Bidirectional Associations Between Coparenting Relations and Family Member Anxiety: A Review and Conceptual Model

Research into anxiety has largely ignored the dynamics of family systems in anxiety development. Coparenting refers to the quality of coordination between individuals responsible for the upbringing of children and links different subsystems within the family, such as the child, the marital relationship, and the parents. This review discusses the potential mechanisms and empirical findings regarding the bidirectional relations of parent and child anxiety with coparenting. The majority of studies point to bidirectional associations between greater coparenting difficulties and higher levels of anxiety. For example, the few available studies suggest that paternal and perhaps maternal anxiety is linked to lower coparental support. Also, research supports the existence of inverse links between coparenting quality and child anxiety. A child’s reactive temperament appears to have adverse effects on particularly coparenting of fathers. A conceptual model is proposed that integrates the role of parental and child anxiety, parenting, and coparenting, to guide future research and the development of clinical interventions. Future research should distinguish between fathers’ and mothers’ coparenting behaviors, include parental anxiety, and investigate the coparental relationship longitudinally. Clinicians should be aware of the reciprocal relations between child anxiety and coparenting quality, and families presenting for treatment who report child (or parent) anxiety should be assessed for difficulties in coparenting. Clinical approaches to bolster coparenting quality are called for.     

Coparenting Profiles in the Context of Mexican‐Origin Teen Pregnancy: Links to Mother–Daughter Relationship Quality and Adjustment

The current study explored the multifaceted nature of the mother–adolescent coparental relationship with data from 167 Mexican‐origin adolescent mothers and their own mothers at 10 months post childbirth. Profiles of mother–adolescent coparenting were created with latent profile analysis using adolescents’ reports of three dimensions of coparenting (communication, involvement, and conflict). Four profiles were identified: (a) Harmonious Coparents (equal involvement, high communication, low conflict); (b) Harmonious‐Adolescent Primary (adolescent is more involved than mother, high communication, low conflict); (c) Conflictual Coparents (equal involvement, high communication, high conflict); and (d) Conflictual‐Adolescent Primary (adolescent is more involved than mother, moderate communication, high conflict). Families characterized by high mother–daughter conflict and psychological control prior to childbirth were more likely to belong in the Conflictual Coparents profile. In addition, adolescents’ and mothers’ depressive symptoms and parenting efficacy after childbirth were linked to profile membership, such that the Harmonious‐Adolescent Primary profile reported the most positive adjustment patterns, whereas profiles with high coparental conflict (i.e., Conflictual Coparenting and Conflictual‐Adolescent Primary profiles) showed the least positive adjustment patterns. Discussion considers the applied implications of identifying precursors to healthy and problematic mother–daughter coparenting for families of adolescent mothers in the early years of parenting.     

Coming to Terms with Coparenting: Implications of Definition and Measurement

Coparenting is a complex construct that shares characteristics with other areas of the family system. In an effort to increase clarity surrounding conceptualizations of coparenting, definitions are proposed based on the external (the who, what, and where) and the internal (the what) structures that bound the coparenting construct. A framework of 4 coparenting dimensions that cross methodological boundaries is presented, and includes coparenting solidarity, coparenting support, undermining coparenting, and shared parenting. In analyses of data collected longitudinally from 62 couples when children were aged 6 months and 3 years, the coparenting dimensions were for the most part significantly associated between and within mothers and fathers. Notably, undermining coparenting was negatively related to coparenting support for fathers, but unrelated for mothers. Links between several distinct indicators within each coparenting dimension and marital outcomes were assessed to demonstrate the ramifications for choosing one measure of coparenting over another.     

Mother‐Stepfather Coparenting in Stepfamilies as Predictor of Child Adjustment

Coparenting between biological parents is a strong predictor of child adjustment. To date, however, little is known about the coparenting dynamics between parent and stepparent in stepfamilies. This study aimed at exploring the links between coparenting in the mother–stepfather dyad and child behavior in stepfamilies compared with the links between mother–father coparenting and child behavior in first‐marriage families. Two modes of coparenting were assessed: overt coparenting, that is, coparental behaviors in the presence of the child, and covert coparenting, that is, the way each parent speaks of the other parent to the child. The sample (N = 80) comprised 48 stepfamilies and 32 first‐marriage families with a child between 7 and 13 years old. Overt coparenting was assessed through direct observation in the standardized situation of the PicNic Game. Covert coparenting and child behavior were assessed through mother‐reported questionnaires. Results showed (a) more covert coparenting behaviors in first‐marriage families, (b) no differences in overt coparenting, (c) more child difficulties reported in stepfamilies, (d) less optimal overt coparenting being linked with more difficulties in children in both family structures, and (e) an interaction effect between family structure and coparenting, showing that overt coparenting is linked with child behavior mainly in stepfamilies.     

