Becoming parents

Today, we look at three studies that begin prenatally and examine effects. First, Stürmlinger, Ray, von Krause, Nonnenmacher, Alpers & Zietlow (2025) published “Prenatal Depressive Symptoms, Infant Temperament, Parental Role Satisfaction, and Child Adjustment: A longitudinal serial mediation. Journal of Family Psychology. Here’s the abstract:

Maternal prenatal depressive symptoms (PD symptoms) pose a risk factor for child adjustment difficulties (CAD), defined as internalizing and externalizing symptoms. This study examined the underlying mechanisms of the link between PD symptoms and CAD in a longitudinal study. Longitudinal data from pregnancy to age 3, encompassing four assessment points, were analyzed for N = 582 mothers participating in the German family panel pairfam. We tested a serial mediation model considering infant temperament during the first year and mothers’ parental role satisfaction 2–3 years postpartum as mediators between PD symptoms and CAD at age 3. PD symptoms significantly predicted CAD. We could not find that infant temperament or parental role satisfaction mediated between PD symptoms and CAD, though all variables were significantly associated on a correlational level. Furthermore, infant temperament partially mediated between PD symptoms and parental role satisfaction. Our findings emphasize the importance of the infant’s temperament in the scope of PD symptoms for the mother’s perception of her parental role, with possible adverse long-term effects for the mother–child relationship and the child. This study provides evidence for a complex bidirectionality between maternal and child-driven effects in the transmission of adverse effects of maternal PD symptoms. Depressive symptoms, even on subclinical levels, should already be targeted prenatally to prevent negative long-term effects for mothers and children. 

I like this study because it finds that prenatal depressive symptoms predict child adjustment problems, with infant temperament playing a mediating role. The next study looks at prenatal social disadvantage. Herzberg et al. (2024) published “Maternal Prenatal Social Disadvantage and Neonatal Functional Connectivity: Associations with psychopathology symptoms at age 12 months” in Developmental Psychology. The edited abstract is as follows:

Recent research has reported effects of socioeconomic status on neurobehavioral development as early as infancy, including positive associations between income and brain structure, functional connectivity, and behavior later in childhood (Ramphal, Whalen, et al., 2020; Triplett et al., 2022). This study extends this literature by investigating the relation of maternal prenatal social disadvantage (PSD) to neonatal amygdala and hippocampus functional connectivity and whether socioeconomic-related alterations in functional connectivity subsequently predict behavior at age 12 months in a large, socioeconomically diverse sample (N = 261 mother–infant dyads). PSD was assessed across gestation; neonatal magnetic resonance imaging was completed within the first weeks of life; and infant internalizing and externalizing symptoms were evaluated using the Infant–Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment at age 12 months. The results showed that PSD was significantly related to neonatal right amygdala and left hippocampus functional connectivity with prefrontal and motor-related regions. Social disadvantage-related right amygdala and left hippocampus functional connectivity with these regions was subsequently related to infant externalizing and internalizing symptoms at age 12 months. Building off an emerging literature exploring prenatal impacts on neonatal functional connectivity, this study further emphasizes the important role of the maternal environment during gestation on infant brain function and its relationship with externalizing and internalizing behavior in the first years of life. The results suggest that the prenatal socioeconomic environment may be a promising target for interventions aimed at improving infant neurobehavioral outcomes. 

Here we see that mom’s social disadvantage is related to poor brain development regions critical for cognitive development, emotional and behavioral dysregulation in infants. Finally, Fentz, Houmark, Simonsen & Trillingsgaard (2024) published “Ready for the Transition to Parenthood? Predicting relationship satisfaction trajectories from prenatal indicators of low readiness” in Journal of Family Psychology. The edited abstract follows:

During the past decades, interventions to strengthen marriage and promote healthy family formation during the transition to parenthood have become more widely available. The broad attendance to such interventions may suggest to the public that having a baby can put the health of any marriage at risk, although large heterogeneity in parents’ trajectories of relationship satisfaction has been demonstrated. In this study, we investigated whether four indicators of low transition-to-parenthood readiness in expecting couples—both for the individual (actor) and their partner—predicted a larger decline in relationship satisfaction across this major life transition. Latent class growth analyses estimated heterogeneous relationship satisfaction trajectories for 1,433 couples from 21 weeks gestation to 19 months postpartum. Findings indicated three groups of parents: 38.7% experienced initially high and stable relationship satisfaction, 51.3% initially high with a small decline, and 10.0% initially low with a large decline. For both the pregnant and nonpregnant partner, actor and partner’s prenatal doubts about the future of the relationship predicted group membership of the low and large decline subgroup rather than to the two more stable groups. For the nonpregnant partner, lacking a clear wish for a child substantially predicted group membership of the low and large decline subgroup. Nonmarital status or unplanned pregnancy did not predict group membership. These results supported that most new parents experience their relationship as robust against the challenges of early parenthood. However, parents experiencing relationship doubts and childbirth as an unwanted life transition may benefit from targeted pregnancy support. 

I found it interesting that nonmarital status and unplanned pregnancy don’t matter but parental doubts, especially by the nonpregnant partner, about the success of the relationship do.