Longitudinal Associations Between Marital Quality and Maternal Psychological Well-Being

• In Event: Extended family roles, parenting, and child development

Abstract

Background
Maternal psychological well-being has a significant impact on both parents’ health and children’s developmental outcomes (Mughal et al., 2019) Whereas marital strife is often conceptualized as an outcome of maternal stress and depression (e.g., Kwok et al., 2015), less is known about the potential mechanisms that might be responsible for transmitting early marital quality to later psychological well-being. The proposed study sought to fill this gap by testing the hypothesis that coparenting relationship quality might serve as an explanatory mechanism in longitudinal pathways from marital quality to mothers’ stress and depressive symptoms.

Method
The present study utilizes data from baseline (Wave 1) (N=6231), the 12- month follow-up (Wave 2) (N=5114), and the 30- month follow-up (Wave 3) (N=4864) of the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) Project. Participants were racially and ethnically diverse (i.e., 43% Hispanic, 21% White, 11% African American), and predominantly low to middle SES. Both fathers and mothers completed a set of baseline instruments that included assessments of socio-demographic characteristics and marital quality. The second wave of data assessing the coparenting relationship was collected 12 months after families first enrolled in the study. Both fathers and mothers completed survey measures of coparental conflict independently. Surveys about psychological well-being (e.g., maternal stress and depressive symptoms) were collected approximately 30 months after families first entered the study.

Results
To investigate the indirect effect of marital quality on maternal psychological well-being via coparenting, a mediational model was tested using path analysis in Mplus v. 8.0 (Muthen & Muthen, 2017). Figure 1 shows the results from the hypothesized mediational model of the associations between marital quality (marital satisfaction and marital conflict) on maternal depressive symptoms and maternal stress via coparental conflict. The overall model fit the data well, χ2(5)=53.300, p < .001 CFI = .943;RMSEA = .053; SRMR= .015. Consistent with hypotheses, mothers reported fewer depressive symptoms when couples had less marital conflict and more marital satisfaction. In contrast, there were no significant direct effects from either aspect of marital quality to mothers’ reported stress. Furthermore, couples with higher levels of marital conflict and lower levels of satisfaction showed greater coparental conflict. In turn, coparental conflict predicted both more stress and more depressive symptoms for mothers. Significant indirect effects in Table 1 indicated that all paths from marital quality to both maternal stress and depressive symptoms were mediated through coparental conflict.

Discussion
These findings affirmed study hypotheses, thus providing support for the notion that the coparenting relationship could be an important mediator of the association between marital quality and maternal stress and depression. Although prior research has shown that depressive symptomology can affect marital functioning (e.g., Renshaw et al., 2010). Further, marital quality may be carried forward to mothers’ psychological functioning via the quality of the coparenting partnership between parents. Results are discussed in terms of the implications of interparental relationship functioning for subsequent mental health outcomes among mothers.

Group Authors

Yasemin Cava Tadik
Geoffrey L. Brown

Authors

• Yasemin Cava Tadik, Winthrop University
  Presenting Author

• Geoffrey L. Brown, University of Georgia
  Non-Presenting Author