When one plus one equals three: Early parenting as a dyadic process

<ns3:p>The journey into parenthood is rarely a solo endeavor—it is a shared experience shaped by mothers and their partners, each bringing their own traits, experiences, and expectations to the family system. Fortunately, after decades of collecting data mostly from the mother, researchers have begun to focus more systematically also on the fathers’ experiences, traits, and behaviors, and their effect on early child development as well. Going beyond that, a literature on dyadic processes between parents is emerging in research, focused on parenting and child development, accompanied by advances in statistical modelling. Here, we summarize existing research from the past years, introduce statistical methods suitable for complex dyadic models, and describe future directions for dyadic and triadic research. Viewing parents explicitly as dyads and not just as one mother and one father gives justice to the perspective of families as systems and afford more insight into family origins of child development.</ns3:p>