Chapter II: New Fathers' and Mothers' Daily Stressors and Resources Influence Parent Adjustment and Family Relationships.

Abstract

To understand new fathers' experiences and well-being, we examine links between fathers and their partners' replenishing and stressful daily experiences-exercise, sleep, work, chores, general stress, and parenting stress-and their own and their partners' well-being and family relations. Fathers and mothers of ten-month old infants (N=143/140 mothers/fathers) in the U.S. reported on daily experiences for eight consecutive days. Results of multilevel models indicated that more replenishing and fewer stressful daily experiences were generally linked to more parent happiness, better couple relations, and greater closeness with the infant. Several gender differences also emerged that may reflect different stress and coping processes or different social roles for mothers and fathers; most striking was that on days that fathers spent more time on chores, mothers reported greater couple closeness but fathers reported more arguments. This exploration of new parents' daily experiences demonstrates the value of the method to generate intervention-relevant insights, as well as the importance of examining fathers' (and mothers') experiences in the context of couple-level dynamics.