Patterns of coparenting and young children
Schoppe-Sullivan, Wang, Yang, Kim, Zhang, & Yoon (2023) published “Patterns of Coparenting and Young Children's Social–Emotional Adjustment in Low-income Families” in Child Development. I am providing a long summary here, first from the abstract and research summary, with some points in bold:
This study identified coparenting patterns using data collected across 2007–2010 from low-income couples (N = 2915; 26.90% non-Hispanic White; 9.41% non-Hispanic Black; 34.24% Hispanic, 29.27% other or mixed race) with young children (M = 3.65 years; SD = 1.31 years; 48% girls) and examined relations with children's social–emotional adjustment. Latent profile analysis revealed four coparenting patterns: mutual high-quality (43.4%), moderate-quality, mothers less positive (31.8%), moderate-quality, fathers less positive (15.9%), and low-quality, mothers less positive (8.9%). When parents' perspectives on coparenting were positive and congruent, children fared best. Children also fared well when coparenting quality was moderate, and mothers were less positive than fathers. When coparenting quality was moderate and fathers were less positive than mothers, children showed the poorest adjustment.
“Coparenting” refers to the ways in which individuals who share responsibility for raising children relate to one another in their roles as parents. The coparenting relationship, or “executive subsystem” of the family, refers to parents' roles as co-managers of family members' behavior and relationships. A high-quality coparenting relationship is characterized by high levels of mutual support, low levels of undermining, low levels of hostile conflict, and relative balance in parenting responsibilities and relationships with children.
Coparenting can affect child adjustment in several ways. For instance, children may observe and model their parents' conflict resolution and social skills. Further, coparenting dynamics may shape children's development via parenting behaviors, parent–child relationship quality, or children's emotional security. Indeed, coparenting relationship quality has been consistently associated with children's social-emotional adjustment. A meta-analysis showed that positive coparenting relationships, characterized by high cooperation, high agreement, low conflict, and low triangulation, were associated with fewer child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and better child social functioning.
Here are some of the previous research findings they summarize:
mothers' reports of lower coparenting conflict and higher shared decision-making with fathers when children were 24 months old predicted higher levels of child social skills at 48 months.
observed cooperative coparenting when children were 3.5 years old was positively associated with mothers' reports of child prosocial behaviors at age 4.
for preschoolers in low-income minority families, mothers' participation in a relationship education program improved coparenting agreement, which, in turn, was associated with increases in child social competence.
an online program designed to mitigate relationship distress reduced short-term coparenting conflict, which was further related to decreased externalizing and internalizing symptoms of children between 3 and 17 years old.
Here is more edited material from their discussion, with key findings in bold:
Overall, when mothers' and fathers' perspectives on coparenting were highly positive and convergent, children fared best, although children fared almost as well when coparenting quality was moderate, and mothers were less positive about coparenting relative to fathers. In contrast, when mothers' and fathers' perceptions of coparenting were less positive and divergent—and especially, when fathers were less positive in their perceptions of coparenting than mothers—children fared the worst.
Using LPA, we identified four patterns of coparenting: mutual high-quality coparenting (43.4% of our sample), moderate-quality, mothers less positive (31.8% of our sample), moderate-quality, fathers less positive (15.9% of our sample), and low-quality, mothers less positive (8.9% of our sample). As we had expected, and consistent with a family systems perspective, these patterns reflected differences in levels of coparenting relationship quality, but also convergence and divergence in parents' perspectives.
Our identification of a large mutual high-quality coparenting group affirms the past work of that indicates that, even among low-income families who experience many challenges, high-quality coparenting relationships are common. Our results indicating that young children whose parents showed mutual high-quality coparenting according to both mothers' and fathers' perspectives had the highest levels of social competence compared with all other groups add to the small body of work suggesting that coparenting relationships are associated with children's positive social–emotional development.
