children they touched each other less, talked to each other less, and smiled at each other less. Children just seemed to get in the way of any kind of communication!

These results would seem to prove your wife wrong. It might be a better idea to leave the kids at home when you go out together—or at least to try and increase the time you are alone.

The researchers admit that most older people who have been together for a long time tend to talk less and touch less anyway. Familiarity, if it doesn’t breed contempt, at least seems to breed disinterest. But even taking this factor into account, the researchers assure us that children inhibit communication.

As for smiling, they admit that adults who are alone have more to smile about because they’re usually interested in each other. “Young adults of courting age,” they point out, at dances, on the beach, may smile a great deal and make us think that if children were around they’d smile less. The truth is, it’s the “country, the beach, the dances that increase smiling.”

All is not hopeless, however. Lest anyone should avoid having children for fear they would cut down on his smiling, talking, and touching, the Minnesota team notes that though children may be a source of difficulty to their parents, they still increase the ties between the parents. They still offer substantial rewards to the parents, and even if the parents touch, smile, and talk less when the kids are around, they may enjoy the touching, talking, and smiling more.