The data says parents want to go on dates, but they aren’t. In 2023, the National Marriage Project released a report that found over half of parent couples say “they never go out on date nights” or have date nights “a few times a year.” 2,000 married parents in the United States participated in the survey.
A similar 2020 Groupon survey of 2,000 parents found the average parent of school-aged children has not been on a romantic date night in three years. A third of parents reported that their last romantic date “was so long ago, they don’t remember it.”
Motherly reported in 2018 that more than 40% of parents with a child one year old or younger “can’t remember” the last time they shared child-free time with their spouse. These couples on average “go months without connecting as a couple outside of the house.”
The data consistently shows that parents are foregoing date night, but parents want to date their spouse.
A 2025 ParentData survey of 11,000 parents living with a partner found 87% of the respondents wanted to talk to their partners more. This trend spans at least a decade. A 2015 Care.com study found that 85 percent of parents “wish they could go out on more dates.”
As a parent many of us, including me, have trouble giving ourselves permission, though, to allow or burden another with the hands-on care of our children. Especially in the early days of parenthood, when every task and dollar goes to “necessary” expenses (i.e., food, formula, diapers, baby paraphernalia) we also have trouble giving ourselves the right to spend our limited resources on an “unnecessary” date night.
So, we push it off.
But, God’s Word shows us that he desires consistent, quality time with our spouse for us. God gives us permission to allocate time and resources to enjoy quality time with our partners.
God’s Word prioritizes our relationship with our spouse as our highest priority behind our relationship with God. (Ephesians 5:25).
In Genesis 2, after God forms Adam and Eve, verses 24 and 25 say, “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Jesus later repeats this verse in Matthew 19:5, after which he adds, “[T]hey are no longer two but one flesh.” (Matthew 19:6) (emphases added).
God encourages us to nourish and cherish our relationship with our spouse.
In Ephesians 5, Jesus’ disciple Paul again repeats the same verse. Ephesians 5:28-31 says, “[H]usbands should love their wives as their own bodies. … For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” (internal quotation marks omitted).
In God’s infinite wisdom, he also reminds us to enjoy life with our spouse! For those who love God and follow him, we are meant to enjoy meals and merriment with those he has placed in our life as blessings from our Father.
Ecclesiastes 9:7-9 says, “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. … Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days … at which you toil under the sun.”
Enjoy the spouse whom you love. Reallocate funds for a babysitter, a meal, or both. Go on your date. You have permission.
