Parental Perceptions of Individual and Dyadic Adjustment as Predictors of Observed Coparenting Cohesion: A Cross‐National Study

• Author: France Frascarolo,Nicolas Favez,James P. McHale,Regina Kuersten‐Hogan,Hervé Tissot
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12359
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Date: 01 March 2019

Parental Perceptions of Individual and Dyadic

Adjustment as Predictors of Observed Coparenting

Cohesion: A Cross-National Study

HERV



E TISSOT*

REGINA KUERSTEN-HOGAN

†

FRANCE FRASCAROLO

‡

NICOLAS FAVEZ*

JAMES P. MCHALE

§

Over the past 20 years, systemically guided approaches to understanding early family

processes have helped to provide greater clarity concerning the interplay among individual,

dyadic, and family level processes. Parental depression, marital functioning, and child

adjustment in particular appear to be reliable predictors of coparental and family level

functioning. Indeed, cohesion at the level of the family group covaries in theoretically mean-

ingful ways with these indicators of individual and dyadic adjustment. In this study, two

collaborating research groups (one in Switzerland, the second in the United States) part-

nered to examine whether similar patterns of relationships exist among individual and

marital adjustment and coparenting processes in families of 4-year-old children.Using sim-

ilar constructs but disparate and occasionally dissimilar measures, both groups measured

parent-reported depression, marital satisfaction, and child behavior problems. Coparenting

cooperation and warmth were observed during family interactions. Despite differences

between samples and evaluation tools, similar results were found for the Swiss and U.S.

samples. A model with depression, marital satisfaction, and child symptoms as predictors

of a latent factor of observed coparenting cooperation and warmth showed good fit to data

in both samples, suggesting the model was relevant for each. Parameter estimation showed

that higher coparenting cooperation and warmth was predicted by lower maternal depres-

sion and higher child internalizing symptoms. The common significant effects despite dif-

ferences in assessment paradigms and instrumentation are of substantive interest. Future

directions pertinent to the coparenting questions addressed in this research are discussed.

Keywords: Coparenting; Triadic Interactions; Family Cohesion; Cross-National Study

Fam Proc 58:129–145, 2019

With the increased salience in recent decades of coparenting dynamics in the raising

of children (McHale & Lindahl, 2011), examinations of factors that contribute to

supportive and cohesive coparental process are of great value. To date, investigations con-

cerned with this matter have concentrated on both individual and dyadic processes that

*FPSE, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.

†

Assumption College, Worcester, MA.

‡

Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Center and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.

§

University of South Florida St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, FL.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Herv

e Tissot, University of Geneva,

Uni-Mail,Room5163,BdduPontd’Arve40,CH-1205Geneva,Switzerland.E-mail:herve.tissot@unige.ch.

This study was supported in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation, grant No 32-52508.97.

129

Family Process, Vol. 58, No. 1, 2019 ©2018 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12359

serve as foundations for positive coparental adjustment. Yet relatively little attention in

prior work has been given to the cross-national applicability of coparenting models. The

current study outlined and tested a family model in which parental reports of depression,

marital satisfaction, and child symptoms from mothers and fathers within comparable

samples of preschool families in the United States and Switzerland were examined as pre-

dictors of coparenting cooperation and warmth, assessed in both samples through observa-

tional approaches.

Observational approaches are indispensable in studies of family process. Since the ear-

liest days of family therapy, observations have provided a window into the signature

group-level dynamics that embody the family’s efforts to cope and adapt as a unit. Efforts

to understand families’ dynamic processes have been informed by two distinctively differ-

ent, but equally important tenets: the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, such

that group-level processes transcend rather than simply recapitulate individual or dyadic-

level processes; and the existence of lawful and systematic relations among relationships

within the system. That is: When signs of distress or disarray are evident in family group-

level processes, other indicators of strain and struggle are frequently present at individual

and dyadic levels. Conversely, when group-level dynamics show signs of cohesion and

unity, individual and dyadic adaptations are better supported.

For decades, these tenets were supported by clinical observations, and eventually, sys-

tematic efforts to capture family group-level processes through informant report. Inte rac-

tional data always maintained a central niche, but initial empirical systems designed to

assess family processes were often molar in nature, providing broad-stroke appraisals of

family success or struggle in addressing immediate challenges or longer term goals (Bea-

vers & Hampson, 1990; Olson & Killorin, 1985). Although family conflict was easiest to

identify and measure, the absence of unity among family members—chronicled as defi-

cient “family cohesion” and lack of esprit de corps—also became an area of focus and con-

cern. Misattunement and withdrawal by one or more family members were flagged as

signs that the family group was not functioning effectively, and family level cohesion

became a sine qua non of the family’s strengths or struggles as a unified group. Once

again, observational data were indispensable in recognizing presence or absence of such

family level cohesion, and it was observational data that gave rise to the field of study now

known as coparenting (see McHale & Sullivan, 2008, for an in-depth historical overview).

Observational Studies of Coparenting and Family Level Interactions: A Brief

Resume

It was from the clinical origins of S. Minuchin’s structural family theory (Minuchin,

1974) that a new methodology debuted in the mid-1990s, emphasizing the moment-to-

moment family level expressions of effectively—or poorly—coordinated coparenting. Capi-

talizing on both staged and everyday transactions between mothers, fathers, and children

during triangular observations, both conflictual (competition, verbal sparring ) and cohe-

sive (warmth, cooperation, child-centeredness, balanced parental involvement) copar ent-

ing and family level processes were documented and soon validated in a Coparenting and

Family Rating System (CFRS; McHale, Kuersten-Hogan, & Lauretti, 2001). Moreover,

early longitudinal studies revealed that coparental dynamics when assessed during trian-

gular observations forecast subsequent child adjustment (Belsky, Putnam, & Crnic, 1996;

McHale & Rasmussen, 1998); findings linking indices of coparental cohesion—in particu-

lar, cooperation between coparents—with child adjustment were subsequently reported by

numerous other family scholars. About a decade later, a meta-analysis by Teubert and

Pinquart (2010) established that coparental cooperation was indeed significantly associ-

ated with children’s internalizing and externalizing symptomatology.

www.FamilyProcess.org

130

/

FAMILY PROCESS