Overt and Covert Coparenting Processes in the Family

This article introduces a new self-report instrument designed to measure the frequency of parental behaviors thought to promote or undermine children's sense of family. Members of 103 married couples rated their behavior in both public (all family members present) and private (alone with child) contexts. Factor analyses of these data revealed four distinct factors indexing: behaviors in the service of promoting a sense of Family Integrity; largely covert parent-to-child communications undermining, or conveying Disparagement of, the coparental partner; overt interparental Conflict in the presence of the child; and coparental disciplinary activities (Reprimand). Significant husband-wife correlations were found on each of the four individual subscales. Construct-specific intercorrelations also obtained between like scales on the new measure and on the Family Environment Scale and Quality of Coparenting Scale. Cluster analyses of husbands' and wives' scores on the four Coparenting Scale factors suggested five “types” of coparenting families: Disconnected, Supportive, Average, Distressed-Conflicted, and Passionate. These clusters, along with the value of self-report instruments in assessing coparenting behaviors that may be largely clandestine in nature, are discussed.     

Coparenting and Children's School Readiness: A Mediational Model

We examined the long‐term direct and indirect links between coparenting (conflict, communication, and shared decision‐making) and preschoolers' school readiness (math, literacy, and social skills). The study sample consisted of 5,650 children and their biological mothers and fathers who participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Birth Cohort. Using structural equation modeling and controlling for background characteristics, we found that our conceptual model of the pathways from coparenting to child outcomes is structurally the same for cohabiting and married families. Controlling for a host of background characteristics, we found that coparenting conflict and shared decision‐making were negatively and positively, respectively, linked to children's academic and social skills and co‐parental communication was indirectly linked to academic and social skills through maternal supportiveness. Coparenting conflict was also indirectly linked to children's social skills through maternal depressive symptoms. The overall findings suggest that for both cohabiting and married families, the context of conflicted coparenting may interfere with the development of children's social competencies and academic skills, whereas collaborative coparenting promotes children's school readiness because mothers are more responsive to their children's needs. These findings have implications for programs aimed at promoting positive family processes in cohabiting and married families.     

Growing Points for Coparenting Theory and Research

Though the study of coparenting is still in its infancy, an explosion of coparenting research is in the wings. This paper identifies several emerging issues in coparenting theory and research to guide work in the years ahead, including issues in definition, conceptualization, and measurement; the interface between coparenting and adult development; and conceptual benefits that will accrue from studies of interadult coordination across diverse cultures and family systems. We emphasize that theory must lead empirical efforts, that across family systems the strongest coparental alliances are likely to be those in which the coparents both experience and provide support and solidarity for one another's parenting efforts with the children, and that measurement approaches need to be expanded so as to capture more comprehensively each family's organizational cooparenting structures and themes.     

核心家庭父亲协同教养对青少年抑郁的影响:父子依恋和母子依恋的中介作用

基于家庭系统理论,采用父亲协同教养、父子依恋、母子依恋和抑郁量表,对河南省某中学初中一、二年级,高中一、二年级共计890名来自核心家庭的青少年进行调查,探索父亲协同教养各维度（团结、一致、冲突、贬低）与青少年抑郁之间的关系,以及父子依恋和母子依恋在二者关系中的中介作用。结果表明：（1）在控制其它维度作用的情况下,父亲协同教养中的团结和冲突对青少年抑郁具有显著的预测作用,一致和贬低对抑郁的预测作用不显著,表明团结、冲突对青少年抑郁具有显著的“独特效应”;（2）团结、一致、冲突、贬低性协同教养均对母子依恋具有显著影响,支持家庭系统中的“交叉效应”;团结、冲突对父子依恋具有显著影响,支持家庭系统中的“外溢效应”;（3）中介效应分析的结果表明,团结、一致、冲突对抑郁的直接效应不显著,母子依恋在团结与青少年抑郁、冲突与青少年抑郁的关系中起到完全中介作用,但父子依恋的中介作用不显著。本研究有助于增进对父亲协同教养的认知,对于指导家庭教育实践、促进青少年心理积极发展具有重要的意义。     

Coparenting dynamics: Mothers' and fathers' differential support and involvement

This study utilizes the actor–partner interdependence model to examine mothers' and fathers' support of their partner and involvement in parental decision making during coparenting interactions in relation to cooperative and competitive coparenting in a sample of 125 first‐time parents with a 24‐month‐old child. Fathers showed greater instances of support for their partner than did mothers, and mothers demonstrated higher levels of involvement in parenting decisions than did fathers. Mothers' higher support of fathers' parenting was related negatively to competitive coparenting and positively to fathers' involvement. Fathers' higher support of mothers and higher involvement in parenting decisions was related to higher cooperative coparenting. Implications for family intervention and future research are discussed.     

