The Family System Over the First Year of Life: A Look Into Marital, Coparental, and Infant Experiences
Open Access
Author:
Mauro, Michelle Rose
Area of Honors:
Human Development and Family Studies
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Dr. Douglas Michael Teti, Ph D, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Kathryn Bancroft Hynes, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Marital relationship coparental relationship infant socioemotional development
Abstract:
The family is the core structure in which individuals flourish. The question of how family subsystem boundaries and implicit rules affect each member’s continuity has been investigated in previous work. This present study examined how the marital system and the coparental system affect one another over the first year of a child’s life, and ultimately how these systems impact infant socioemotional development. Data was taken from the Project SIESTA longitudinal study sample of 167 mothers and their infant over the first 12 months of life. Results showed that the marital and coparental relationship are related and impact each other over the first 12 months of the child’s life. Positive coparenting was a stronger predictor of marital quality than negative coparenting, and the coparenting relationship was found to have a stronger impact on a child’s socioemotional development than the marital relationship. This study demonstrated the need to further examine familial effects on child development over the first year of life, as well as a need to focus on the contextual aspects of the coparenting relationship.
