The Effects of Mother Participation in Relationship Education on Coparenting, Parenting, and Child Social Competence: Modeling Spillover Effects for Low‐Income Minority Preschool Children

Abstract

Although suggestions are that benefits of relationship and marriage education (RME) participation extend from the interparental relationship with parenting and child outcomes, few evaluation studies of RME test these assumptions and the relationship among changes in these areas. This quasi-experimental study focuses on a parallel process growth model that tests a spillover hypothesis of program effects and finds, in a sample of low-income minority mothers with a child attending a Head Start program, that increases in mother reports of coparenting agreement for RME participants predict decreases in their reports of punitive parenting behaviors. Although improvements in parenting behaviors did not predict increases in teacher reports of children's social competence, improvements in coparenting agreement were associated with increases in children's social competence over time. In addition, comparative tests of outcomes between parents in the program and parents in a comparison group reveal that RME program participants (n = 171) demonstrate significant improvements compared to nonparticipants (n = 143) on coparenting agreement, parenting practices, and teachers' reports of preschool children's social competence over a 1 year period. The findings are offered as a step forward in better understanding the experiences of low-resource participants in RME. Implications for future research are discussed.

Individual mental health and couple functioning following couple relationship education participation: Exploring prospective cross‐lagged influences among changes

“…While there are decades of research and several meta-analyses that explore the change in relationship quality indicators following CRE, very limited research has answered the call to expand outcome assessment areas and to begin more exploration of the processes of change following CRE (Markman & Rhoades, 2012). A few studies have tested the influence among outcome variables theoretically and analytically (i.e., finding the best fitting model) using data collected concurrently (e.g., Bradford et al, 2014;Rauer et al, 2014); however, the current study joins only a few previous CRE studies ( Adler-Baeder et al, 2018;Doss et al, 2020;Zemp et al, 2017) and explored how changes in one area at one time point influences change in another area at a later time point. Further, we built on the one previous study that considered the link between change in individual mental health indicators and couple functioning after participating in a CRE program and used concurrent assessments (Bradford et al, 2014).…”

“…Further, we built on the one previous study that considered the link between change in individual mental health indicators and couple functioning after participating in a CRE program and used concurrent assessments (Bradford et al, 2014). The current study utilized a more comprehensive measure of individual mental health functioning and couple relationship functioning and longitudinal data to prospectively examine the influence of individual mental health indicators on later couple functioning indicators in an effort to replicate the Bradford and colleagues’ finding and then tested the cross‐lagged associations between changes in individual mental health functioning and couple relationship functioning over time, providing a more accurate test of the comparative “spillover” process (Adler‐Baeder et al, 2018).…”

“…Another found links from enhanced couple functioning to improvements in co‐parenting conflict, which in turn, was associated with decreases in child emotional and conduct problems after participating in a CRE program. (Doss et al, 2020) And another study found that among mothers participating in CRE who have a child in a Head Start program, improvements in co‐parenting agreement at immediate postprogram predicted decreases in punitive parenting and were associated with improvements in teacher‐reported child social competence 1‐year postprogram (Adler‐Baeder et al, 2018).…”

“…Another found links from enhanced couple functioning to improvements in co-parenting conflict, which in turn, was associated with decreases in child emotional and conduct problems after participating in a CRE program. (Doss et al, 2020) And another study found that among mothers participating in CRE who have a child in a Head Start program, improvements in co-parenting agreement at immediate postprogram predicted decreases in punitive parenting and were associated with improvements in teacher-reported child social competence 1-year postprogram (Adler-Baeder et al, 2018). Bradford et al (2014) were the first to consider testing the link between changes in depressive symptoms and couple quality among CRE participants framing predictive paths using the stress generation model (Hammen, 1991) and the marital discord model (Beach et al, 1990).…”

“…Typically, studies of CRE assess concurrent changes in a range of factors related to couple functioning and relationship quality (Hawkins et al, 2008; Hawkins & Erickson, 2015). Few studies of CRE have included measures of individual mental health and few have explored the associations among changes in distinct outcome areas (see Bradford et al, 2014, Rauer et al, 2014, and Adler‐Baeder et al, 2018 for exceptions), particularly over time.…”