Paternal Support and Involvement in Unmarried Fragile Families: Impacts on Long-Term Maternal Mental Health

Fragile families are defined as those that include unmarried or romantically unstable parents who have children and are socioeconomically disadvantaged. Mothers in fragile families may experience risk factors that lead to increased depressive symptoms that inhibit their ability to bounce back after stressful events. Risk factors for poorer maternal mental health may include declines in father involvement and a lack of coparenting support. This study examined the connected nature of coparenting and father involvement over time among continuously unmarried mothers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. A bidirectional latent growth curve analysis demonstrated that early father involvement was associated with a more gradual decline in coparenting support over the child's first 5 years, while early coparenting support also predicted a slower decline in father involvement over time. Steeper declines in coparenting support and father involvement over time were linked with more maternal depression and lower maternal life satisfaction when their child was nine. Results demonstrate a clear need for targeted intervention with both parents in fragile families to promote involved fathering behavior and enhance coparental relationships.     

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

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.     

Individual Parental Adjustment Moderates the Relationship Between Marital and Coparenting Quality

Contemporary family research studies have devoted surprisingly little effort to elucidating the interplay between adults' individual adjustment and the dynamics of their coparental relationship. In this study, we assessed two particularly relevant trait variables, parental flexibility and self-control, and traced links between these characteristics and the nature of the coparents' interactions together with their infants. It was hypothesized that parental flexibility and self-control would not only explain significant variance in coparenting quality, but also act as moderators attenuating anticipated relationships between marital functioning and coparental process. Participants were 50 heterosexual, married couples and their 12-month-old infants. Multiple regression analyses indicated that even after controlling for marital quality, paternal flexibility and maternal self-control continued to make independent contributions to coparenting harmony. As anticipated, paternal flexibility attenuated the association between marital quality and coparenting negativity. Contrary to predictions, maternal flexibility and self-control did not dampen, but actually heightened the extent to which coparenting harmony declined in the face of lower marital quality.     

The importance of parental verbal and embodied mentalizing in shaping parental experiences of stress and coparenting

Parental mentalizing—recognizing that children are separate psychological entities, who have their own thoughts, wishes, and intentions that motivate their behaviors—is traditionally considered a verbal, linguistic capacity. This paper aimed to examine the relation between parental verbal mentalizing (parental reflective function; PRF) and its nonverbal form—parental embodied mentalizing (PEM)—and how both constructs contribute to parents’ subjective experience of parenting, namely parental stress and coparental alliance. 68 mothers and their three-months-old babies were observed to assess PEM, interviewed to code PRF, and completed self-reports of coparental alliance and parental stress. PEM was found to be positively correlated with PRF. Mediation analyses revealed that higher PEM, but not PRF, was associated with lower parental stress, mediated by positive reports of coparental alliance. The findings support adopting a multifaceted approach when studying parental mentalizing, both in terms of assessing parental mentalizing beyond its verbal expressions to include also embodied aspects, as well as investigating its impact beyond infant development to include the familial context within it operates. Conceptual, empirical and clinical implications are discussed.     

养育是一种幸福的体验吗？养育倦怠述评

养育倦怠指的是由于父母角色和长期的养育压力而导致的一组负性症状,具体包括与父母角色相关的极度耗竭感、与子女的情感疏远和父母角色的低效能感。学者们采用风险-资源平衡模型来对养育倦怠进行解释,并围绕其测量、前因变量和后果变量开展了一系列的研究。未来的研究应当重点关注以下问题：澄清养育倦怠的概念内涵,发展科学的测量与评价工具;重视养育倦怠与后果变量之间的关系及其作用机制;充分关注文化因素在养育倦怠研究中的地位和作用。     

养育是一种幸福的体验吗？养育倦怠述评

养育倦怠指的是由于父母角色和长期的养育压力而导致的一组负性症状,具体包括与父母角色相关的极度耗竭感、与子女的情感疏远和父母角色的低效能感。学者们采用风险-资源平衡模型来对养育倦怠进行解释,并围绕其测量、前因变量和后果变量开展了一系列的研究。未来的研究应当重点关注以下问题：澄清养育倦怠的概念内涵,发展科学的测量与评价工具;重视养育倦怠与后果变量之间的关系及其作用机制;充分关注文化因素在养育倦怠研究中的地位和作用。     

Empathy and parenthood: The moderating role of maternal trait empathy on parental burnout

The ability to empathize with others enables us to effectively interact with each other and may have specifically evolved to support parental roles and caregiving. The relationship between parenting and trait empathy is little understood as previous research focused on empathy exclusively in the context of parenting, for example parental sensitivity. Here we aimed to understand how trait empathy may moderate the association between child's negative emotionality and parental burnout. Two cohorts were examined (1) parents of infants (10–18 months old; N = 203) and (2) parents of children (3–10 years old, N = 201). Parents filled out a battery of online questionnaires assessing maternal empathy, parental burnout and child temperament. We found that the relationship between higher levels of negative emotionality and parental burnout is moderated by specific aspects of maternal emotional empathy. Our findings suggest that maternal emotional empathy acts as a buffer against parental burnout when faced with a child's characteristics that incur higher parental demands.     

Parental Perceptions of Individual and Dyadic Adjustment as Predictors of Observed Coparenting Cohesion: A Cross‐National Study

Over the past 20 years, systemically guided approaches to understanding early family processes have helped to provide greater clarity concerning the interplay among individual, dyadic, and family level processes. Parental depression, marital functioning, and child adjustment in particular appear to be reliable predictors of coparental and family level functioning. Indeed, cohesion at the level of the family group covaries in theoretically meaningful ways with these indicators of individual and dyadic adjustment. In this study, two collaborating research groups (one in Switzerland, the second in the United States) partnered to examine whether similar patterns of relationships exist among individual and marital adjustment and coparenting processes in families of 4‐year‐old children. Using similar constructs but disparate and occasionally dissimilar measures, both groups measured parent‐reported depression, marital satisfaction, and child behavior problems. Coparenting cooperation and warmth were observed during family interactions. Despite differences between samples and evaluation tools, similar results were found for the Swiss and U.S. samples. A model with depression, marital satisfaction, and child symptoms as predictors of a latent factor of observed coparenting cooperation and warmth showed good fit to data in both samples, suggesting the model was relevant for each. Parameter estimation showed that higher coparenting cooperation and warmth was predicted by lower maternal depression and higher child internalizing symptoms. The common significant effects despite differences in assessment paradigms and instrumentation are of substantive interest. Future directions pertinent to the coparenting questions addressed in this research are discussed.     

二胎家庭的父母养育

随着我国全面二胎政策的实施,关于二胎家庭父母养育的问题越来越受到社会的广泛关注。但是,在我国这方面的研究极度稀缺。本文就二胎家庭父母养育的表现形式、影响因素及作用机制进行论述。二胎家庭父母养育的表现形式包括父母差别对待、协调同胞关系等。二胎家庭父母养育的影响因素包括父母养育第一胎的经验、婚姻质量、协同养育、儿童特点等。二胎父母养育的作用机制包括父母差别对待造成的儿童心理发展问题,以及父母在协调同胞关系中的作用。此外,本文结合已有文献,提出了一个"二胎家庭父母养育的过程机制"模型,揭示在二胎家庭情境下,各种因素是如何影响父母的养育模式,又通过哪些作用机制对家中的两个孩子产生影响。最后,强调未来我国的研究者应该重视本土化,关注社会变迁中二胎父母养育的特点。     

Perceived Collective Efficacy and Parenting Competence: The Roles of Quality of Life and Hope

Parents' perceptions of their parenting competence predict successful implementation of parenting tasks and contribute to their interest and involvement in parenting and to their children's development. Thus, identifying factors that contribute to parents' perceptions of parenting competence can help inform efforts to promote children's safety and well-being. The present study employs social disorganization theory to examine the relationship between collective efficacy and parents' sense of competence, measured along two dimensions: parental efficacy and parental satisfaction. It examines the direct association between the two constructs and whether the association is mediated by parent perceptions of their quality of life (QOL) and sense of hope. Data were collected from 198 parents residing in a neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv, Israel. The analyses indicated that high collective efficacy was directly associated with high parental efficacy, but not with high parental satisfaction. Using structural equation modeling, a mediation model was found whereby higher collective efficacy was associated with (a) higher QOL, which in turn was related to a greater sense of hope, which was linked with higher parental efficacy; and (b) higher QOL, which was directly associated with higher parental satisfaction. The findings provide further support to the idea that neighborhood characteristics play an important role in parents' ability to care for their children.     

父母婚姻质量、协同教养对青少年问题行为的影响:同时或者滞后溢出?

采用父母婚姻质量、协同教养和SDQ问卷,对416名初中生进行6个月的追踪测试,考察父母婚姻质量与协同教养之间的溢出效应及其对青少年问题行为的影响。结果发现：（1）父母婚姻质量与协同教养之间不仅存在同时溢出效应,而且存在滞后溢出效应;（2）在同一时间段内,父亲婚姻质量通过父亲团结性协同教养对青少年问题行为具有负向预测作用;（3）母亲婚姻质量不仅在同一时间段内,而且在不同时间段内通过母亲的冲突性、贬低性协同教养对青少年问题行为具有正向预测作用。因此,父母婚姻质量通过协同教养对青少年问题行为起着长期的、重要的影响。