Violated Wishes About Division of Childcare Labor Predict Early Coparenting Process During Stressful and Nonstressful Family Evaluations.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Non-randomized observational study examining parental expectations and observed family interactions (design analogy).
PubMed 19768138 · doi:10.1002/imhj.20183
What was done
The study evaluated how violated parental expectations regarding fathers' involvement in childcare relate to maternal and paternal marital satisfaction and early coparenting behavior. Coparenting dynamics were directly assessed during playful and mildly stressful family-interaction sessions.
What was found
The abstract provides no numerical data, effect sizes, confidence intervals, or sample size counts. Qualitatively, it reports that violated childcare expectations were associated with negative effects on enacted family processes and that violated maternal wishes related differently to coparenting dynamics depending on whether the interaction was playful or mildly stressful.
Why it matters
It highlights that discrepancies between prenatal expectations and postnatal reality regarding division of childcare labor may negatively influence observational coparenting interactions across different family stress contexts.
Limits
The abstract omits sample size, participant demographics, follow-up intervals, and all quantitative statistical estimates. The specific observational coding systems and definitions of violated expectations are not described.
Cited by
- context In a study using the 'Who Does What?' questionnaire, every expectant couple predicted before birth that the father would do more childcare tasks than he actually did six months postpartum.