The Transition to Parenthood

by Jay Belsky, John Kelly

Featured on Oprah and excerpted in Glamour magazine, this exploration of the positive and negative effects the birth of a child has on a marriage is based on the largest, most comprehensive study of couples entering parenthood ever conducted.

Genres: Parenting

288 pages, Paperback

Published March 4, 1995

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this book when I was looking for a book about the emotional journey to motherhood, something similar to Fathering Right from the Start: Straight Talk About Pregnancy, Birth, and Beyond, but for women. This book is based on a landmark study conducted by a psychology professor at Penn State who followed 250 couples from pregnancy through year 3 of their first child’s life. While the study was conducted in the 1980s, there are many aspects of Belsky’s findings which are still applicable today.

Belsky’s study refuted the common notion (at the time) that parenthood always decreased marital satisfaction. Alternatively, he found six factors upon which each couples’ score predicted whether their marriage improved, stayed the same, or declined after the birth of a child. The six characteristics include: Self (the couple’s ability to merge their individual selves into a large Us), Gender Ideology (each person’s perception of how the baby/domestic chores would be divided), Emotionality (a marker of personality that governs vulnerability to stress), Expectations (how did the husband and wife think the baby would affect their marriage?), communication (could they keep talking?), and Conflict Management.

There were too many great insights in this book to include in this review, but I will mention a few. (And of course, these are all generalizations!) Reassuring to me, Belsky found that couples who are less certain about having a child (as opposed to those who only think it will be all champagne and roses) generally tend to cope better with the stresses and pressures of parenthood, as they marshal more resources (in-laws, friends, etc.) to help. Also, couples who are older parents tend to cope better, mostly because they know themselves and their partners better and are usually more financially secure. In areas for improvement for me, Belsky also noted that husbands/wives who see the glass as half full (rather than half empty) tend to cope better with the more difficult aspects of parenthood by focusing on the good (i.e., I may be awake all night but at least I am spending time with my baby).

Overall, I really can’t recommend this book highly enough. It reassured me about some of the emotions I have experienced on this journey and helped me know where I can grow and improve my marriage through this transition. I love that it is based on a scientific study (which I can understand the underlying theory of thanks to my doctoral statistics studies), but it is written in layman’s terms and is approachable for all parents.

[Kimberley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished reading "The Transition to Parenthood." I find it interesting because the question put forth was, does the quality of a couple's marriage affect the child's upbringing? And the researchers answered with a resounding, "Yes!" So, to me, an understanding of how to stay in good relationship with a spouse is important to early childhood development and to educators (like me). Some of the amazing outcomes of this research were: 1) Couples who argue effectively are better off because for a woman, it means her husband is emotionally engaged in the relationship, and for men it is a place to vent frustrations. Couples who argue learn more about each other and feel more invested in the relationship compared with couples who "get along." 2) Women who are egalitarian, strong-willed, energetic, ambitious and hard-working have to marry men who are willing to participate equally in the housework and child-care arrangements. The wife simply insists on it and won't have it any other way. These households, for some reason, had men who dearly loved their wives. The women were very secure and the men had to be secure, too, or they wouldn't be able to take on so many "feminine" tasks. And these were the marriages that were most likely to improve after the arrival of children. 3) If individuals have more accurate expectations of married life with baby, they also do better. The new parents who expect difficulties will muster up enough resources to handle them, they gear up for them, compared to those who expect parenthood to be bliss and are shocked by how demanding it can be and who aren't energetically prepared. The unprepared parents are wiped out by difficulty. But undo difficulty often undid a couple. Something no one could prepare for (an utterly impossible in-law for example) could undo even the most realistic partner. There are some situations no one can foresee.

The book held many other interesting "a ha"s for me. I'm glad Jay Belsky decided to write a more popular-style book for the masses. Otherwise, these research findings just end up in journals that everyday parents don't read.

[Acc13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good framework for discussing new child's effect on a marriage; but the science behind it is missing. This omission is the book's greatest weakness - I expect more explanation and detail on his data and how he derived his conclusions. I cannot simply take his interpretations at face value.

He admits at the beginning that the couples in the "case-studies" are amalgamations of several study families, conflated to illustrated this or that point. Many of the if-then conclusions describing the effect of personal parameters on marital improvement/decline after-baby; and subsequent if-then effects of marital improvement/decline on quality of parenting are so cut-and-dry, they are suspect as over-simplifications. Science and statistics are rarely so tidy.
This was likely Belsky's intent - to illustrate patterns that his research uncovered - but it makes some aspects of these families' stories unbelievable.

