Keeping your coparent in mind: A longitudinal investigation of mindfulness in the family system

Abstract

Recent studies have increasingly focused on mindfulness as it relates to interpersonal processes. In particular, cross-sectional research has shown that parents' dispositional mindfulness is associated with increased mindful parenting and coparenting, as well as improved coparenting relationship quality. The current study replicates and extends such work, representing the first longitudinal investigation of mindful coparenting. A sample of 449 parents (60% mothers) of children between the ages of 3 and 17 years were recruited online through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) as part of a larger study on the assessment of parenting. Parents reported on their dispositional mindfulness, mindful coparenting, and coparenting relationship quality at three time points across an 8-month period. Results from a path analysis model using maximum likelihood estimation suggested that higher levels of parental mindfulness at baseline were related to higher levels of mindful coparenting at 4 months, which, in turn, were related to higher quality coparenting relationship at 8 months. Support for this model was found for both mothers and fathers and across all examined child age groups (i.e., early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence), highlighting the robust nature of these effects. Overall, findings suggest that increasing mindfulness at an individual level can promote meaningful change within a family system, specifically through improvements in coparenting and parent-child interactions.