A mum and a dad sit beside each other on a sofa, eyes glued to their television screen. On the screen is a video of a child, a little girl, their daughter. She is playing in a garden on a warm, sunny day. As the parents watch the screen, their faces are animated with emotion. The little girl is in her own world of imaginary play. They share a knowing look and a smile as they watch their child run and laugh with abandon. A glimmer of concern and anxiety flickers across the mother’s face as her child navigates the rope net on the climbing frame, her grip on the ropes slipping suddenly, while the father’s face glows with pride as he observes his child’s athleticism and bravery. Their child’s hysterical laughter as she chases a harassed-looking pigeon across the lawn leads to a similar burst of laughter from her parents as they are taken up in her moment of joy. This is a scene repeated in homes across the land and we could argue that the reactions we see, split as they are along sex lines, are wholly typical.
In this chapter, I want to expand our focus a little to move beyond just dad and consider the family. To explore how both parents can work together to provide a child with all he or she needs to develop, but also to understand how adding a baby (or two, or three . . .) can have an impact on a relationship. We’ll consider the best way to make sure this is a happy transition for everyone. And I will show you the profoundly different way that mum and dad conceive of their family and the relationships within it, which can help us understand why difficulties in the parenting relationship have a significantly more negative impact on dad and his family relationships than anyone else.
We may joke about the difference in parenting styles between men and women – a well-worn cliché given full run-out in numerous sitcoms and movies – but what we are observing here are the results of half a million years of brain evolution, with the ultimate aim of producing a team that is ideally adapted to provide the best environment for raising a child. Not all children emerge into the world as members of a nuclear family – heterosexual or gay. But for those that do, their arrival can have a profound effect on both parents’ brains, biology and psychology.
A distinction they see in us . . . is the way we do discipline. I tend to be the one more likely to become quickly angry, whereas Sarah is more balanced, able to reason with them. What would they come to me for? Maybe it’s around the things I enjoy, the things I like doing with them, so if they want a bike ride they will come to me. Sarah tends to do more creative things with them; I come home and there are paints and crayons [and I think], Ooh, looks like hard work.
John, dad to Joseph (four) and Leo (two)
John’s observation is one I hear with reasonable regularity. We learnt in Chapter Two that during pregnancy the baseline levels of oxytocin of parents-to-be are synchronized. It is believed that this wonder of biology – triggered by the cohabiting couple’s close behavioural and physiological bond – occurs to ensure the relationship between the couple is strong and that as parents they will speak and act as one; crucial if they want to maintain some semblance of control and provide the stable foundation that their child will need. But evolution hates redundancy – the idea that two people will carry out a survival-critical behaviour when it only requires one to do so. Energy is finite, and the job of raising a human child is complex. Evolution is loath to make both parents fulfil a task when one could be freed up to achieve a different and equally vital parenting goal. As a consequence, this level of hormonal synchrony is not necessarily mirrored by behavioural synchrony. Of course, we know this. Even among those most equal of parents, the Aka of the Congo in Africa, there are still roles that are distinct to mum and dad – dad for co-sleeping, mum for feeding. In the West, it is generally the case that in traditional family set-ups, dads play and mums nurture. Dads push developmental boundaries and mums plan activity timetables. Dads fix broken toys and buy games consoles, mums handle the baking, painting and sticking, just like John’s wife. We know from Chapter Seven that dads get a peak in oxytocin when playing with their child, while for mums this chemical rush is reserved for caring behaviours. The brain has evolved to ensure that the parents favour doing very different but equally vital activities with their children – and as such, all the bases are covered by the parenting team. And this neurochemical split is mirrored by a corresponding split in brain activity.
In 2012, fifteen pairs of heterosexual parents of 6-month-old babies volunteered to be placed in a fMRI scanner and have their brain activity assessed while they watched videos of their children playing. Israeli psychologist Shir Atzil wanted to see whether the behavioural and neurochemical differences we see between dads and mums are reflected in differences in their brain activity when involved in a child-centred activity. What she hoped to see was synchrony in some areas of the brain, reflecting the skills and behaviours that all parents need to exhibit to build a secure attachment, but asynchrony in others, reflecting the distinct behavioural differences between the members of the parenting team. And her wishes were granted. While viewing the video of their child playing, both mums and dads showed activity in the areas of the brain linked to empathy and mentalizing. Mentalizing is the ability to read and understand the thoughts and feelings of another person – to place yourself in their shoes. It is essential if you want to manipulate someone, or lie or cheat, as it allows you to second-guess their next move. But it is also essential if you are to care for someone, for it allows you to feel what they feel, respond appropriately and anticipate what they may need next. This ability is fundamental to a secure attachment between parent and child, and the activity patterns in the brains of both parents show us that both mum and dad have the neural capability to build a strong attachment to their child.
