Role of Marital Adjustment in Associations Between Romantic Attachment and Coparenting

• Author: Patricia Kaminski,Shelley Riggs,Michelle Young
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12245
• Published date: 01 April 2017
• Date: 01 April 2017

M Y, S R,  P K University of North Texas

Role of Marital Adjustment in Associations

Between Romantic Attachment and Coparenting

Objective: A family systems framework was

used to examine the reciprocal inuences of

parents’ romantic attachment security, marital

adjustment, and the coparenting alliance.

Background: Research indicates that adult

attachment strategies are predictive of adult

romantic relationships, but there is less evi-

dence linking adult romantic attachment to the

ability to effectively coparent. Furthermore,

much of the prior coparenting literature has

focused on direct paths and has not accounted

for mutual inuence within parental dyads,

despite an increased awareness of the interde-

pendence among familial roles and a push to

understand familywide dynamics.

Method: A community sample of 86 heterosex-

ual couples with a residential child between

8 and 11 years of age completed the Experi-

ences in Close Relationships Scale, the Dyadic

Adjustment Scale, and the Coparenting Scale as

part of a larger study on family processes in

middle childhood. Multilevel models were con-

ducted utilizing the actor-partner interdepen-

dence model.

Results: Compared to their low attachment anx-

iety counterparts, spouses with higher attach-

ment anxiety and avoidance reported lower

levels of marital adjustment, less coparenting

cooperation, and more coparenting conict.

Findings indicated that marital adjustment

Department of Psychology, Universityof North Texas, Den-

ton, TX 76203 (anneyoung@my.unt.edu).

Key Words: Attachment, coparenting, couples, marital

adjustment, parenting.

mediates the relationship between romantic

attachment style and perceptions of coparenting.

Conclusion: Results highlight the benet of

conceptualizing parental attachment, marital,

and coparental subsystems within a systemic

framework and suggest that a healthy marital

relationship is an important intervening factor

that helps explain links between attachment

security and the coparenting alliance.

Implications: Findings underscore the impor-

tance of evaluating and treating multiple levels

of the family system and suggest that thera-

peutic treatment of the marital relationship

may be associated with a healthier coparenting

dynamic.

B

According to family systems theory, adaptive

families are characterized by a parent-led hier-

archical organization in which all subsystems

interconnect to inuence one another and the

family system as a whole (Minuchin, 1985).

The ability of couples to cooperatively and

supportively parent together, or coparent, is par-

ticularly important in two-parent households

because the spousal and parenting subsystems

affect each other as well as other family rela-

tionships (McHale, Kuersten, & Lauretti, 1996).

For example, studies have linked positive and

negative coparenting to various aspects of child

and adolescent development, such as mental

health, risky behavior,attention, and dependence

(Riina & McHale, 2014; Teubert & Pinquart,

2010). Despite studies indicating that coparent-

ing contributes to child adjustment beyond the

Family Relations 66 (April 2017): 331–345 331

DOI:10.1111/fare.12245