Pathways to Parenthood: An Assessment of Family Structural Context Over the Transition to Parenthood

Most of the literature on the transition to parenthood focuses on changes in marital quality of first-time biological parents, with the structural context of the family prior to the transition largely left out of the analysis. This research compares the trajectories of two marital quality variables between different family structural contexts: Families who have no children, families who have children, and stepfamilies. This research also compares the family experience of adding a child into these three main structures to determine whether family experience, initial family structure, or an interaction between the two has a greater impact on marital quality variables. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANCOVA) results indicate that while family experience, in the form of the transition to parenthood, appears to impact later values of marital quality variables, initial family structure has an effect on initial starting values which also impact later marital functioning. Thus, the importance of family structure cannot be ignored when assessing relationship quality across the family experience of adding a child.