But in other areas of the brain, there was a distinct difference between the sexes. In the brains of the mothers, the ancient centre, known as the limbic system, was the most active. Within this area, at the very core of the brain, lie the brain systems associated with emotion. The fact that they are more active in mothers than fathers may reflect the key characteristics of mothering – giving affection and nurturing. One area of the limbic system, the amygdala, was particularly active. This small structure detects, and causes a reaction to, risk, suggesting that as well as caring for their child, a mother is constantly monitoring the environment for any potential threats – that slippery rope ladder in the introduction to this chapter being one. In contrast, in the father’s brain it was the neocortex that was set alight – the outer, deeply riven surface of the brain. In particular, the areas associated with social cognition – responsible for enabling someone to handle complex thoughts and tasks and make plans. This may reflect the special responsibility a father takes for teaching and encouraging his child to strive towards independence above and beyond that carried out by mum. When viewing the video o f his playing child, the father is assessing her abilities and planning the next step in pushing her developmental boundaries. Furthermore, the fact that a father’s activity is located in this brain structure – the site of our species’ advanced intelligence and abilities – reflects the innate flexibility of the dad’s role.
We know from Chapter Five that the power and value of the fathering role lies in great part with his ability to respond quickly to environmental changes to ensure the survival of his offspring. To do this, you have to be intellectually quick-thinking – hence a father engages his neocortex. What is also interesting is that the locations of these intense activations – the ancient brain core in mothers and relatively new outer neocortex in fathers – reflects the different evolutionary time points of the emergence of these roles. Mothering is as old as time, present in the earliest reptiles, whereas we know that human fatherhood is only 500,000 years old at best, meaning its skills are hard-wired into the newest area of the brain.
Let’s be clear, Shir’s results do not mean that fathers never care and mothers never teach – we all know this not to be true. Fathers showed activation in the limbic area and mothers in the neocortex, but the extent of this activity was much less as compared to their opposite-sex partner. To avoid redundancy, evolution has shaped the brains of mothers and fathers to focus on different aspects of their child’s needs to ensure that, together, they meet all her developmental needs. And remember that the same is true for the gay parenting team; the primary caretaking dad shows activation in both regions of the brain. Within the nuclear family, evolution has ensured that, regardless of parental sexuality, a child is cared for by the perfect parenting team.
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Both Deb and myself said, [for the] first month or so, we felt like Anna wasn’t ours, wasn’t our baby; it was weird, and it was only a few months in that you started to say, ‘It’s our little ball of fun.’ And only really recently when she has started to get a little character do you really think, This is my daughter and this is who I am going to be looking after, watch grow and stuff like that. So, it took a good few weeks, if not months, to really realize you have this baby for the next . . . [however many years].
Steve, dad to Anna (six months)
Pregnancy is one of the very few periods in our life that has a firmly defined beginning and end. In most cases this allows parents nine solid months in which to prepare themselves for the whirlwind of parenthood. Obviously, this means that there is time to do all the essential practical jobs and engage in some serious equipment shopping, but there is also time to focus on the relationship between mum and dad. Unfortunately, this is often an area of preparation that gets overlooked – it is rarely the focus of antenatal classes and not something that most parents-to-be take much time to discuss. But if you think of it using the analogy beloved of human resources managers, that of the effective workplace team, before you are parents, you are a team of two and have gone through the sometimes rocky stages of team-building that mean that, hopefully, you have reached a happy equilibrium and rub along together well. However, having a baby is adding another member to that team and at a time when you both may have very few physical and mental resources to fall back on – this can result in a considerable ‘storm’, as everyone comes to terms with their new place in the order. The couple are being asked to work together, carrying out tasks that neither of them initially know how to start, let alone complete, with a new boss who is not terribly good at communicating what he or she needs beyond screaming at them. Sounds stressful, doesn’t it? Hopefully it is clear why, to cope with this new dynamic, it is a good idea to try to make the relationship between the parents as strong and healthy as it can possibly be before baby is added to the mix.