A notable difference between our work and that of Waller (2012) and Mallette et al. (2019) is that we included the perspectives of fathers as well as of mothers. The value of this is reflected in the identification of two distinct moderate-quality coparenting groups—one in which fathers were less positive relative to mothers, and one in which mothers were less positive relative to fathers—with the latter group nearly twice as large as the former, and with children in the former group faring the worst on social competence and behavioral adjustment. Notably, unmarried fathers and fathers with elevated levels of psychological distress were overrepresented in the “fathers less positive” group compared with other groups. This group appears somewhat similar to the “disengaged” group identified by Waller's (2009) qualitative analysis of interviews with mothers and fathers. We speculate that some fathers in this group may experience maternal gatekeeping. Indeed, and arguably reasonably so, paternal psychological distress may prompt mothers to close the gate to fathers to protect children from negative paternal behavior. In turn, experiencing maternal gate closing may exacerbate fathers' psychological distress. In these families, children's social–emotional development may be especially at risk because it is compromised via multiple pathways—coparenting conflict, triangulation, and a lack of fathers' positive engagement.
Another interesting aspect of our LPA findings is that we identified two groups of families in which mothers had less positive perceptions of coparenting than fathers, with one group having moderate coparenting quality overall and the other having low coparenting quality. Thus, the difference between these groups was in the overall quality, not in the relative perceptions of mothers and fathers. The moderate-quality group had children who did not necessarily fare significantly worse than the high-quality group on behavioral adjustment, and overall, the social-emotional adjustment of children in this group fell in between that of the mutual high-quality coparenting group and the low quality-mother less positive group. When considering that, across the entire sample, mothers tended to rate fathers' coparenting cooperation lower than fathers rated mothers' coparenting cooperation, it may be normative for mothers to perceive their partner's coparenting less positively relative to fathers. This makes sense in light of the fact that gendered parenting roles persist – mothers of young children, even those in dual-earner families, still spend more time devoted to childcare than fathers. Notably, it appeared that mothers' less positive perceptions of coparenting relative to fathers in itself did not indicate elevated risk for children's social–emotional functioning beyond the quality of the overall coparenting relationship. This does not mean, however, that relatively poorer maternal perceptions of coparenting might not compromise children's social–emotional development through other channels, including marital conflict, or parenting stress, for example.
It is important to note that mothers with higher psychological distress were more likely to belong to the low quality-mothers less positive group than to the moderate-quality-fathers less positive group, although fathers' levels of psychological distress were similar in both groups. Thus, mothers' psychological distress may affect their perceptions of the coparenting relationship. Comparing the child's social-emotional adjustment in these two groups, mothers' reports of children's outcomes did not differ between these two groups, but fathers in the low quality-mothers less positive group reported better child social-emotional adjustment than fathers in the moderate-quality-fathers less positive group. It is possible that, due to mothers' elevated psychological distress in the low quality-mothers less positive group, fathers may engage in parenting more to compensate for mothers' psychological distress, which may lead fathers to evaluate their child's social–emotional adjustment more positively.
In sum, consistent with a family systems perspective, we have provided evidence that distinct patterns of coparenting exist that reflect not only levels of quality but also convergence and divergence in mothers' and fathers' perceptions, and that these patterns are meaningfully associated with young children's social–emotional adjustment. Prevention and intervention programs can emphasize that high-quality coparenting promotes children's social competence, which is increasingly important and valued for success in academic as well as social–emotional domains. The development and implementation of social policies in the U.S. that support new parents to develop high-quality coparenting relationships, such as paid parental leave for fathers as well as for mothers, is warranted. Practitioners who work with expectant and new parents may want to pay special attention to mother–father coparenting relationships that are not only low in quality, but those in which fathers are markedly less positive than mothers about their coparenting experiences, which may confer or covey heightened risk for children's social–emotional development.
I like this study because of its family systems orientation, the inclusion of data from fathers, and the extensive discussion. It may be helpful to professional who work with children in settings where coparenting quality is important.