Longitudinal Effects Of Parental Marital Satisfaction On Co-pareting: A Study Of The Mediation Role Of Self-compassion And Intervention

Families begin with the establishment of marital relationships,which are the core relationships in the family,and marital satisfaction is an important indicator for evaluating marital relationships.For families,the quality of marital not only affects the relationship between the husband and wife,but the emotions or feelings in the marriage also affect the co-parenting relationship between the parents and the children.And the interactions between family members do not only involve intra-individual spillover effects;interpersonal crossover effects cannot be ignored either.Therefore,it is significant to examine both intra-and interpersonal effects within a family systems perspective.Furthermore,not only children and adults are developing,but systems of relationships are also developing.Family relationships also face change and development at different stages of the family.However,little is known about how marital satisfaction and co-parenting develop and change over time and whether the development of marital satisfaction further influences changes in co-parenting.Finally,whether self-compassion,an important psychological resource and emotion regulation trait for individuals,mediates the relationship between marital satisfaction and co-parenting,and whether interventions to improve co-parenting through parental self-compassion need to be further explored.Our study examines the dynamic mechanisms of family system interactions based on a longitudinal tracking perspective,which consisted of four studies:Study 1 explored the longitudinal spillover and crossover effects of parental marital satisfaction and co-parenting,respectively.Study 2 constructed an unconditional latent growth model to examine the developmental trajectories of fathers’and mothers’marital satisfaction and co-parenting respectively over time;subsequently,it examined the spillover and crossover effects of the development of parents’marital satisfaction on the developmental trajectories of co-parenting by constructing a conditional latent growth model.Study 3 explored the mediation role of self-compassion between parental marital satisfaction and co-parenting.Based on this,Study4 used an intervention on parental self-compassion to test whether a group-assisted intervention targeting parental self-compassion could improve parental self-compassion and co-parenting,and thereby provide empirical support for creating harmonious family relationships and promoting the joint development of family members.In this study,717 pairs of parents of students in three schools in Anhui Province were followed up three times using a whole-group sampling method(each at 12-month intervals,M_age=34.65,SD=4.59 for fathers and M_age=33.44,SD=4.25 for mothers;at the time of the first administration,with the age range of students concentrated between 8 and 11 years).Self-compassionate intervention for 40 pairs of parents through online recruitment,the main findings are as follows.1.Father’s marital satisfaction was a significant positive predictor of father’s positive co-parenting and a negative predictor of father’s negative co-parenting;mother’s marital satisfaction was a significant positive predictor of mother’s positive co-parenting and a negative predictor of mother’s negative co-parenting,with significant spillover effects.Father’s marital satisfaction was a significant positive predictor of the mother’s positive co-parenting,but the father’s marital satisfaction was an unstable predictor of the mother’s negative co-parenting,with the father’s marital satisfaction at T1 not predicting the mother’s negative co-parenting at T2,and father’s marital satisfaction at T2 predicting mother’s negative co-parenting at T3.Mother’s marital satisfaction was a significant positive predictor of the father’s positive co-parenting and a negative predictor of the father’s negative co-parenting,with a significant cross-sectional effect.2.The results of the unconditional growth model showed that the trends in fathers’and mothers’marital satisfaction and mothers’negative co-parenting were not significant;fathers’and mothers’positive co-parenting trended in a decreasing way,and fathers’negative co-parenting trended increasingly.The results of the conditional growth model showed that parental marital satisfaction negatively predicted their positive co-parenting trends and positively predicted their negative co-parenting trajectories,respectively,and maternal marital satisfaction negatively predicted fathers’negative co-parenting trends.3.In positive co-parenting,T1 fathers’and mothers’marital satisfaction can influence T3mothers’positive co-parenting not only through T2 mothers’self-compassion but also through T2 fathers’self-compassion;in negative co-parenting,only T1 fathers’marital satisfaction can influence T3 fathers’negative co-parenting through T2 fathers’self-compassion.4.Interventions based on the theme of self-compassion increased the level of self-compassion in both fathers and mothers and,to some extent,promoted positive co-parenting and reduced negative co-parenting.Our study examined the relationship between parental marital satisfaction and co-parenting from static and dynamic perspectives through three follow-up surveys,respectively.It also explores the mediation role of self-compassion and further tests the effectiveness of self-compassion interventions,which not only expands the application of family systems theory but also provides new directions for future family education and intervention practices.