First-time mothers’ prenatal expectations about coparenting and their postnatal experiences

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate primiparous women’s perceptions of coparenting with a specific focus on childcare task division with their partners. Mothers’ prenatal expectations, postnatal experiences, and expectation violations regarding postnatal childcare task division have been explored using a longitudinal design. In the first stage, 113 pregnant women participated in the study, with 97 participating in the second stage (i.e., 4-months postpartum). Family income, couple satisfaction, social support, child characteristics (temperament and sex), and environmental support (grandparental task division and number of caregivers) are used as predictors of childcare task division expectations, experiences, and expectation violations. The results indicate mothers’ prenatal expectations about childcare task division with their husbands to have been towards egalitarian sharing, but most had their expectations violated as the mothers reported doing most of the childcare tasks in the postnatal period. While difference in the mothers’ expectations could not be explained with the predictor variables, postnatal couple satisfaction has been found as the unique predictor of postnatal childcare task division. Moreover, expectation violations are seen to be predicted by family income and couple satisfaction. As a result, the unique importance of couple satisfaction for paternal involvement with childcare has been revealed, with implications for psychological counseling interventions being discussed. Counselors are recommended to guide parents to share their expectations about child-related responsibilities, and handle marital relationship and coparenting together during counseling process.