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The present study aimed to characterize the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on families with preschool age children and to identify pre-pandemic factors that explained unique family experiences. We leveraged an ongoing longitudinal study of relatively well-resourced community families who had reported on family functioning prior to the pandemic and completed surveys 6 months after pandemic onset. Both parents of dual parenting households endorsed significant hardships as a direct result of the pandemic (e.g., disrupted family routines, challenges at work); however, families also reported aspects of flourishing (i.e., experiencing positive outcomes in response to adversity) such as spending more time together as a family. Families were prone to greater hardships and fewer opportunities for growth to the extent that parents were lower in psychological resources (i.e., greater stress and internalizing symptoms, poor well-being) and were not on the same page as a couple (i.e., interparental discord, low quality coparenting) prior to pandemic onset. Finally, greater pandemic hardships predicted poorer parental mental health, greater family dysfunction, and elevated child psychopathology, controlling for pre-pandemic levels. Parents who reported more family flourishing from the pandemic had a stronger interparental relationship. Results are intended to inform theories of family stress and family interventions that can be tailored to promote resiliency (i.e., adaptation to challenging life events) and prevent dysfunction when families face rapid change and adjustment and high degrees of uncertainty and stress., (© 2022 Family Process Institute.)

Despite multiple theories and treatment modalities emphasizing the importance of individuality in couple relationships, the field is lacking a reliable and valid measure of this construct. In the present study, we developed the Individuality in Couples (ICQ) questionnaire and demonstrated its strong psychometric properties across two samples of participants in committed intimate relationships (Sample 1 = 580 undergraduates; Sample 2 = 445 community members). The ICQ is comprised of 25 items that can be combined into a reliable total score to measure individuality in the context of couple relationships (i.e., the extent to which someone feels respected by their partner for their individuality and experiences personal autonomy in the relationship). Scores on the ICQ demonstrated high internal consistency, excellent construct replicability, convergent and divergent validity with measures of other relationship dimensions (i.e., intimacy, support, sexual satisfaction, psychological aggression, communication), criterion validity with measures of relationship satisfaction and partner health, and incremental predictive validity for explaining relationship satisfaction and partner well-being when controlling for other relationship dimensions. Results suggest that individuality in couples is largely a unidimensional construct that is distinct from more severe patterns of control and coercion characteristic of psychological aggression. The ICQ holds promise for identifying and promoting dynamics essential for healthy couple relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Purpose: To evaluate how sexual pain influences changes in sexual frequency from the pregnancy to postpartum transition, and to examine how couple's sexual communication interacts with sexual pain during pregnancy., Methods: We explored data following 159 mixed-sex couples across the transition from pregnancy to 6 months postpartum. Couples completed the Relationship Quality Interview and the Marital Satisfaction Inventory-Revised, which assessed their sexual communication, pain and other sexual problems during pregnancy, and frequency of intercourse at pregnancy and postpartum., Results: Overall, couples reported a decline in sexual activity from pregnancy to postpartum. Women's sexual pain during pregnancy influenced changes in sexual frequency only among couples who reported poorer communication about sex. Among couples reporting sexual pain and good communication, pain did not impact changes in sexual frequency (i.e. they experienced significant declines in sexual activity into the postpartum period, as expected). In contrast, among couples with poor communication, sexual frequency did not significantly decline., Conclusion: Our findings suggest that sexual communication alters the effects of sexual pain on postpartum sexual activity. Future research should examine if sexual communication training during pregnancy improves postpartum sexual wellbeing.

Research demonstrates the central role of mother-child relationships in child socioemotional development; however, families are complex systems and the unique roles of multiple family subsystems in early infant development have received less attention. In the present study, we investigated the role of multiple family relationships (interparental, mother-infant, father-infant), during pregnancy and the first month after childbirth, in infant socioemotional functioning at 6 months. We administered semi-structured interviews during pregnancy to assess multiple qualities of the interparental relationship. At 1 month postpartum, parents completed reports about their feelings and attitudes toward their infant to assess impaired bonding. At 6 months, parents provided reports of child socioemotional functioning. Both mother-infant and father-infant impaired bonding were uniquely associated with infant socioemotional impairment, controlling for prenatal interparental relationship quality. Additionally, multiple dimensions of the interparental relationship (i.e., poor-quality conflict management, inadequate support for fathers, and low levels of respect toward mothers) were associated with infant socioemotional impairment controlling for parent-infant bonding. Results also demonstrated an indirect pathway, such that poor sexual quality during pregnancy was associated with fathers (but not mothers) reporting more impaired bonding with their infants, which was linked to greater infant socioemotional impairment. Results highlight the importance of understanding the broad family environment, prior to and immediately following the birth of the child, to identify at-risk children at the earliest possible stages of intervention., (© 2020 Family Process Institute.)