We know that, for both mum and dad, how positive they find the experience of becoming a parent is strongly linked to how satisfied they are with their relationship. That is, the more cohesive, consensual and affectionate the relationship, the more satisfied the individual is with their partner and the more they rate becoming a parent as a positive experience. In particular, new parents rate their relationship highly if three criteria are met. Firstly, how mutually supportive and encouraging their partner is regarding their parenting role. Secondly, how aligned their ideas are about co-parenting and how happy they are with the way the baby-related chores are divided up. And, thirdly, the temperament and developmental stage of their baby. It is truly the case that life does become easier as your baby develops and can communicate their needs effectively and can meet some of these needs, such as feeding, themselves. This in turn makes parents less stressed and, hopefully, their relationship more stable. But beyond these jointly shared issues, there are some factors that are more important to dad than to mum and these mostly centre on the temperament of the baby and, more relevant here, the support dad receives from mum for his role as a father.
Maternal gatekeeping is the term given to beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that exclude the father from spending time with his child. In its most extreme version it only occurs at low frequencies within the global population, but elements of it can be seen in a significant number of parental relationships where conflict is a regular occurrence. It is most often seen in separated or divorcing couples, but also exists within families where the parents cohabit. It can be caused by, and be the cause of, marital difficulty, as the mother uses access to the child as a weapon in her disagreements with her partner, which leads to instability in the family and further conflict. It is important to recognize, because it has serious consequences for the marital relationship, the relationship between father and child and the development of the child. Mothers who practise maternal gatekeeping tend to be overly and publicly critical of their partner’s parenting style. They tend to undermine his attempts at discipline and set unachievable criteria for allowing him to spend time with his child. They control all of the child’s activities and scheduling and, believing that mothers make the best carers, find it very hard to relinquish any of the care of the child to anyone else. Ultimately, they believe that the father is very much an assistant rather than an equal in the parenting project – they, as the mother, are the boss.
In their study of 365 Mexican American and European American families, a team of psychologists and sociologists from a number of American universities, led by Matthew Stevenson, explored both the causes of gatekeeping and the impact it had on the relationship between father and adolescent child and the adolescent child’s sense of importance – their self-esteem. They found that, irrespective of ethnicity or socio-economic group, an increase in marital problems – such as volatility, criticism, jealousy or infidelity – led to an increase in maternal gatekeeping beliefs in the mother. This in turn meant that fathers spent less time with their children, regardless of the gender of the child. The impact of this on the child was a sense that they did not matter or mattered less to their father than they previously had. As such feelings lead to increases in negative self-absorption and inability to control emotions, these are worrying consequences for the children within these families.
Luckily, many fathers won’t experience maternal gatekeeping in their relationship with their partner. But the behaviours and mental health of all fathers are influenced by how their partners behave towards them in their role as a father. Where partners are encouraging and support the father in their role and actively enable the father to have time with his child, the risk of the father’s poor mental health decreases and the ease with which he adopts his new identity increases. And this has positive consequences for the bond he can build with his child. In their 2014 study, a joint team from the University of Sussex and City University London in the UK, led by Ylva Parfitt, followed a group of parents-to-be as they transitioned to parenthood. During pregnancy, seventy-two women and sixty-six of their male partners (not all the dads wanted to take part) were asked about their mental health and their degree of satisfaction with their relationship. The team then waited for babies to be born and repeated these measures for all when their babies were three and fifteen months old, with the addition of a measure that assessed the baby’s temperament. Two valuable conclusions were drawn. Firstly, for both parents, how strong the bond was between them and their baby was most significantly affected by how they had rated their relationships during pregnancy, meaning that we can get a good handle on the quality of the future relationship between parent and child by assessing their interactions with their partner. Secondly, this link between relationship satisfaction and the strength of the bond between baby and parent was still the case for men at the fifteen-month mark, in combination with his level of mental health, whereas, for the mums, the key factor impacting their relationship with their child at this point was only his or her temperament. The influence of the state of the parenting relationship appeared to be more influential for a longer period of time on the relationship between dad and baby than mum and baby. What this means for parents is that working on your relationship during pregnancy to make sure it is the healthiest it can be will make bonding with your child easier and that, particularly for dad, keeping half an eye on your relationship once baby is there is important. Seek out those willing babysitters, take some time to be a couple and try to make sure baby isn’t your sole topic of conversation, however tempting it may be.