Because of the lack of explanation, I question several key conclusions.
First is that I would expect any of these key factors for marital improvement/decline to apply to any marriage "under crisis," and not only the strains of a new child. So the conclusions feel somewhat myopic. The other is that if marital success post-baby determines parenting effectiveness, and personality factors determine post-baby marital success; then personality factors appear to be ultimate cause for parenting effectiveness, not the state of the marriage. Again, without data and the reasoning, this chain is impossible to evaluate.

Another missing piece is the scientific protocols Belsky's team followed; for example, to account for bias of the interviewers. The researchers performing the intake interviews should be distinct and firewalled from those performing the follow ups - double-blind. Without this buffer, it is easy to see how the conclusions can be muddied by researcher expectations. Belsky provides no insight into how the study was conducted.

I'm glad I read it, because the book made some good observations on how spouses interact; but on the whole, unsatisfying and left me with more questions than answers.

[Largercircle]

This was a fascinating read in many ways. I think as a married person with children I could hardly help but reflect on my own marriage and parenting in reading it (fortunately, my husband concurs with me that our marriage has improved since we had children, rather than declined.)

One question that occurred to me right away was to wonder about the diversity (or lack thereof) of the population Dr. Belsky's study was based on. Although he talks about differences in parents' ages, religious views, and educational/work backgrounds, he doesn't ever mention race or sexual orientation. Or, except by inference, class or financial status. It's also disconcerting to me that he does not take into account the birth experiences of his subjects (something I would expect to bear some relationship to the outcomes he is interested in.)

After a while, though, I realized that another question I have to ask is about generational change. Dr. Belsky's study was conducted with couples in my parents' and parents-in-law's generation. I think some things have changed in the last 30 years that have some bearing on his study findings, especially in the realm of gender role expectations. Of course gender role expectations are still relevant to marital satisfaction; but for most of my peers, there are (sometimes subtle, sometimes not) differences in how those expectations were formed and play out compared to our parents. Unless we grew up in or have chosen a fairly extreme social conservatism of one sort or another, it's rare for any of us (male or female) to be unrepentant Traditionalists about gender roles. The vast majority of us are some sort of Transitionalist or Egalitarian, and there is probably more variation in what those two terms might encompass than there was 30 years ago.

I'm convinced of the importance of the new parenthood transition - but maybe not a lot wiser about how to help it positively in situ.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book out of curiosity. It's a little old, so some of the data may be different if the study was done today, but overall, the themes seemed relevant. The book discusses how new parents react to the first three years after having a baby within the context of marriage. The research was aimed to predict the improvement or decline in a couple's relationship based on six components:Self, Gender Ideology, Emotionality, Conflict Management, Communication, and Expectations. To simplify, the ability of a couple to work and communicate as a team, to respect each other while still being themselves, and the ability to recognize and respond supportively to conflict affects the couple's ability to grow in their marriage.
I found the chapter on Gender Ideology especially interesting. It discusses how perceived gender roles affect the marriage. Like, if a woman who believes in the equal division of labor is married to a man who thinks child-rearing is best left to the woman, their liklihood of severe conflict and disappointment with the demands of a baby is high. She will always be expecting more from him, and he will always feel what he's doing is way more than he ought to have to do. It sounds really logical, but Belsky did a great job of making things you "know" pop out and make sense in a concrete way, using lots of examples from the couples he studied.
Overall, it made me think of my own faults and how they might affect my marriage should we someday decide to have children.

[Scott Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A relevant book given that I am about to enter into that transition. The key is that it provides insight into the changes in a marriage that a baby brings. It is far from the idealistic world that all will be great. There are more challenges and tasks. The couples in the story all cope with varying degrees of success. A key is that even as a couple assumes the role of parents, they must all remember that communication in the marriage is important and not to lose sight of that during the transition.

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though a bit dry and difficult to follow at times, especially if you are reading this AFTER the baby has arrived and are only getting small chunks of time, I found this book to be amazingly informative and insightful. I saw myself in many different aspects and it made me step back and think about things in a different way more than once. I'd love to be able to reread this book when I have more time to devote to it since I know I would be able to follow the subjects more easily.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really helpful. It gives lots of helpful concepts/paradigms to describe the transition to parenthood, although I would say that it would be more accurately titled, "The Transition in your Marriage as you make the transition to parenthood"! Read it when you are expecting.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Attempts to define a few "typical" kinds of marriages prior to children, and the way children's arrival into a family affects those arrangements. A helpful start for me when our baby was young.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very interesting. I found myself looking back to our own transition. Technically, my husband are still in that transition since our first is still under 3. So I found it intriguing.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read most of this book for a child development class in grad school....thought it was time to review!!