Exploring Individual Differences in Marital Change across the Transition to Parenthood: The Role of Violated Expectations

Abstract

The major purpose of this investigation is to test the hypothesis that spouses whose prenatal expectations proved too positive or insufficiently negative relative to their actual postnatal experiences would experience the greatest decline in marital functioning across the transition to parenthood. A 2ndary goal involves the simple comparison of prenatal expectations and postnatal experiences to determine the general accuracy of prenatal expectations about how the transition to parenthood is likely to affect individual and family functioning. The 61 middle class families particiapting in the project provided information on themselves during the last trimester of pregnancy and at 3 and 9 months postpartum. Prenatal assessment questions asked how parents-to-be expected the baby to affect a number of aspects of their lives. At 3 and 9 months the questions requested that parents evaluate how the birth of the baby and the transition to parenthood actually affected these same domains in their lives. Respondents were queried about 6 specific domains of individual and family life: marital conflict and cooperation overall marital relationship personal opinion of self relations with extended family with friends and neighbors and shared caregiving arrangements. A measure of violated expectations was created on the basis of the discrepancy between parental expectations and postnatal reports. In general prenatal expectations and postnatal experiences were similar. The effects of having a baby on the marriage turned out to be significantly less positive than anticipated for the sample as a whole; and parents-to-be expected husbands to be more involved in child care than they turned out to be. As predicted it is found that parents whose postnatal experiences turned out less positive and more negative than anticipated experienced more negative change in marriage. This is especially the case for mothers and for marital change between the last trimester of pregnancy and 3 months postpartum. The analyses clearly indicate that violated expectations had a much less powerful effect on marital change from 3 to 9 months. That the impact of violated expectations was more evident in the case of women may be explained by the fact that it is mothers who invariably bear the major burden of the transition to parenthood. Because women experience the greatest lifestyle change following the arrival of a 1st baby it seems to be the case that failure to anticipate accurately the nature of the babys influence and especially the tendency to overestimate the positive effects of this event are associated with negative change in the marital relationship as evaluated by women.