Ter Kuile Hagar, Finkenauer Catrin, van der Lippe Tanja, Kluwer Esther S
Department of Social, Health & Organisational Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2021 Feb 16;12:622160. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.622160. eCollection 2021.
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-pregnancy happiness increased slightly in the years after childbirth, whereas the relationship commitment of fathers with lower pre-pregnancy happiness and fathers with a partner with lower pre-pregnancy happiness decreased. In addition, the relationship commitment of mothers with a happier partner prior to pregnancy decreased only slightly across the transition to parenthood but showed a steeper decline for mothers with a partner with average or lower pre-pregnancy happiness. In line with the idea that happiness acts as a resource when partners have to deal with relationship challenges, individual happiness predicted changes in relationship commitment for parents, but not for partners who remained childless.
为人父母的转变在一段关系中既是一件令人喜悦的事，也是一项具有挑战性的事件。迄今为止的研究大多发现，第一个孩子的出生对父母关系有负面影响。我们认为，伴侣怀孕前的个人幸福感可能会缓冲这些负面影响。我们预测，怀孕前幸福的父母在产后的关系承诺方面比不幸福的父母表现更好。为了验证我们的预测，我们使用了一项针对109对荷兰新婚夫妇的五波纵向研究数据，这些夫妇在研究期间生育了第一个孩子，还有一个由55对无子女夫妇组成的对照组。我们发现，怀孕前幸福感较高的父亲以及伴侣怀孕前幸福感较高的父亲在产后几年里关系承诺略有增加，而怀孕前幸福感较低的父亲以及伴侣怀孕前幸福感较低的父亲的关系承诺则有所下降。此外，怀孕前伴侣更幸福的母亲在向父母角色转变过程中关系承诺仅略有下降，但怀孕前伴侣幸福感一般或较低的母亲关系承诺下降幅度更大。与幸福在伴侣应对关系挑战时可作为一种资源的观点一致，个人幸福感预测了父母关系承诺的变化，但对无子女的伴侣则没有预测作用。
