TY - JOUR
T1 - Relationship satisfaction can help to maintain the positive effect of childbirth on parental self-esteem
AU - Wenzel, Mario
AU - Staab, Doris
AU - Rowland, Zarah
AU - van Scheppingen, M.A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The panel data received for this article was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation).
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The transition to parenthood is accompanied by declined self-esteem levels, which may be explained by parents’ relationship satisfaction. However, prior research examined self-esteem only shortly before and after childbirth and had no or only unmatched childless respondents as a control group, limiting the possibility to examine long-term adaptive processes and the causal interpretation of the associations. Thus, we used panel data (10 years, 4,075 individuals, and 16,122 observations) to compare self-esteem and relationship satisfaction trajectories of parents with matched childless respondents using propensity score matching. We found a quadratic trajectory for parents’ self-esteem, which declined and increased before birth and declined and returned to baseline levels after birth. In contrast, matched childless respondents’ self-esteem decreased linearly before childbirth and then recovered. The quadratic postpartum process in parents was significantly associated with reduced relationship satisfaction. Thus, a fulfilling relationship may help to maintain the positive effects of childbirth on self-esteem in parents.
AB - The transition to parenthood is accompanied by declined self-esteem levels, which may be explained by parents’ relationship satisfaction. However, prior research examined self-esteem only shortly before and after childbirth and had no or only unmatched childless respondents as a control group, limiting the possibility to examine long-term adaptive processes and the causal interpretation of the associations. Thus, we used panel data (10 years, 4,075 individuals, and 16,122 observations) to compare self-esteem and relationship satisfaction trajectories of parents with matched childless respondents using propensity score matching. We found a quadratic trajectory for parents’ self-esteem, which declined and increased before birth and declined and returned to baseline levels after birth. In contrast, matched childless respondents’ self-esteem decreased linearly before childbirth and then recovered. The quadratic postpartum process in parents was significantly associated with reduced relationship satisfaction. Thus, a fulfilling relationship may help to maintain the positive effects of childbirth on self-esteem in parents.
KW - childbirth
KW - parenthood
KW - propensity score matching
KW - relationship satisfaction
KW - self-esteem
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097488504&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1948550620971532
DO - 10.1177/1948550620971532
M3 - Article
SN - 1948-5506
VL - 12
SP - 1358
EP - 1368
JO - Social Psychological and Personality Science
JF - Social Psychological and Personality Science
IS - 7
ER -