Sleep is a critical health behavior with important implications for child development. This chapter discusses the effects of sleep problems on early child executive functioning (EF), with an emphasis on individual differences that might moderate this relationship. Specifically, we (1) provide a brief background on sleep and EF in early childhood; (2) review literature on the association between sleep and EF; (3) review literature on individual differences in the effects of sleep problems on EF; (4) offer recommendations for future research on moderators of the sleep-EF association, and (5) briefly describe an ongoing study examining the moderators of the sleep-EF association within a longitudinal study from pregnancy to preschool., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Given the powerful implications of relationship quality for health and well-being, a central mission of relationship science is explaining why some romantic relationships thrive more than others. This large-scale project used machine learning (i.e., Random Forests) to 1) quantify the extent to which relationship quality is predictable and 2) identify which constructs reliably predict relationship quality. Across 43 dyadic longitudinal datasets from 29 laboratories, the top relationship-specific predictors of relationship quality were perceived-partner commitment, appreciation, sexual satisfaction, perceived-partner satisfaction, and conflict. The top individual-difference predictors were life satisfaction, negative affect, depression, attachment avoidance, and attachment anxiety. Overall, relationship-specific variables predicted up to 45% of variance at baseline, and up to 18% of variance at the end of each study. Individual differences also performed well (21% and 12%, respectively). Actor-reported variables (i.e., own relationship-specific and individual-difference variables) predicted two to four times more variance than partner-reported variables (i.e., the partner's ratings on those variables). Importantly, individual differences and partner reports had no predictive effects beyond actor-reported relationship-specific variables alone. These findings imply that the sum of all individual differences and partner experiences exert their influence on relationship quality via a person's own relationship-specific experiences, and effects due to moderation by individual differences and moderation by partner-reports may be quite small. Finally, relationship-quality change (i.e., increases or decreases in relationship quality over the course of a study) was largely unpredictable from any combination of self-report variables. This collective effort should guide future models of relationships., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.

Mutually responsive orientation (MRO) reflects a system of reciprocity between members of a dyad (Kochanska, 2002), and MRO observed in parent-child relationships is a robust predictor of child development (Kim, Boldt, & Kochanska, 2015; Kim & Kochanska, 2012; Kochanska, Aksan, & Joy, 2007; Kochanska, Forman, Aksan, & Dunbar, 2005). The goal of the present study was to adapt an observational coding system previously validated in parent-child dyads to assess MRO in intimate relationships and test the reliability and validity of scores from this adapted coding system. One hundred and fifty-nine couples were observed engaging in a series of standardized, naturalistic, interactive contexts. A team of trained behavioral coders rated MRO across several paradigms. Participants also completed semistructured interviews and self-report questionnaires assessing numerous dimensions of intimate relationship quality to assess convergent and divergent validity and individual and relationship health outcomes to assess criterion and incremental validity. Interrater reliability estimates established that multiple coders could reliably rate MRO across multiple contexts. As anticipated, MRO had small to moderate correlations with other relationship processes (e.g., conflict management, support), demonstrating that MRO is a unique but related dimension of intimate relationship quality. MRO scores were also associated with numerous outcomes including global relationship satisfaction, relationship security, partner mental health, and parent-infant bonding, even when controlling for neuroticism. The assessment of MRO in intimate relationships holds promise for tapping into a unique dimension of intimate relationship quality with implications for explaining a range of outcomes of interest to couples researchers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Understanding how couples navigate and negotiate the challenges and demands of pregnancy has important implications for family health. The aim of this study was to apply a multidimensional model of intimate relationship quality in a sample of 154 pregnant, cohabitating couples, to investigate the association between a range of intimate relationship processes (i.e., emotional intimacy, conflict management, sexual quality, received respect and acceptance, and received support) and the global relationship satisfaction of each partner. Semistructured clinical interviews were administered to each partner assessing multiple qualities of the relationship, and participants completed home surveys of global relationship satisfaction each day for 14 days. Results demonstrated that multiple dimensions of the intimate relationship were associated with greater relationship satisfaction. Some processes (e.g., degree of emotional intimacy and closeness, conflict management) had larger effects on relationship satisfaction than others (e.g., quality of the sexual relationship). Furthermore, some processes were more important for maternal than paternal satisfaction (e.g., emotional intimacy, support, respect). Finally, results varied, to some degree, as a function of whether parents were transitioning to parenthood for the first time. We discuss the implications of adopting a multidimensional approach to studying the specific relationship processes associated with global relationship satisfaction and present implications for clinicians working with couples navigating the transition into parenthood., (© 2019 Family Process Institute.)

A common topic for advice given to parents after childbirth - both from relationship experts and popular media - is how to "bounce back" to one's pre-pregnancy sexuality, with warnings that postpartum declines in sexual frequency will take a serious toll on one's relationship. However, these admonishments may not accurately reflect the ways in which the unique reproductive context of pregnancy and the postpartum transition alter associations between sexual frequency and relationship quality. Evolutionary perspectives on reproductive strategies would suggest that in the postpartum context, decreased sexual activity would help target parental investment in the current offspring (rather than creating new offspring); however, if the parental relationship is lacking in intimacy and support, continued sexual activity may help seal the cracks in the bond. We tested this theory in a longitudinal dyadic study of changes in relationship quality and sexual frequency from pregnancy to 6 months postpartum among 159 heterosexual couples. We found that across three different measures of relationship quality taken from interviews and behavioral observation of couple interactions, higher relationship quality (i.e., greater support, intimacy, and responsiveness) predicted greater decline in sexual frequency whereas sexual frequency remained relatively stable in lower quality relationships. These findings suggest that, during the postpartum transition, decreased sexual frequency may not be a reliable signal of poor relationship quality., (Copyright © 2020 Lorenz, Ramsdell and Brock.)