[It’s] been almost like our relationship is on holiday for a moment, so I wouldn’t say we don’t have a relationship, but it is very different in terms of what we talk about every day. It is obviously focused more on our baby at the moment. The first thing I get when I walk in the door is, ‘Do you know how many times he ate this?’ ‘He did that.’ ‘This was in his nappy.’ That is the daily report. It has changed our dynamic quite a bit and I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing, it’s just part of the next stage for us and at some point I hope we move back to more of an intimate setting . . . [where] the two of us can sit down and chat about something other than nappies.
Jim, dad to Sean (six months)
It is clear from previous chapters that fathers and mothers experience the transition to parenthood – that is, the period of time it takes to feel comfortable and competent as a parent – very differently. It is not entirely clear why this might be, but I could suggest that it is linked to the longer period required for a father to bond with his child, as we explored in Chapter Seven, and the fact that the current status of the father in Western families is still that of the secondary parent. Fathers are still the most likely parent to head out to work while mum takes on most of the primary care. As a result, dad’s time with his child is limited to evenings, weekends and the annual family holiday. This means fathers have less time to practise their new-found parenting skills and achieve the level of competence that will allow them to feel comfortable inhabiting their new role.
All of these differences between mum and dad need to be accommodated within this new parental relationship, and if this is not achieved via constructive rather than destructive communication – taking time to explore feelings about parenthood, arriving at a joint co-parenting plan, avoiding judgement and criticism, taking care to remain supportive of each other – the quality of the marital relationship and the cohesiveness of the family will diminish.
Once baby has arrived, the new family will exist at three levels of organization: the individual, the couples (teams of two: mum and dad, baby and dad, baby and mum) and the family (mum, dad and baby). Research by Ilanit Gordon on ninety-four heterosexual couples and their 5-month-old first-borns has shown that mums tend to perceive their family as a set of these couples; she will focus separately on the relationship she has with her partner and with her baby, and the relationship she observes between her partner and her baby. In contrast, dads view the family at these three distinct levels: individual, couples, family – and, as a consequence, they and their other relationships are more vulnerable to the impact of disharmony within the marital couple. This is known as the spillover effect and describes the fact that the impact of marital conflict can spill over to the rest of the family. Mums are more immune to this because they can compartmentalize their family relationships, so an argument with their partner does not impact upon their relationship with their child. But because dads see the family in its totality, rather than as a group of couples, if they fall out with their partner, the negative effects of this seep into their relationship with their child.
UCLA-based psychologist Mark Cummings has labelled this the fathering vulnerability hypothesis, due to the comparative vulnerability of dads to marital disharmony. He argues that the impact of this vulnerability on the relationship between dad and child is further exacerbated by the tendency of dads who experience emotional difficulty to withdraw from relationships. We know from Chapter Four that, unlike mothers, dads with poor mental health use withdrawal from the family as a mechanism for handling their feelings. This is also the case when experiencing marital discord but, because of their whole-family perspective, withdrawal from mum also includes withdrawal from child. The result of dad’s vulnerability to this discord is that his behaviour towards the child becomes harsher and more punitive, the emotional warmth within the relationship is reduced and, ultimately, withdrawal from the family appears to be the only answer. And the outcome of this withdrawal is the risk of an insecure attachment developing between father and child and the flood of negative consequences for child, family and society that this can unleash.
This damage at the psychological level is mirrored by corresponding damage at the neural level. In their 2007 study of sixty-three children – thirty-two pre-schoolers and thirty-one teenagers – Patricia Pendry and Emma Adam of Northwestern University in the US analysed the link between the quality of the parental relationship, measured by the degree of satisfaction and frequency of conflict, and the cortisol levels of the children. Cortisol is a hormone released in the brain by the adrenal gland in response to stress. In the short term, it is highly advantageous. Its production leads to the increased metabolism of glucose to give energy, heighten memory and lower sensitivity to pain – all vital if you are to overcome the intimidating, stressful or downright dangerous situation in which you find yourself. However, in the long term, continued exposure to stress is detrimental, particularly when an individual is young and their brain is still developing, as flooding the brain with cortisol disrupts the creation of the normal neural pathways. This invariably leads to behavioural and emotional issues in child- and adulthood. In their study, Pendry and Adam found that as the level of conflict increased between the parents, so the children’s cortisol levels increased, and that this effect was particularly significant in the pre-school group of children. This link to age is of particular concern as early childhood is a time when neural connections are being rapidly made – new skills are acquired and new experiences embraced – and, as a consequence, the negative impact of cortisol is at its most powerful. The disruption to normal brain development at this age has lifelong consequences. Further, the link between conflict and stress in their study was independent, meaning that the negative impact of conflict was not being buffered by any other factor. Neither the level of parental warmth and affection nor a lack of mental ill health among the parents appeared to be a protective factor. The impact of marital conflict on the children was real and direct and protection within the family was hard to find.
