This And Baby Makes Three review is for the couple who looked at each other six months after the baby arrived and thought: what happened to us? The book — written by relationship researcher Dr. John Gottman and his wife Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman — answers that question with decades of research and a practical roadmap for couples navigating one of life's most disruptive transitions.
The central finding is sobering and validating at the same time: 67% of couples experience a significant drop in relationship quality in the first three years after a baby. That's not a sign your relationship is broken. It's a sign you're human — and that this transition is genuinely hard in ways no one prepared you for. The remaining 33% don't avoid the stress; they've built something specific that helps them move through it together. This book is about what that something is.
If you've been reading our guide on how to keep your marriage strong after kids, this book is one of the most research-backed resources you'll find on exactly that question.
💡 One-line takeaway: Having a baby doesn't damage relationships — it reveals the cracks that were already there, and amplifies them. The couples who thrive aren't the ones without problems; they're the ones who stayed friends and kept turning toward each other.
What Is "And Baby Makes Three" About?
The book draws on Gottman's long-running research at the "Love Lab" — a laboratory where couples were studied over years, not just months. His team tracked couples from before a baby arrived through the early years of parenthood, identifying the specific patterns that predicted whether relationships would strengthen, plateau, or deteriorate. What emerged is less a theory and more a portrait of what actually happens in the couples who make it.
The book is structured around three major themes: building and maintaining a deep friendship with your partner, managing the conflict that new-parent stress inevitably creates, and forging a sense of shared meaning as you become a family together. Each section contains exercises, scripts, and questions you can actually use — this is not an abstract academic text.
The Research Behind It: Why 67% Struggle
Gottman's team found that the drop in relationship quality after a baby is driven by a cluster of predictable forces: sleep deprivation, the radical shift in each partner's roles, the sudden disappearance of couple time, the inequality that often emerges around domestic labor, and the way stress tends to make both partners feel unseen and unappreciated simultaneously.
What's striking is what doesn't predict the outcome. The couples who struggled weren't less in love or less committed than those who thrived. They weren't less educated, less financially stable, or less interested in good parenting. The differentiator was subtler: it came down to the quality of their friendship before the baby arrived, and whether they knew how to recognize and respond to each other's emotional bids for connection — especially under stress.
The Concept of "Turning Toward"
One of Gottman's most important findings is the idea of bids for connection — the small, often indirect attempts one partner makes to reach the other. A bid might be a comment about how tired you are, a question about what you want for dinner, or a hand reaching for yours on the couch. The research showed that in stable, happy couples, partners "turn toward" these bids most of the time — they acknowledge, respond, engage. In struggling couples, bids are met with distraction, dismissal, or outright rejection, often without either partner realizing what's happening.
In the sleep-deprived fog of new parenthood, the rate of "turning away" spikes in most couples. Understanding why — and having a name for it — is the first step to reversing it.
The Four Horsemen
Gottman's research also identified four communication patterns that, when they appear regularly, predict relationship breakdown with striking accuracy. The book describes how each of these tends to intensify during the newborn and toddler years:
- Criticism — attacking your partner's character rather than raising a specific complaint ("you never help" vs. "I need more help with the night feeds")
- Contempt — treating your partner with disrespect, sarcasm, or eye-rolling; the single strongest predictor of relationship failure in Gottman's research
- Defensiveness — responding to complaints by deflecting blame rather than hearing the underlying need
- Stonewalling — emotionally shutting down and withdrawing from the conversation; often a sign of overwhelm, not indifference
The book doesn't just name these patterns — it gives the antidotes. Gentle start-up instead of criticism. Expressing appreciation instead of contempt. Taking responsibility instead of deflecting. Self-soothing and returning to the conversation instead of stonewalling. These aren't vague suggestions; the book provides specific language and exercises for each.
And Baby Makes Three by Dr. John Gottman & Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman is backed by decades of relationship research. If the ideas here resonate, the full book goes deeper — view it on Amazon.
The Three Pillars the Book Teaches
1. Deepen Your Friendship
Gottman's research consistently found that friendship — genuine liking and respect, not just romantic attraction — is the foundation of durable relationships. The book introduces the concept of Love Maps: your internal map of your partner's inner world. Who are their closest friends? What's worrying them right now? What dream have they quietly given up on? Couples whose Love Maps stay current — even amid the chaos of new parenthood — fare significantly better than those who gradually become strangers occupying the same house.
The book includes a set of Love Map questions couples can use to stay genuinely curious about each other, even when conversation keeps getting interrupted by a crying infant. These simple exercises are among the most immediately practical parts of the book.
2. Manage Conflict Without Damaging the Relationship
The goal isn't to eliminate conflict — Gottman's research shows that 69% of couple conflicts are what he calls "perpetual problems," meaning they never fully resolve. The difference between stable and unstable couples isn't whether they fight; it's whether their fighting keeps a thread of respect and affection running through it, and whether they can repair after a rupture.
The book teaches how to raise concerns without triggering defensiveness — specifically, how to use a "gentle startup" (leading with how you feel and what you need, rather than what your partner did wrong) and how to deploy repair attempts during heated conversations to stop escalation before it becomes damaging.
