Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do We Develop in Early and Middle Adulthood?
Apply the multiple-role discussion to a study that observes couples before and after first parenthood. Reconstruct what the comparison can establish about a transition and what it leaves unresolved about its mechanisms.
A question to consider. If relationship satisfaction falls after birth, what observations would distinguish increased time pressure, changed expectations, and pre-existing relationship difficulties?
Why this reading
A difference between parents and nonparents may predate the birth of a child. Doss and colleagues follow couples across time, distinguishing gradual relationship change from changes around first parenthood. Their design makes a developmental transition an investigable question.
Before you read
Prospective research collects observations before the event of interest. An interrupted time-series model distinguishes the trajectory before an event, a change around it, and the trajectory afterwards. A comparison group can help evaluate an alternative explanation without making the event randomized.
Read for
- Explain what the prebirth observations add to a simple parent–nonparent comparison.
- Compare sudden and gradual change across the relationship measures.
- Distinguish the average pattern from variation among couples and from predictors of that variation.
Consider afterwards
- What could a nonparent comparison group rule out, and what selection differences could still explain part of the apparent effect of first parenthood?
Editorial context
The study examines 218 couples over eight years, including 132 who became parents. Participants were mainly White and well educated; they received premarital education and married through religious organizations. The results concern this transition in this sample, not all forms of caregiving or all families. Birth was not randomized, and later births complicate the interpretation of subsequent change.