[Our relationship] has changed in the way you would expect, as it is no longer just the two of us. There is someone else who we put first before either of us, I suppose. In practical terms, it means we have less time for each other. We don’t really have any time on our own any more. I think we both feel it is worth it. I think we walked into it with open eyes. We do have a nice moment once in a while when we’re driving somewhere and Florence falls asleep, and for a moment you can just imagine that it is just the two of us for a change, but those are few and far between.
Richard, dad to Florence (six months)
Ultimately, the state of the parents’ relationship matters because this is the relationship that creates the environment into which the child is born and develops, where he is nurtured and taught. The impact of the quality of the parental relationship on a child’s development is beyond that of either of the relationships he or she has individually with their parents or the natural temperament of the child. It is the model relationship from which all other relationships will grow and against which all other relationships will be measured. It will form the bedrock of his life, will profoundly influence his mental and physical health and will greatly impact upon the success or failure of all his future relationships. In a way, the romantic relationship between parents is the practice ground for the relationship a parent will build with their child. While the relationship you have with your romantic partner is not your first attachment relationship – that would be with whoever raised you as a child – it is the first in which you have played an adult role, and while it is categorically different than that with a child, its components are the same – commitment, intimacy and passion. How well you have managed to build and maintain these three aspects in your marital life gives a good indication as to how well you will build and maintain your relationship with your child. So, if you are raising your child within a couple then the message is get your relationship with your partner right and you are already on your way to having a great relationship with your kid.
How can you achieve this? Pregnancy is about change, and if you have taken the conscious decision to have a child then you have hopefully indicated that you are comfortable with the idea of new experiences and roles. You can harness this willingness to change to instigate a discussion about how your roles and relationship may alter once you become parents. Research by sociologists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has shown that the parental relationships that best navigate the choppy waters of new parenthood are those in which the parents take the time afforded by pregnancy to discuss and agree a few issues. First, what will your roles be? You and your partner will have established roles within your relationship but the addition of a third family member means that these roles need to be renegotiated. Part of this is explaining to each other what sort of parent you want to be, how you perceive the other person’s role and exploring how your roles will interact productively for you and your child. Secondly, you need to acknowledge that conflicts will arise – it is amazing how important it seems to apportion blame at 3am when discussing who used the last nappy and didn’t restock, to the accompaniment of a screaming baby and an unpleasant smell. By acknowledging that conflicts will occur, you can normalize this and can have an open discussion about how arguments will be resolved constructively rather than destructively – a bit of conflict management. Thirdly, you need to explore what you each expect from being a parent and what you hope your parenting style will be. One of the most difficult moments for any new parent is when their expectations are not matched by the reality – your pledge never to raise your voice can quickly fly out of the window when confronted with no sleep and an obstinate child – but it helps if you have a willing and understanding ear to help you get over this temporary obstacle. It is important that your beliefs regarding the correct way to parent align as closely as possible, so you are singing from the same hymn sheet and don’t feel you are in a constant battle for parenting supremacy. Finally, if you are going to co-parent, decide to do this positively. This means supporting your partner as they parent and, if you do not agree with what you see, discussing this in a constructive and open fashion with the aim of reaching a consensus, rather than being critical or belittling. As Dan acknowledges, having children will drastically shift your focus from ‘we’ to ‘they’, so being as prepared for this as possible is key to a smooth transition for everyone.
[Having children] is a whole other level to a marriage. It adds another deeper, more cemented layer to our marriage and to our relationship. And [you can be sure] in hell isn’t about us any more!
Dan, dad to Daisy (six) and Bill (five)
Apart from the fact that time will be a rare commodity after birth, focusing on your relationship before birth is effective because how you interact with your partner before birth is predictive of the functioning of your new family after birth. Families who function well act as an alliance – they are close, supportive and cooperative. All members are included in activities or discussions, everyone has a distinct role that is respected, members are able to come together with a shared goal or activity and everyone’s emotions are understood and supported. The Lausanne Trilogue Play (LTP) is the catchy title of a behavioural task given to parents to allow those of us who study them to assess their joint parenting behaviour and the extent of this alliance within their family. There is a version that has been developed for use before birth, where the role of the baby is taken by a doll, and a version involving the baby for after birth. First developed by Swiss psychotherapist Elisabeth Fivaz-Depeursinge, it is of huge value because it allows us to study the family as a whole unit rather than as a set of couples, meaning that all the key players are included in the scenario, and we can try to untangle the multiple impacts they all have on each other – a much more realistic representation of the family.
