Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. The purpose of this study to consider whether attachment security in mothers and fathers promotes more successful early coparenting adjustment, to assess the role of marital quality in amplifying or diminishing any such effects, and to examine interactive effects of maternal and paternal attachment status on coparenting. Maternal Insecure attachment status predicted higher levels of coparental conflict, as did father Secure status.
Families with Insecure fathers exhibited lower coparental cohesion on the whole. Prenatal marital quality predicted 3-month coparenting cohesion, but not conflict. Prenatally assessed attachment status in both mothers and fathers predicts dimensions of coparenting early in the family life cycle. The impact of attachment status differs in important ways as a function of parent gender, and security in some cases exacerbated rather than buffered the negative impact of partner insecurity on coparental functioning.
Effects of parental attachment security on coparenting cannot be properly estimated without reference to contextual factors. The growing literature on coparenting e. Coparenting refers to the transactions occurring between two adults as they work together to rear a child or children for whom they share responsibility.
Coparenting partners function effectively to the extent that they create for children a sense of the family environment as secure, predictable, nurturing, and governed by consistent standards McHale, b. By contrast, coparenting disturbances place children at increased risk for a range of internalizing and externalizing problems and insecure attachment see McHale, a , b , , for recent extensive reviews of this literature. Associations between coparenting and child outcomes remain even after taking the contributions of marital functioning and motherβchild or fatherβchild relationship quality into account e.
The coparenting concept emerged initially from family theories based on observations of Western nuclear families e. Given the potential enduring impact of emergent coparenting processes on child development and psychopathology, interest has grown in those factors operative prior to the parenthood transition that set the stage for differential development of coparenting dynamics. Marital strife before the birth of a first child forecasts later coparenting discord and miscoordination, whereas positive marital adjustment during a first pregnancy predicts cooperation in the coparenting domain.
