Dynamic Family System Trajectories From Pregnancy to Child's First Year

Abstract

Family systems reorganize during transitional periods, such as the birth of a new child. Longitudinal research, however, on family dynamics during the transition to parenthood is lacking. Accordingly, the authors aimed to identify family system trajectories from pregnancy to the child's first birthday and to examine their contextual predictors. Both parents (N = 702) reported autonomy and intimacy in marital (wife‐to‐husband, husband‐to‐wife) and parenting (mother‐to‐child, father‐to‐child) relations during pregnancy and at child's ages of 2 months and 12 months. Finite mixture modeling revealed 7 unique family system trajectories: (a) Cohesive (35%), (b) Disengaged (5%), (c) Enmeshed Declining (6%), (d) Enmeshed Quadratic (5%), (e) Authoritarian (14%), (f) Escalating Crisis (4%), and (g) Discrepant (15%) families. Parental education in interaction with duration of partnership and parity predicted family trajectory membership. The study demonstrates how different family types reorganize during the transition to parenthood; this includes decline, growth, and stability in autonomy and intimacy.

Family systems approach to attachment relations, war trauma, and mental health among Palestinian children and parents

“…Both the children and parents in these families reported high attachment security, and the children also exhibited low avoidance. The results concur with research empirically confirming the emergence of the classic family systems (Minuchin, 1974) and found that cohesive, balanced, and secure family types tend to form the majority (Lindblom et al, 2014; Johnson, 2010). The phenomenon of highly secure families in conditions of severe unsafety may indicate parents’ commitment and motivation to protect their children’s development and well-being in war zones.…”

“…Similarly to research on family systems in peaceful societies (Johnson, 2010; Lindblom et al, 2014), the study revealed multiple family dynamics. Among Palestinians, a secure family type with warm siblingship and optimal parenting practices was more than twice as common as an insecure family type with very negative relational patterns (36% vs 16%).…”

Patterns of marital relationship change across the transition from one child to two.

“…We acknowledge the differences in sample size across classes and the possibility of increased probability of Type I errors of these post-hoc comparisons; all remaining classes, however, constituted greater than 5% of the sample, in line with Lindblom et al’s (2014) decision to retain classes larger than 4%. In the ANOVA testing, we used Tukey post-hoc tests to reduce risk of Type I error due to multiple testing when comparing means across classes.…”

“…A recent study by Lindblom and colleagues (2014) highlights the complexity of group-based analyses when multiple dimensions over multiple timepoints for multiple individuals were examined. The resulting groups were much smaller in size than those identified when analyzing a single dimension for one individual separately.…”

Parents' Psychological Well‐being and Parental Self‐efficacy in Relation to the Family's Triadic Interaction

“…By law, both parents can take parental leave, and many fathers take advantage of this opportunity. However, despite a relatively high level of equality in parenting roles, previous studies have shown some gender differences between parents’ experiences and expectations of parenting and family relationships also in Finland (Lindblom et al, ; Flykt et al, ).…”