Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2020 September, 252 (1)

Coparenting Intervention for Expectant Parents Affects Relationship Quality: A Pilot Study

ANNA C. PHILIPP,¹ JIN-KYUNG LEE,² TANJA A. STAMM,³ MICHAEL WININGER,⁴ WILFRIED DATLER⁴ and NESTOR D. KAPUSTA¹

¹Department for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
²Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
³Section for Outcomes Research, Center for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Intelligent Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
⁴Research Unit Psychoanalysis and Education of the Department of Education, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Research has shown that the transition to parenthood is a particularly challenging period of life which is often associated with a decline in relationship quality and an increase in mental health problems. Emerging parents often experience difficulties in coping with new tasks and challenges in the relationship, resulting in inadequate mutual support, stress, conflicts and even depressive symptoms. To support expectant parents in establishing an effective and strong coparenting alliance, we have employed an educational coparenting intervention to teach important coparenting skills. The intervention was a non-randomized case-control study with 126 expectant parents. The intervention group participated in a five-session intervention, whereas the control group received an information booklet and had an optional meeting postpartum. The purpose of this study was to ease the transition to parenthood in order to prevent postpartum conflict and depression. Parents in the intervention group (n = 34 couples) showed significantly fewer conflicts postpartum than before (Z = −3.28, p = 0.00), and scored better in postnatal delegated dyadic coping (β = 0.25, p = 0.00, R² = 0.32), a form of mutual support. Neither the intervention group (Z = −0.83, p = 0.40) nor the control group (Z = −0.86, p = 0.38) showed a significant increase in depression scores after childbirth. Although conflicts during the transition to parenthood declined and postnatal delegated dyadic coping strengthened, the study design does not allow to draw conclusion on group effects. Nevertheless, the promising results of this pilot intervention are a base for future studies.

Keywords —— conflict; coparenting; intervention; relationship quality; transition to parenthood

© 2020 Tohoku University Medical Press

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Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2020 , 252, 33-43.

Correspondence: Anna C. Philipp, Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Medical University of Vienna, 18-20 Währinger Gürtel, Vienna 1090, Austria.

e-mail: anna.christina.phillip@gmail.com