Intensive Parenting Beliefs in the Transition to Parenthood: Relations to Marital and Coparenting Relationships

• In Event: 2-205 - Gender Roles and Expectancies in Parenting Research Involving Both Mothers and Fathers

Integrative Statement

The transition to parenthood requires couples to negotiate multiple roles and navigate an influx of social messaging regarding best practices for parenting (Cowan & Cowan, 2000) and recent years have brought an increased scrutiny on the relative merits of various parenting practices (Gopnik, 2016). Intensive parenting beliefs are defined as beliefs that mothers are the essential parents, that parenting is inherently self-sacrificing, and that child-rearing should involve a high level of investment of parental time, energy, and resources (Walls, 2014). The proposed research is based on the premise that heavy investments in childrearing may have deleterious consequences for both intra- and inter-personal functioning, which in turn could disrupt parent-child relationships and subsequent adaptive child development. The aim of study is to examine intensive beliefs about the parenting role and how these beliefs influence parental mental health, marital relationship quality, parent-child relationship quality, and co-parenting across the transition to parenthood.

Intensive parenting has applied primarily to mothers, but it may also be endorsed by fathers as well (Shirani et al., 2011). Fathers’ intensive parenting beliefs, both alone and in combination with their partners’, may influence parents’ mental health and family dynamics. In addition to affecting the quality of the couples’ marital relationship, maternal and paternal intensive parenting beliefs may be related to aspects of triadic family functioning, including maternal gatekeeping – the extent to which mothers may regulate fathers’ involvement with their children -- and co-parenting quality – the extent to which partners support one another and cooperate regarding childrearing.

The purpose of the current study is to examine the relations of intensive parenting beliefs to parenting confidence, marital quality, and coparenting relationships in a sample (n = 80 couples; total n = 160) of first-time mothers and fathers followed from the third trimester of pregnancy. Parents completed online assessments, providing demographic data and measures of intensive parenting (IPAQ; Liss et al., 2013), marital satisfaction (QMI; Norton, 1983), and anticipated parenting confidence (KPCS, Crncec et al., 2008)). Follow up assessments are being conducted at 3 months (nearly completed) and 6 months (will be analyzed by April); these follow-ups will add measures of coparenting relationship and father involvement.

Preliminary findings from the baseline assessment indicated broad dyadic agreement between parents on the IPAQ subscale of essentialism (ICC = .458), indicating beliefs that mothers are essential to childrearing. We found negative correlations between essentialism beliefs with marital satisfaction for both mothers (r = -.39) and fathers (r = -.50). Notably, essentialism beliefs were significantly correlated with parenting confidence for fathers (r = -.44), but not mothers (r = -.15). Further analyses pending completed data collection will test longitudinal associations among these variables across the transition to parenthood, incorporating dyadic cross-lagged analyses (actor-partner interdependence models) to assess potential interpersonal influences of one partner’s intensive parenting beliefs on the other’s self-reported perceptions of relationship quality and mental health. These data will provide a novel opportunity to expand a burgeoning literature on intensive parenting beliefs by including father reports and relations to father involvement and coparenting relationships.

Authors

• Anne Shaffer, University of Georgia
  Presenting Author

• Violeta J Rodriguez, University of Georgia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Geoffrey Brown, University of Georgia
  Non-Presenting Author