Successful Marriages For any marriage to be successful there are certain changes a man and woman have to make. They have to be flexible and open and ready for new experiences and ways of living. Marriages can be successful or unsuccessful based on many different aspects of it. Four important concepts that are definitely part of the whole marriage life are: children, conflict resolution, outside influences, and communication. Children may be the biggest change to a married couple. From going from just the two people, doing whatever they want, whenever they want, to staying home and taking on the responsibilities of taking care of children is a big step. Gone is the freedom of leaving at the spur of the moment to catch that new movie that just came out, eating what they want, when they want, buying whatever they want, and sleeping in until noon. The average number of children for parents completing my survey was two. Everyone knows that raising children is very stressful, but because of the different ages of the parents, and the children, I could not get facts on which years were the toughest. Most parents whose kids are well into their 20's or so, say that the most stressful years for them were the teenage years. Children that are toddlers are said to be less stressful then when they were infants. It varies for everyone, and from my surveys I got no facts, just opinions. Children are a big responsibility and cause a lot of stress for parents. Out of 30 people, 96% say that their children have been a cause for an argument at least one time throughout their marriage. This could occur for many reasons; one being that it is very expensive to raise children and parents would have to agree on what is necessary for their children to have or things that are just nice to have. They must agree to what their priorities are and each partner would have to adjust. Also parents might feel differently about ways of disciplining their children, which usually causes them to argue.