Pre-birth, the parents-to-be are asked to picture the very first time they are together with their baby following his or her birth – a magical time that hopefully will get the imagination working. They are given a set of interactions to perform during their scenario to make sure the researchers can assess all the different relationships within the family – parent to child, parent to parent (the couples) and whole family. First, each parent is asked to hold the baby doll and interact with it, then they are asked to interact with the baby as a couple, and then they are told to place the baby to one side, as if sleeping, and interact with each other. Researchers are looking for how well the parents play together, how intuitively they share parenting, how warm they are towards each other and the baby and how they cooperate. It is a bit of a feat of imagination for the parents, but again and again, how they play out this scenario has been shown to be predictive of how the family will function after the birth.
In their 2013 study, Nicolas Favez, France Frascarolo, Chloé Lavanchy Scaiola and Antoinette Corboz-Warnery from the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland explored the value of using this test to predict how well a family would function post-birth. In their study, forty-two families carried out the test during the fifth month of pregnancy and repeated it when their child was three months and eighteen months old. What they found was that, combined with the baby’s temperament, the parents’ interactions before birth with the baby doll were predictive of how well the family functioned after birth. Parents who encouraged and supported their partner’s interactions with the baby doll before birth continued to do so after birth, when the real baby was present. Those who worked to include everyone in the task and showed an intuitive ability to parent continued to show these abilities following the arrival of their baby.
But what was of equal interest was the unique predictive power of the father-to-be’s perspective. Favez and his colleagues had asked parents-to-be to visualize their family life after the birth. To help them get a handle on this, they asked them to focus on two aspects in particular: how close it would be – that’s those shared viewpoints and emotions again – and to what extent team roles would be flexible, allowing everyone a bit of precious leeway to adapt their role to suit them. What they repeatedly found was that how a father visualized his family before birth was predictive of how well it was functioning when their child was three months old. Dad’s imagination is undoubtedly a powerful force, but what is it about his perspective, but not mum’s, that allows it to have such a power? Favez suggested that this phenomenon was down to the difference between the way mums and dads visualize their family and the relationships within it. The father’s desire and ability to envisage the family as a whole unit, rather than the series of couples more favoured by mothers, means that he finds it more comfortable to act out his parenting model at this level. His ability to conceive of his family at the whole family level enables him to have a profound influence on how well it functions. And while families are made up of their constituent relationships, the ability to picture them as a whole organism as well as individuals and couples enables fathers to have the strength to confront the difficulties that will inevitably challenge them as they move through life. In a way, dad is the family specialist.
All this prediction and preparation sounds like hard work and maybe, when there are so many other things to consider while you await the arrival of your child, a bit of overkill. But it is well worth it, because warm and supportive marital environments have an even more powerful positive impact on the relationship between dad and baby. The data backs this up. In their study of forty-four American families, American psychologists Kay Bradford and Alan Hawkins found that where emotional intimacy within a marriage was high, dads reported feeling much more competent in their role. They were more involved, felt more secure in their identity as a dad and were happier. Indeed, one role that could be particularly key is being a model of conflict resolution. Professor of developmental psychology Mark Cummings argues that the way a child reacts to its parents’ behaviour will depend on the nature of their behaviour and their gender. In this case, Cummings argues that while a dad’s conflict behaviour may produce a more negative reaction in his children than that of their mum, his positive conflict behaviours produce a similar but opposite reaction in them – their behaviours are more positive. By modelling how to disagree well – avoiding personalization, focusing on issues, looking for common ground and avoiding overt emotionality – a father both normalizes the occurrence of conflict and shows his children how to arrive at a healthy resolution. So, a father and his child stand to benefit in particular from parents taking the time to ensure their relationship is healthy and strong and conflict is effectively resolved. This means working on it while you await your child’s arrival and continuing to work and monitor its health once baby is there.
