Abstract
Healthy coparenting and marital satisfaction are two main components of within-family functioning, providing the basis for healthy child development. In the current study, we investigated the link between marital satisfaction and coparenting from a dyadic perspective in Turkish families with young children. The sample is composed of 249 married coparent dyads (249 mothers and 249 fathers) with at least one child between the ages of three and seven (M = 56.96 months, SD = 15.16). Couples reported their coparenting and marital relationship satisfaction levels. Three separate Actor-Partner Interdependence Models tested the association between marital satisfaction and coparenting dimensions (cooperation, conflict, and triangulation). Results revealed that marital satisfaction was positively associated with coparenting cooperation and negatively associated with coparenting conflict and triangulation for both parents (actor effect). In addition, fathers’ marital satisfaction was positively associated with mothers’ coparenting cooperation and negatively associated with mothers’ coparenting triangulation (partner effect). These findings suggest that marital satisfaction has both within-person and between-partner links with coparenting, albeit the between-partner effect is pronounced only from fathers toward mothers.
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Data Availability
“The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to protect confidentiality of participants and accommodating regulations of data sharing agreement of the institution of the authors, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request”.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my very great appreciation to Doğan Cüceloğlu for his support in data collection process. He provided significant support for our research to reach large audiences. I would like to express my thanks to Semiha Bekaroğlu for contribution to writing of introduction part.
This paper is an extended version of the first author’s master’s thesis.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Ibrahim Hakkı Acar is associate editor in Current Psychology journal. No funding was received for conducting this study. The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
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Ece, C., Gürmen, M.S., Acar, İ.H. et al. Examining the dyadic association between marital satisfaction and coparenting of parents with young children. Curr Psychol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04363-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04363-0
Keywords
- Actor-Partner Interdependence Model
- Coparenting
- Dyadic analysis
- Marital satisfaction