Transition to parenthood and development of personality and emotional competencies.
(2010) the 5th Congress of the European Society on Family Relations — Location: Milan, Italy (29.September.2010)
Files
No attached file found for this publication.
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- Background People who become parents and are involved in the raising of children are transformed and follow a different developmental trajectory from people who do not engage in parenting roles (Palkovitz, Marks, Appleby, & Holmes, 2003). It is therefore not surprising that transition to parenthood is considered as a transformative experience. This kind of experience consists of a life event and its outcomes, such that the event is given a central role, in causing lasting psychological change (Palus, 1993). Yet, this change doesn’t affect personality. Indeed, personality tends to be stable across the transition to parenthood at the broad dispositional level of the “Big Five” personality factors (Heinicke, 1995; McCrae & Costa, 1987). Much flexibility would be observed at the “doing” level of personality (Palus, 1993), such as emotional competences. Emotional competences consist in the extent to which people attend to, process, and utilize affect-laden information of an intrapersonal (e.g., managing one’s own emotions) or interpersonal (e.g., managing others’ emotions) nature. People with high emotional intelligence are more self-confident, satisfied with their live and capable of controlling their emotions, communicating their feelings to others and taking someone else’s perspective (Mikolajczak, Luminet, Leroy, & Roy, 2007). The present study intends to examine the impact of transition to parenthood on emotional competences. We postulate a positive change of emotional intelligence with child’s birth. Three groups are compared. First, because of the primacy of the event, primiparous parents would have the most important evolution of emotional competences between pregnancy and 6 months postpartum. Second, non-primiparous parents would present a weaker change. Finally, no change would be observed in non-parents. Furthermore, we postulate that the social background would moderate the relation between parenthood and development of emotional competences. Accordingly, disadvantaged parents are expected to present a weaker change. Method This study is based on a 2-waves longitudinal program research (pregnancy and 6 months postpartum). A questionnaire assessing emotional competences (TEIQue), subjective impression of change and major events inventory has been completed by 100 parents (primiparous and non-primiparous) and 100 non-parents. Results and Discussion The results globally support our hypotheses. The discussion focuses on the relevance of considering parents’ emotional competences both for research and clinical purposes.
- Affiliations
Citations
Galdiolo, S. (2010). Transition to parenthood and development of personality and emotional competencies. the 5th Congress of the European Society on Family Relations, Milan, Italy. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/65338