Springer Prenatal Family Dynamics: Couple and Coparenting Relationships During and Postpregnancy

This book examines family interactions and relationships during the transition to parenthood. It offers a unique integration of different lines of research on prenatal family dynamics contributed by leading family researchers in North America and Europe who use observational approaches to study emergent family processes. The book explores prenatal dynamics in diverse families, including adolescent couples, same-sex couples, couples experiencing infertility, and couples expecting their second child.  The introduction, anchored in family systems and structural theories, provides an overview of challenges couples commonly experience during the transition to parenthood and details prenatal family processes that predict postpartum adjustment in families. This sets the stage for subsequent chapters by emphasizing unparalleled windows into prenatal family dynamics provided by direct observation. Initial chapters focus on predictors of prenatal interactions and partners’ representations of parenthood. Subsequent chapters describe original research on prebirth couple interactions and the coparenting relationship emerging during pregnancy. The volume includes several studies that rely on innovative research designs using observations of simulated couple encounters with their newborn, represented by a life-sized infant doll. The book concludes with a review of recent prenatal intervention programs designed to improve interpersonal and coparenting relationships of married and unmarried couples. The volume offers recommendations for future research on prenatal family dynamics, including suggestions for methodological advances, exploration of prenatal risk factors, expansion of conceptual models to incorporate culturally-meaningful coparents besides mothers and fathers, and further focus on prenatal intervention programs.   This book is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians and professionals, and graduate students in the fields of infant mental health/early child development, family studies, pediatrics, developmental psychology, public health, social work, and early childhood education. About the Author Regina Kuersten-Hogan, Ph.D., is a licensed Child Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor in the Clinical Counseling Psychology Program at Assumption College and an Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA. Dr. Kuersten-Hogan’s research focuses on coparenting dynamics and family emotion expression during the transition to parenthood in nonclinical and high-risk families. She regularly presents her research at national as well as international conferences and has authored articles and book chapters on coparenting and family dynamics. Dr. Kuersten-Hogan also provides assessments and therapy with children and families in private practice and teaches courses in Developmental Psychology, Family Psychology, Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions, and Family Therapy. James P. McHale, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology, Director of the USF St. Ptersburg Family Study Center and Executive Director of the USFSP Infant-Family Center. He was Founding Chair of USF St. Petersburg’s Department of Psychology, and past Director of Clinical Training at Clark University in Worcester, MA. He has published more than 100 articles, chapters, and books about coparenting in diverse family systems, and his research studies of coparenting and child development have been supported since 1996 by the National Institutes of Health. Among his seminal works are the books Coparenting: A Conceptual and Clinical Examination of Family Systems" (American Psychological Association, with Kristen Lindahl), and Charting the Bumpy Road of Coparenthood: Understanding the Challenges of Family Life (Zero to Three). Dr. McHale also developed the intervention, Focused Coparenting Consultation (FCC), to support coparenting in married, unmarried, divorced, and multigenera