USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

Is seeing believing? Expectant parents' outlooks on coparenting and later coparenting solidarity.

SelectedWorks Author Profiles:

James P. McHale

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2007

Abstract

This study examined short- and longer-term sequelae of parents’ prenatal expectations of their future family process, and traced subsequent stability in coparenting solidarity from infancy through the toddler years. One hundred and ten couples expecting a first child participated in prenatal assessments of coparenting expectations and differences, and in 3-month post-partum evaluations. Forty-five couples completed subsequent assessments at 12 and 30 months. At each time point multi-method evaluations of coparental adjustment were obtained. Men’s and women’s expectancies during the pregnancy and the degree of difference between their self-reported beliefs about parenting predicted post-baby coparental adjustment, with latent class analyses suggesting aftereffects of prenatal expectancies up through 30 months for some couples. Coparental solidarity was also stable from 3 to 12 and from 12 to 30 months. Data indicate that the lens parents bring to bear on their emerging family system is not immaterial, and that early-emerging coparenting dynamics portend longer term coparenting adjustment.

Comments

Abstract only. Full-text article is available only through licensed access provided by the publisher. Published in Infant Behavior & Development, 30(1), 63-81. doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2006.11.007 Members of the USF System may access the full-text of the article through the authenticated link provided.

Language

en_US

Publisher

Ablex Pub.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS