Do Good Partners Make Good Parents?: Relationship Quality and Parenting in Married and Unmarried Families

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Do Good Partners Make Good Parents? Relationship
Quality and Parenting in Married and Unmarried
Families
Marcy Carlson Columbia University Sara
McLanahan Princeton University
July 13, 2004 Fragile Families Summer Data
Workshop
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The Questions

• How does the quality of parental relationships
  affect the quality of parenting?
• Are effects similar for positive and negative
  dimensions of relationship quality and parenting?
• Are they similar for mothers and fathers?
• Are they similar across different types of family
  structures?
• Are they causal?

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Why Do We Care?

• Good parenting is known to be strongly associated
  with positive child outcomes
• Parents relationship quality may be more
  important in predicting good parenting than
  family structure ( of parents biological ties)
• Family structures are changing, and we need to
  know more about family process in non-traditional
  families
• New marriage initiatives are aimed at improving
  parental relationships

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What Does Theory Tell Us?

• Family systems theory predicts a spill-over
  effect positive relationship ? positive
  parenting
• Social support theory predicts that parental
  support will improve parenting by reducing stress
• Alternatively, adult relationships may compete
  with parent-child relationship

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Causality Issues

• Multiple pathways may explain the association
  between relationship quality and parenting
  quality
• Third factors
• Easy child may affect parenting and
  relationship quality
• Easy parent may affect parenting and
  relationships
• Reverse causality
• Good parenting may improve relationship quality
  by making the partner happy
• Good parenting may undermine relationship quality
  by making the partner jealous (relevant to time
  investments)

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What Does Empirical Evidence Tell Us?

• Parental relationship quality is positively
  correlated with good parenting
• Most studies focus on small samples of
  middle-class, married couples
• Most studies focus on negative measures of
  relationship quality (conflict)
• Few studies deal with causality (exception is
  Cowan experiments)

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What Our Study Does

• Examines associations between relationship
  quality and parenting quality
• Uses positive as well as negative measures
• Compares results by gender and family type
• Deals with causality by
• Controlling for individual differences (easy
  parent)
• Controlling for other parents parenting (easy
  child)
• Controlling for mothers approval of fathers
  parenting (reverse causality)

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Data and Sample

• Data from Fragile Families one-year follow-up
  survey
• Sample is restricted to parents in a romantic
  relationship
• Sample
• Mothers 2,928
• Fathers 2,522

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Indicators of Parenting Quality

• Warmth (play game, toys, hug, sing songs) Range
  never (1) to nearly every day (4)
• Cognitive stimulation (read, tell stories)
• Range never (1) to nearly every day (5)
• Frequency of spanking
• Range never (1) to nearly every day (5)

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Parenting Quality Stats
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Indicators of Relationship Quality

• Supportiveness Range never (1) to often (3)
• Fair
• Affectionate
• Critical
• Encouraging
• Listens
• Understands
• Overall quality Range poor (1) to excellent
  (5)
• Conflict (frequency) Range never (1) to always
  (5)

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Relationship Quality Stats
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Other Variables Stats
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Other Variables Stats (contd)
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Effects of Relationship Quality on Parenting

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Marital/Co-residence Interactions
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The Effects of Other Variableson Parenting
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Summary

• Parents relationship quality is positively
  associated with parenting quality
• The pattern is similar for positive and negative
  indicators
• The evidence suggests that causality runs from
  relationship quality to parenting
• The effects of relationship quality are more
  pronounced for fathers than for mothers
• The effects of relationship quality are similar
  across different types of families

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Policy Implications

• Improving the quality of parental relationships
  is likely to improve the quality of parenting
  even if parents do not marry one another
• Programs could usefully focus on both mothers and
  fathers, but especially fathers