Relationship satisfaction can help to maintain the positive effect of childbirth on parental self-esteem
Wenzel,Mario Staab,Doris Rowland,Zarah van Scheppingen,M.A.
Wenzel,Mario
Staab,Doris
Rowland,Zarah
van Scheppingen,M.A.
Abstract
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.
Description
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).
Date
2021
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Research Projects
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Keywords
childbirth, parenthood, propensity score matching, relationship satisfaction, self-esteem
Citation
Wenzel, M, Staab, D, Rowland, Z & van Scheppingen, M A 2021, 'Relationship satisfaction can help to maintain the positive effect of childbirth on parental self-esteem', Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 1358-1368. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620971532