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Poster #126 - Coparenting Across the Transition to Parenthood: Qualitative Evidence from South-Brazilian Families

Fri, March 22, 7:45 to 9:15am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Coparenting is the way individuals coordinate, support each other in their parental roles, and share responsibility in childrearing (Feinberg, 2003). High-quality coparenting relationships are critical for successful child development (Teubert & Pinquart, 2010), as well as adaptive family functioning (Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2008). Despite increased research on coparenting, much work has focused on Anglo-American families (Lindsey & Caldera, 2015), which has hampered practice and policy targeting diverse societies. Feinberg (2003) noted the importance of investigating coparenting in distinct cultures. In Brazil, the largest country in South America and the fifth largest in the world in territorial extension, research on coparenting is still scarce. Moreover, in-depth exploration of coparenting through qualitative research has been suggested (Cabrera et al., 2013), and this approach is well suited to offer rich insight into coparenting in diverse contexts (Kotila & Schoppe-Sullivan, 2015). The current study fills these gaps by investigating two key themes aligned with Feinberg’s model of coparenting, i.e., agreement/disagreement and support/undermining, in a sample of South-Brazilian families across the transition to parenthood.
We used a qualitative, longitudinal, multiple case study. Semi-structured, face-to-face individual interviews were conducted with 12 first-time mothers and fathers (six nuclear families) at 6, 12, and 18 months postpartum (36 interviews altogether). All the participants were white, middle- or upper-middle-class, and living in Porto Alegre (1.5 million inhabitants), the capital of the Southern-most state in Brazil (see Table 1 for more demographic information). Some of the key interview questions included: (a) How do you see your partner as a parent?; (b) Tell me about the day-to-day routine with the baby; and (c) Tell me about some challenging situations that happen in the day-to-day family routine.
We used deductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), coding data according to Feinberg’s definitions of coparenting agreement/disagreement and support/undermining. We found that agreement between parents remained relatively stable during the first year, whereas disagreements concerning discipline demanded more parental negotiation as infants advanced toward toddlerhood. Our findings supported the perspective that, although conversations on child-related topics had started during pregnancy, parents negotiated most of them after the birth, in the face of the new demands that emerged in establishing family routines and in response to the child’s development (Abramson et al., 2014). Regarding support and undermining, we noted that both coexisted in the same families although mothers and fathers expressed undermining differently. Maternal undermining occurred through criticism of paternal competence in parenting, whereas paternal undermining occurred by breaching maternal decisions and parental agreements. This finding is enlightened by the view that fathers may feel discouraged to perform childcare tasks due to maternal criticism (Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2008), and therefore try to enhance proximity when interacting with the child in other situations. We also discuss influences of Brazilian culture, families of origin, parents’ employment and childcare arrangements on agreement/disagreement and support/undermining. Our findings suggest that, albeit predominantly based on studies of Anglo-American families, Feinberg’s model may be applied to coparenting in white, middle- or upper-middle-class nuclear families in the South of Brazil.

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