The Effect of the Transition to Parenthood on Relationship Quality: An Eight-Year Prospective Study
By B. Doss, Galena K. Rhoades, S. Stanley, H. Markman. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2009
656 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This longitudinal study examined the effect of the birth of the first child on relationship functioning using data from 218 couples (436 individuals) over the course of the first 8 years of marriage. Compared to pre-birth levels and trajectories, parents showed sudden deterioration following birth on observed and self-reported measures of positive and negative aspects of relationship functioning. The deterioration in these variables was small to medium in size and tended to persist throughout the remaining years of the study. Mothers and fathers showed similar amounts of change after birth. The amount of post-birth deterioration in relationship functioning varied systematically by several characteristics of the individual, the marriage, and the pregnancy itself. In a group of couples who did not have children, results indicated more gradual deterioration in relationship functioning during the first 8 years of marriage without the sudden changes seen in parents, suggesting that the results seen in the parent sample may be due to birth.
Subfields: Demography, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fd749cfa159bde48bc1a846355c4cd5be75f30a4
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Citations in the corpus
- Parenthood and Happiness: a Review of Folk Theories Versus Empirical Evidence (2011, neutral): “For example, recent U.S. data shows that marital satisfaction tends to decline in the first 2 years (Crohan 1996), 5 years (Lawrence et al. 2008), and 8 years (Doss et al. 2009) of marriage for all couples, but more so for parents.”
- From Partnership to Parenthood: A Review of Marital Change Across the Transition to Parenthood (2010, background): “This entails an increase in marital satisfaction from prepregnancy to pregnancy, because couples might experience a ‘‘honeymoon’’ of cooperation and togetherness during their first pregnancy (Doss et al., 2009).”
- Marital Quality over the Transition to Parenthood as a Predictor of Coparenting (2015, background): “increases (Gottman 1994; Doss et al. 2009; Lawrence et al. 2008; Mitnick et al. 2009; Twenge et al. 2003).”
- Controversies in Couple Relationship Education (CRE): Overlooked Evidence and Implications for Research and Policy (2014, methodology): “Doss et al (2009) and Markman et al (2010) followed up an intervention study by Stanley et al (2001), while the Rogge et al. (2006) study is based on a German trial of PREP by Hahlweg and colleagues (Hahlweg, Markman, Thurmaier, Engl, & Eckert, 1998).”