Does childbirth really transform your life?
(2014)
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2014-ThèseSarahGaldiolo.pdf
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- Authors
- Supervisors
- Roskam, Isabelle
- Abstract
- Childbirth is one of the most significant life events because of its potential to drastically disrupt an individual’s life. My doctoral dissertation aims to answer whether childbirth transforms one’s life by taking into account individual, dyadic, and triadic perspectives. I specifically ask the following research questions: How does childbirth change parents’ personality traits and attachment orientations? Do the developmental trajectories of mother and father influence each other? How do family interactions construct? I conducted a four-wave longitudinal study (pregnancy, 6 months postpartum, 12 months, and 16 months; n = 204 parental couples) with a multi-informant, prospective, and multi-method strategy. I used growth curves, dyadic, structural, and cross-lagged analyses in order to compare the trajectory of couples with children with couples without children. The results showed that childbirth only causes a decrease in father’s extraversion. Except for this isolated result, both parents’ personality traits and attachment orientations tend to be highly stable. Compared to childless couples, mothers’ and fathers’ developmental courses are interdependent, that is, childbirth leads parents to function in a dyad rather than individually. Finally, from a family perspective, our results showed that mother’s conscientiousness and avoidant attachment and father’s anxious attachment directly and/or indirectly (i.e., via coparenting) influence family interactions.
- Affiliations
Citations
Galdiolo, S. (2014). Does childbirth really transform your life? https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/53673