New Parents' Psychological Adjustment and Trajectories of Early Parental Involvement.

ABSTRACT: Trajectories of parental involvement time (engagement and child care) across 3, 6, and 9 months postpartum and associations with parents' own and their partners' psychological adjustment (dysphoria, anxiety, and empathic personal distress) were examined using a sample of dual-earner couples experiencing first-time parenthood (N = 182 couples). Using time diary measures that captured intensive parenting moments, hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that patterns of associations between psychological adjustment and parental involvement time depended on the parenting domain, aspect of psychological adjustment, and parent gender. Psychological adjustment difficulties tended to bias the 2-parent system toward a gendered pattern of "mother step in" and "father step out," as fath

SUBMITTER: Jia R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4933319 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature