Ready for the transition to parenthood? Predicting relationship satisfaction trajectories from prenatal indicators of low readiness.

Abstract

During the past decades, interventions to strengthen marriage and promote healthy family formation during the transition to parenthood have become more widely available. The broad attendance to such interventions may suggest to the public that having a baby can put the health of any marriage at risk, although large heterogeneity in parents' trajectories of relationship satisfaction has been demonstrated. In this study, we investigated whether four indicators of low transition-to-parenthood readiness in expecting couples-both for the individual (actor) and their partner-predicted a larger decline in relationship satisfaction across this major life transition. Latent class growth analyses estimated heterogeneous relationship satisfaction trajectories for 1,433 couples from 21 weeks gestation to 19 months postpartum. Findings indicated three groups of parents: 38.7% experienced initially high and stable relationship satisfaction, 51.3% initially high with a small decline, and 10.0% initially low with a large decline. For both the pregnant and nonpregnant partner, actor and partner's prenatal doubts about the future of the relationship predicted group membership of the low and large decline subgroup rather than to the two more stable groups. For the nonpregnant partner, lacking a clear wish for a child substantially predicted group membership of the low and large decline subgroup. Nonmarital status or unplanned pregnancy did not predict group membership. These results supported that most new parents experience their relationship as robust against the challenges of early parenthood. However, parents experiencing relationship doubts and childbirth as an unwanted life transition may benefit from targeted pregnancy support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).