Carolyn Pape Cowan

Promoting Healthy Beginnings: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Preventive Intervention to Preserve Marital Quality During the Transition to Parenthood

Couples expecting their first child were randomly assigned to intervention (n=28) and comparison groups (n=38) to assess the efficacy of a couples intervention and examine marital satisfaction trajectories across the transition to parenthood. The primarily European American sample (M age=30 years) completed assessments of marital satisfaction at 5 points from the final trimester of pregnancy to 66 months postpartum. Growth curve analyses indicated a normative linear decline in marital satisfaction. Intervention participants experienced significantly less decline than comparison participants, providing support for the efficacy of the intervention. Comparable childless couples (n=13) did not show a decline in marital satisfaction. The results suggest that early family transitions that strain couple relationships provide critical opportunities for preventive interventions to strengthen marriage.

Coming home upset: Gender, marital satisfaction, and the daily spillover of workday experience into couple interactions.

This study explored how daily changes in workday pace and end-of-the-workday mood were related to nightly variations in withdrawn and angry marital behavior. For 3 days, 82 husbands and wives from 42 couples completed questionnaires at the end of the workday and at bedtime. More negatively arousing workdays were linked with angrier marital behavior for women and less angry and more withdrawn behavior for men. Daily changes in workday pace predicted fluctuations in womens, but not mens, marital behavior. Several of these workday-marital behavior connections varied by level of marital satisfaction. In contrast to the gender differences in responses to workday stress, no differences were found in typical marital behaviors. These findings suggest that gender differences are enhanced under stress.

Interventions as tests of family systems theories: Marital and family relationships in children's development and psychopathology

This paper addresses the role of family-based studies of preventive and therapeutic interventions in our understanding of normal development and psychopathology. The emphasis is on interventions designed to improve parent-child and/or marital relationships as a way of facilitating development and reducing psychopathology in children and adolescents. Intervention designs provide the gold standard for testing causal hypotheses. We begin by discussing the complexity of validating these hypotheses and the implications of the shift from a traditional emphasis on theories of etiology to developmental psychopathologys newer paradigm describing risks --> pathways --> outcomes. We summarize correlational studies that document the fact that difficult and ineffective parent-child and marital relationships function as risk factors for childrens cognitive, social, and emotional problems in childhood and adolescence. We then review prevention studies and therapy evaluation studies that establish some specific parenting and marital variables as causal risk factors with respect to these outcomes. Our discussion focuses on what intervention studies have revealed so far and suggests an agenda for further research.

Marriage and Fatherhood Programs

To improve the quality and stability of couple and father-child relationships in fragile families, researchers are beginning to consider how to tailor existing couple-relationship and father-involvement interventions, which are now targeted on married couples, to the specific needs of unwed couples in fragile families. The goal, explain Philip Cowan, Carolyn Pape Cowan, and Virginia Knox, is to provide a more supportive developmental context for mothers, fathers, and, especially, the children in fragile families.The authors present a conceptual model to explain why couple-relationship and father-involvement interventions developed for middle- and low-income married couples might be expected to provide benefits for children of unmarried parents. Then they summarize the extensive research on existing couple-relationship and father-involvement interventions, noting that only a few of the programs for couples and a handful of fatherhood programs have been systematically evaluated. Of those that have been evaluated, few have included unmarried couples as participants, and none has investigated whether interventions may have different effects when unmarried fathers live with or apart from the child. Furthermore, although the funders and creators of most programs for couples or for fathers justify their offerings in terms of potential benefits for children, the authors note that the programs rarely assess child outcomes systematically.Next, the authors consider whether interventions for working-class or middle-class fathers or couples that have shown benefits for family members and their relationships might be helpful to fragile families, in which the parents are not married at the time of their childs birth. Because evidence suggests that couple-oriented programs also have a positive effect on father involvement, the authors recommend integrating couple and fatherhood interventions to increase their power to reduce the risks and enhance the protective factors for childrens development and well-being. The authors emphasize the need for more research on program development to understand the most effective ways to strengthen co-parenting by couples who are the biological parents of a child but who have relatively tenuous, or already dissolved, relationships with one another.In closing, the authors summarize how far the family-strengthening field has come and offer suggestions for where it might go from here to be helpful to fragile families.

A More Optimistic Perspective on Government-Supported Marriage and Relationship Education Programs for Lower Income Couples.

Comments on the original article by Matthew D. Johnson (see record 2012-08242-001). It is important to challenge some of Johnsons points about the effectiveness and reach of interventions to lower income couples and couples of color and his suggested prioritization of basic over applied research. With emerging findings and practical knowledge gained in lower income communities from all across the United States over the past decade, we see evidence to support optimism for the potential utility of marriage and relationship education (MRE) programs to help disadvantaged and minority couples. Accordingly, continued support for these efforts is justified. We anticipate that the potential of these first-generation programs will only increase as the research Johnson called for advances our understanding of low-income and minority couple relationships, as more programs are rigorously evaluated, and as we learn and disseminate best practices from programs now in the field.

Policies That Strengthen Fatherhood and Family Relationships: What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Know?

As described in earlier articles, children whose parents have higher incomes and education levels are more likely to grow up in stable two-parent households than their economically disadvantaged counterparts. The widening gaps in fathers’ involvement in parenting and in the quality and stability of parents’ relationships may reinforce disparities in outcomes for the next generation. This article reviews evidence about the effectiveness of two strategies to strengthen fathers’ involvement and family relationships—fatherhood programs aimed at disadvantaged noncustodial fathers and relationship skills programs for parents who are together. Fatherhood programs have shown some efficacy in increasing child support payments, while some relationship skills approaches have shown benefits for the couples’ relationship quality, coparenting skills, fathers’ engagement in parenting, and children’s well-being. The research suggests that parents’ relationship with each other should be a fundamental consideration in future programs aimed at increasing low-income fathers’ involvement with their children.

Couple relationships: a missing link between adult attachment and children's outcomes

Decades of research have established links between parents’ working models of attachment to their parents and their children’s adaptation. This Special Issue focuses on the question of the mechanisms involved in intergenerational transmission: how to explain the linkage between the quality of parent–child attachment relationships in the family of origin (Generation 1–Generation 2) and the developmental adaptation of a child in the next generation (Generation 3). Four types of theoretical explanations have dominated the literature of the last 50 years. First, it is undoubtedly the case that some of the associations between the quality of family relationships across generations and children’s adjustment are affected by the fact that parents and children share genetic and other biological characteristics that influence family members’ behavior inside and outside the family (Caspi et al., 2002; Plomin, 1994). Second, psychoanalytic formulations focus on the child’s identification with the same-sex parent and the internalization of that parent’s superego, both of which provide guidelines for what constitutes appropriate behavior when the child becomes a parent. This process is repeated from generation to generation (Fraiberg, 1975; Freud, 1938), with variations depending on the sex of the child and the parent (Chodorow, 1978). Third, attachment theory assumes that adults have developed ‘‘working models’’ of parent–child relationships based on experiences with key attachment figures in their families of origin, particularly on their experience of separations and reunions, and those models shape their expectations and reactions during interactions with their own children (Bowlby, 1988; van IJzendoorn, 1992). In turn, interactions between parents and children result in the creation of working models in the children that shape their expectations of whether they are worthy of and can expect to receive support in times of stress or vulnerability (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). These expectations shape the child’s tendency to engage in intimate relationships by reaching out positively, attacking negatively, or avoiding involvement, which helps to determine both internalizing and externalizing behavior patterns (Cummings & Cummings, 2002; Sroufe, Carlson, Levy, & Egeland, 2003). Although both psychoanalytic and attachment theories focus almost entirely on children’s relationships with their mothers, this special issue will show that intergenerational linkages between working models of attachment and children’s outcomes hold for fathers as well. A fourth approach to the explanation of intergenerational transmission of adaptation tends to ignore inner schemas and defense mechanisms, and focuses instead on behavioral transactions. Early versions of this approach, such as social learning theory, looked specifically at whether children were reinforced or punished for their behavior or simply imitated their parents (Bandura, 1977; Patterson, 1975). Later theories advanced by Attachment & Human Development Vol. 11, No. 1, January 2009, 1–4

Lessons Learned From the Supporting Father Involvement Study: A Cross-Cultural Preventive Intervention for Low-Income Families With Young Children

ABSTRACT Despite the proliferation of fatherhood programs designed to promote paternal involvement and positive family outcomes, evaluations of these programs are scarce. The Supporting Father Involvement (SFI) study is a randomized clinical trial comprised of 289 low-income Spanish- and English-speaking families living in California. The evaluation design reflects a partnership stance that promotes empowerment of staff and social service agencies. This article examines lessons learned from the programs first 3 years (2002–2004) from the perspectives of both evaluators and program staff. The lessons cover a broad range of areas, including communication procedures, training, staffing, recruitment/retention, clinical needs, intervention content and process, and maintaining cultural sensitivity.

Working Models of Attachment to Parents and Partners: Implications for Emotional Behavior Between Partners

This study examined whether working models of attachment are associated with observed positive emotion, sadness, and anger during marital conflict. Individuals (n = 176) from a longitudinal study of families participated in the current cross-sectional study. Narrative interviews assessed the unique and combined contribution of attachment representations based on parents (adult attachment) and partner (couple attachment). The influence of partners attachment, depression symptoms, and sex of participant was also examined. Hierarchical linear models demonstrated that ones couple attachment security predicts ones observed positive emotion, whereas the partners couple attachment security predicts ones observed negative emotion. Partners depression symptoms moderated the effects of partners couple attachment. Adult attachment was not related to observed emotional behavior between partners. These findings have important clinical implications for individual, couple, and family therapy.

Unresolved loss in the Adult Attachment Interview: Implications for marital and parenting relationships

This study examined links between the unresolved loss of a significant person and current functioning in marital and parenting relationships. Participants were 80 women who had experienced loss, their husbands, and their preschool children. Unresolved loss was assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview, and individual, marital, and parenting adaptation was assessed through videotaped observations and womens self-reports. As predicted, women with unresolved loss displayed less positive emotion and more anxiety and anger with both their husbands and children, compared to women who were not unresolved. They also displayed less authoritative and more authoritarian parenting styles with their children. Yet unresolved women did not report more individual or relationship difficulties, suggesting that direct observations are needed to assess the implications of unresolved loss for family functioning.