Progress and Continued Challenges in Understanding the Transition to Parenthood

Significant contributions in understanding the complexities of a couple's transition to parenthood have been made by recent longitudinal studies: the suggestion is clear that parenthood causes significant change and reorganization in the couple system. The data reported here suggest that adaptation to parenthood is a process that occurs over time, and they suggest that the process of adaptation may be different for men and women in terms of the factors that predict adaptation in the course of their lives. Moreover, the Cowans and their colleagues suggest that this divergence between the lives of men and women sets the stage for increased difficulty in marriage. Early work is also being done exploring the quality of marriage prior to the child's birth and its influence on parenting and the development of the child. The complexities of such interrelationships are highlighted by the finding that the paths of influence may be different depending on the gender of the child born, as will other attributes of the child. However, many questions concerning the transition to parenthood remain unanswered because it is difficult for researchers to go beyond their particular interests and because of the methodology developed within each of those specialties. This situation can be improved by collaborative efforts in which the refined notions of marriage, family systems, and adult development that family sociologists and family therapists have developed combine with the more refined notions of parent-child relationships and child development that developmental psychologists have achieved. Such efforts could lead into a number of unexplored but important areas, such as a study of family systems in the greater social context, and individual life cycles and the family life cycle. Finally, the biggest challenge to researchers is the development of methodologies to measure variables that describes families and family processes meaningfully.