It is hard not to laugh when your teenage child's voice comes bawling through the door telling you to "shut the fuck up" because they can't sleep.
So yes there was an effect

Children were the goal of our marriage, had 3 daughters, and each brought a different perspective on life. All 3 were raised the same, however the results were 3 different personalities and goals...Would happily do it all over again...

After my first wife had three kids her sex drive died and so did our marriage.

I have one son (32yrs) from my first marriage and a daughter (17) from second marriage. Currently separated. However, with my 2nd wife, we still have quite a strong friendship and I still love her dearly though she moved on and has a new boyfriend. At the beginning when we had our daughter, it was really rough. Sleepless nights was the rule. I would come to work with bloodshot eyes everyday. I began to falter and felt I was not in tune with my wife which indeed happened. It caused problems in our relationship. Once my daughter was a toddler and could speak we began to be more together as a couple and divide the tasks of taking care of our daughter. For example, on Saturdays, it was my turn to take her to the park to play with her little friends and give my wife a break. At the time my wife did not work. I made enough money to support the family. It was a decision we made that at least one parent stayed home to take care of our daghter and not have her being raised by strangers. That worked very well until she grew up. To conclude, raising my daughter was tough on my relationship with my wife during the first 3 yrs. As she grew, things eased up a bit for both of us. We stayed married for 15 years and separated almost 2 years ago.

Yes and no. Having kids can be a wonderful way to enrich your life, but it can also make it much harder. Raising children is not for the faint of heart, and any problems in your relationship will only become more evident. It doesnt fix anything, but instead it makes life more complicated. Address any serious problems before proceeding.

That being said... if you have a solid foundation for your relationship and your willing to keep an open mind and work together, then being a parent can be fun and fufilling for the both of you. But don't leap into parenthood with out giving it some serious thought and planning... if you can help it.

When, in the beginning, we had agreed to mutually raise the children, which, towards the end - she had taken over, almost exclusively. When my oldest daughter was about 16, we had mutually set up a curfew - that was midnight. So, it became 1 a.m. or so, and daughter hadn't shown up yet. I was getting anxious. How dare her? Then, I found out that without consulting me, permission had been given for a 4 a.m. check in time. Guess what? I hit the roof. These and other unilateral decision making broke the camel's back. And I was discouraged, which started me off to not feeling involved (as we had agreed) and not being the father figure (co-existent with the complementary mother figure that we had agreed to). The marriage wasn't helped! AND it wasn't really the fault of the daughter. She was just trying out her wings.

I don't know if it enhanced our relationship, but it kept us together longer. My kids tell me now we stayed together too long.

I was surprised that both my wives were jealous of how close a relationship I had with my children! Would have thought the reverse with the "mothering instinct".

Absolutely. It took a while for me to realize it but on some level I think he was more interested in being a parent than a spouse. He’s a very good dad, but after our kids were born I was basically an afterthought. Granted, if anything is going to take his attention I’m glad it was our children as opposed to alcohol or some other equally destructive thing. But I spent many years of being extremely lonely.

It made our relationship very strained and ultimately broke it. It brought out a side of him I had never seen. He was an abusive parent. He couldn't handle having kids, even though he had really wanted a family.