Changes in Relationship Commitment Across the Transition to Parenthood: Pre-pregnancy Happiness as a Protective Resource.

ABSTRACT: The transition to parenthood is both a joyous and a challenging event in a relationship. Studies to date have found mostly negative effects of the birth of the first child on the parental relationship. We propose that partners' pre-pregnancy individual happiness may serve as a buffer against these negative effects. We predicted that parents who are happy prior to pregnancy fare better in terms of relationship commitment after childbirth than unhappy parents. To test our prediction, we used data of a 5-wave longitudinal study among 109 Dutch newlywed couples who had their first child during the study and a comparison group of 55 couples who remained childless. We found that the relationship commitment of fathers with higher pre-pregnancy happiness and fathers with a partner with higher pre-

SUBMITTER: Ter Kuile H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7921486 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature