engleski

Marital idealization during the transition to first parenthood

Previous research and theorizing suggest that positive illusions about one’s marital relationship are normal in satisfying marriages. Since most of the studies focused on the newlyweds, it is less clear how this tendency operates during later stages of the marital and family cycle. Using a combination of both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, this study examined the tendency of idealization in men and women at various points during the transition to the first parenthood. At Time 1, a sample of 320 wives and husbands, drawn from two periods of the transition (i.e., during wives’ middle trimester of pregnancy and about four months after the birth of the child), completed measures of marital functioning, including marital idealization. The same measures were completed by a subsample of 122 participants who agreed to take part in the follow-up ten months later (Time 2). The analyses of both cross-sectional and longitudinal data indicated a higher tendency of idealization during the pregnancy phase. However, comparisons of the Time 1 and Time 2 data suggest that in the periods after the childbirth the idealization is a more stable tendency, which is more closely related with the perception of marital stability than with one’s contentment with marriage. The observed pattern will be discussed with reference to the positive illusions functioning in sustaining the marital bond as well as to both processes’ sensitivity to the developments during the transition to parenthood.

transition to parenthood; marital idealization; longitudinal data

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