This connects directly to communicating better with your spouse — the language patterns matter enormously in the exhausted, time-scarce years of early parenthood.
3. Create Shared Meaning as a Family
Perhaps the most underrated section of the book deals with the stories, rituals, and values that bind a family together. When two people become three (or four), each partner often carries an unconscious template — inherited from their own family of origin — of what family life is supposed to look like. When those templates don't match, tension builds without either partner understanding why.
Gottman guides couples through the process of deliberately building shared rituals (not elaborate ones — even a ten-minute cup of tea after the baby goes to sleep counts), agreeing on what their family stands for, and understanding how their upbringings shape their expectations. This layer of the work is often what prevents couples from feeling like efficient co-parents who happen to live together, rather than true partners.
What the Book Does Exceptionally Well
The research base is genuine and compelling. Gottman isn't guessing — he tracked couples longitudinally, not just surveyed them once, which gives the findings a level of credibility that most relationship books lack. The practical exercises are concrete. The couples' case studies throughout the book are recognizable and honest. And the tone throughout is empathetic without being saccharine — it acknowledges that this season of life is genuinely hard without overdramatizing it.
The book is also refreshingly honest about the unequal burden new parenthood often places on mothers. It doesn't sidestep the data on domestic labor distribution and its relationship to relationship satisfaction. For many couples, that section alone opens a productive conversation that hadn't been possible before.
💡 If you want the Gottman research turned into a daily practice — with concrete tools for staying connected during the busiest years — The Mindful Family Handbook at calmimo.com was built for exactly that. It covers both the marriage piece and the parenting piece in one structured guide.
Honest Limitations
A few caveats worth naming. The book was written with heterosexual married couples primarily in mind, and same-sex couples or those in different family structures may find some of the framing less directly applicable. The exercises, while practical, require both partners to engage — if one spouse is resistant to "doing the work," the book has limited traction on its own.
It's also a framework, not a daily protocol. After reading it, many couples feel energized and equipped — and then life with a newborn swallows them again within days. The gap between understanding the research and consistently applying it under sleep-deprived stress is real. The book acknowledges this but doesn't fully solve it.
Finally, some of the concepts overlap with other Gottman books (particularly The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work), so if you've read widely in this space, parts will feel familiar.
Who Should Read It
This book is an excellent choice if you:
- Are expecting a baby or in the first two years of parenthood and want to get ahead of the research on what's coming
- Feel like you and your partner have drifted and can't quite name why — the book often names it for you
- Are someone who wants research, not just anecdotes, behind the advice you follow
- Want something with concrete exercises rather than pure theory
It may feel less necessary if you've already worked through Gottman's flagship couples work, or if the relationship is in acute crisis requiring professional support rather than a book-and-exercises approach.
For the broader picture of what helps marriages survive and thrive after kids, our complete guide to keeping your marriage strong after kids pulls together the best of this research into a practical framework you can apply week by week.
Read the Research. Now Build the Daily Practice.
The Mindful Family Handbook translates Gottman's findings — and the best of modern family psychology — into a structured, week-by-week guide for staying close as a couple and calm as a parent. No more reading great books and forgetting them by Tuesday.
Get the Handbook — calmimo.comFrequently Asked Questions
What is "And Baby Makes Three" about?
It's a research-backed book by John and Julie Schwartz Gottman about how having a baby affects a couple's relationship — and what separates couples who grow closer from those who drift apart. It covers the science of why 67% of couples see a drop in relationship quality after a baby, and provides concrete exercises for rebuilding friendship, managing conflict, and creating shared family meaning.
Is "And Baby Makes Three" worth reading?
For most new and expecting parents, yes — especially if you want research, not just general advice. It's grounded in Gottman's long-term observational studies rather than surveys or anecdote. Its main limitation is that it's a framework and exercise set, not a daily practice system, so couples who struggle to maintain changes between conversations may need more structured support alongside it.
What is the "67% statistic" Gottman cites?
Gottman's research found that 67% of couples experience a measurable drop in relationship quality in the first three years after a baby is born. The drop is driven by sleep deprivation, role shifts, unequal domestic labor, loss of couple time, and stress amplifying existing communication patterns. The remaining 33% who maintained or improved relationship quality shared specific habits — particularly around friendship and turning toward each other's bids for connection.
What are the "Four Horsemen" in Gottman's work?
The Four Horsemen are four communication patterns that predict relationship deterioration: criticism (attacking character rather than behavior), contempt (disrespect or mockery — the single strongest predictor of breakup), defensiveness (deflecting blame rather than hearing your partner's need), and stonewalling (emotional withdrawal during conflict, often driven by overwhelm). Each has a specific antidote the book teaches.
When should you read this book — before or after the baby?
Ideally before — reading it in the third trimester gives you a shared language and a set of practices to establish before the sleep deprivation hits. That said, couples reading it a year or two into parenthood, when the drift has already started, often find it equally useful. The exercises work at any point; you just have more runway to build habits if you start early.