Indeed, one of the few interventions aimed at trying to prevent the negative impacts of poor marital quality on families makes it clear that the power lies in prevention rather than post hoc cure. The US-based Family Foundations Intervention is a course of eight lessons, four pre- and four post-birth, which aim to help new parents deal with the strains and stresses of parenthood. Developed by Mark Feinberg and his colleagues at Pennsylvania State University’s Prevention Research Center, rather than offering the traditional antenatal class fodder of nappy-change demonstrations, breathing exercises and the essential contents of your hospital bag, this programme instead focuses on giving parents-to-be tools to use when the going gets tough. So, it teaches communication skills, facilitates discussions between partners about their expectations of parenthood and encourages parents to be mutually supportive rather than undermining each other’s roles. And as its developers predicted, its outcomes are not only positive but long-term. In a 2013 study of its efficacy, Feinberg and his colleagues found that of those couples who had undergone the intervention programme, parental stress reduced consistently from the point of birth, and sense of parental competency, mental health and relationship quality continually improved – positive effects that were still being felt at their child’s third birthday. In contrast, the control group – who had simply received leaflets on choosing childcare – showed a consistent downward trend in all areas, despite their results on this range of measures relating to stress, mental health, relationship quality and parental competency being indistinguishable from the intervention group at the start of the programme.
And it wasn’t only the parents who benefited. A warmer, more supportive parenting relationship led to positive developmental benefits for the children of these families. They were more socially competent and better able to manage their emotions – all key skills for children entering their pre-school years. The parents involved in this study were not selected because they were at high risk. The authors recognized that all parents find parenting tough and the skills to navigate the hurdles aren’t necessarily innate – they must be taught to everyone, regardless of background. This programme worked because it was there when the couples needed it. It was there before birth to take the time afforded by pregnancy to encourage discussion and teach skills, and it was there immediately after birth to help couples utilize their learning in those first few weeks. While this is a rare intervention programme, based in the US, its findings have relevance for us all because they show the power of investing time in nurturing your relationship before your baby is born, in preparing for your new roles and developing a toolbox of skills that you can both use to ease your passage through the inevitably rocky times ahead.
All families have tough times, some very tough. Sometimes the troubles come from within – internal disagreements, difficult behaviour, health issues – and sometimes they are from outside, but families are more likely to weather these storms by remembering that the stronger a family bonds, the more likely they are to ride out the difficulties successfully. This means valuing everyone’s contribution, keeping the lines of communication open, sharing your emotions and acting from a place of empathy. Think of yourself as Team Family. It is also important to have an extended network to rely upon. This does not have to be your family – there are friends and professionals who can help as well as online communities that can be an invaluable source of help, wisdom and emotional support.
Not all children arrive into the world as members of a heterosexual, biological nuclear family. But it is still the case that the majority of children live within a household that contains, at its heart, a cohabiting, parental couple. They may be gay men, adoptive or foster parents or the children may be part of a step- or extended family. For these children, the distinctions don’t necessarily matter because, regardless of the fine details, these parents are the bedrock of their family and the nature of their relationship still has a profound influence on that child’s development and life experience. So, while this chapter has focused on the cohabiting mum and dad experiencing the pregnancy of their biological child, the tools that they need to use, and the preparations they need to make, to ensure their relationship is a healthy one apply across the board. As parents-to-be, we rush around making our plans and enhancing our knowledge about everything from eco-friendly nappies to baby signing; very few of us stop to consider that, if we strip away all the consumer products and all the social and healthcare services, what a family is is its members and, as its founding members, parents are the model from which their family will learn and grow.
It is probably true to say that adding a baby to your relationship will mean that you have more arguments and disagreements and feel more resentful towards your partner than ever before – lack of sleep and a steep learning curve will do that to you. But it is about how you resolve these arguments and move forward that counts. And be reassured, it is overwhelmingly the case that the dads in my studies say that having a child has only deepened and strengthened the relationship they have with their partner. I’ll let Noah and Adrian close this chapter with their thoughts:
Adrian: We are very much in synch on parenting styles, we very much agree on what we want for [our daughter] and how to raise her. We are on a level about things because, despite being very different people, we have similar standards and outlooks.
Noah: We have been together twenty years. We have had her for seven, so we had thirteen years before her and we had real highs and, you know, really amazing times, and that is why, when I look at her, I think, I am really glad we stayed together. I think it has made our relationship so much better. Because you have somebody else who takes all your attention . . .
Adrian: . . . and brings you a huge amount of joy.
Adrian and Noah, dads to Judy (seven)