Mexican Immigrant Couples’ Marital Quality and Coparenting Satisfaction: The Role of Spouses’ Incongruence in Familism Values

Abstract

With a sample of 120 Mexican immigrant couples, this study tested an estimated actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) to examine the associations between spouses’ perceptions of marital quality (i.e., marital warmth and marital negativity), spousal incongruence in familism values, and spouses’ coparenting satisfaction. The model simultaneously explored the moderating effects of spouses’ incongruence in familism values to ascertain the extent to which the within-couple match between spouses’ cultural values impacted the association between spouses’ marital quality and coparenting satisfaction. Significant and positive actor effects from marital warmth to coparenting satisfaction were found. A significant interaction qualified the actor effect for wives. Spouses’ incongruence in familism values moderated the association between wives’ marital warmth and their coparenting satisfaction in such a way that the link was stronger for couples with low spousal incongruence in familism values (i.e., couples in which spouses were in close agreement on familism values). Marital negativity and incongruence in familism values were not significantly related to spouses’ coparenting satisfaction. Findings underscore the link between spouses’ marital warmth and their coparenting satisfaction and suggest that effective coparenting is nested within the context of a warm and supportive marital relationship.