This study assessed the effects of violated parenting expectations on the adjustment to parenthood in a sample of 473 married, middle-class, white women pregnant with their first child. The women were interviewed during the final trimester of pregnancy and at one year post-birth. The bivariate results indicated that women's expectations about how parenting would affect their lives and how they would fare in the maternal role did not match their experiences, although the magnitude of the discrepancies was small. In general, women expected things to be better at one year post-birth than they actually were. The multivariate results indicated that these discrepancies significantly affected the ease of their adjustment to motherhood. Adjustment was more difficult when parenting expectations exceeded experiences in the following domains: relationship with spouse, physical well-being, maternal competence, and maternal satisfaction. In addition, high expectations regarding child care assistance from spouse, and support from extended family, were associated with a more difficult period of adjustment, net of the actual amount of assistance or support received. The transition to parenthood is a major life event with long-term consequences for individuals in families. As such it is one of the most commonly studied transitions in the life cycle. Early work in this area suggested that entry into parenthood precipitated a crisis for the family unit (Dyer, 1963; Hill, 1949; LeMasters, 1957). However, researchers found little empirical support for this view of parenthood (Hobbs, 1965; Hobbs & Cole, 1976; Hobbs & Wimbish, 1977; Russell, 1974). They thus rejected the notion of crisis, and offered an alternative conceptualization of the entry into parenthood as a transition associated with the experience of stress as well as the satisfactions and rewards of parenting (Hobbs & Cole, 1976; Jacoby, 1969; Rossi, 1968; Russell, 1974). While research in this area originated as an attempt to understand the nature of the transition and its effect on individuals as well as the family unit, the scope of this work has shifted over time to an almost exclusive focus on how becoming a parent affects the marital relationship. This work has generally found declines in marital satisfaction across the transition to parenthood (Belsky, Lang, & Rovine, 1985; Belsky & Pensky, 1988; Belsky & Rovine, 1990; Cowan et al., 1985; Glenn & McLanahan, 1982; Goldberg, Michaels, & Lamb, 1985; Miller & Sollie, 1980; Ryder, 1973). This finding has held across a variety of research designs that have progressively become more reCenter for Population and Family Health, 60 Haven Avenue B-3, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032.