Stability and antecedents of coparenting quality: The role of parent personality and child temperament

This investigation explored how parent personality and infant temperament were associated with the development and stability of coparenting over the first 3 years of life. We examined the stability of supportive and undermining coparenting from 13 months to 3 years and whether infant difficult temperament moderated the stability of coparenting. We also examined how two dimensions of parent personality, communion and negative emotionality, were directly associated with coparenting quality and how these personality variables interacted with infant difficult temperament in predicting subsequent coparenting quality. Both supportive and undermining coparenting demonstrated moderate stability; however, stability in undermining coparenting was present only for families with less difficult infants. Fathers’ communion and negative emotionality were associated with higher and lower coparenting quality, respectively, but only for families with an infant with a more challenging temperament. Mothers’ negative emotionality was associated with higher coparenting quality. The results of this study suggest that parents’ and children's characteristics are associated in direct and interactive ways with the development of the coparenting relationship across the first few years of a child's life.

► We examined how parent personality and infant temperament predicted coparenting.
► Coparenting was moderately stable across the first years of a child's life.
► Coparenting was less stable for families with a temperamentally difficult infant.
► Parents’ communion and negative emotionality predicted coparenting quality.
► Infant temperament moderated parent personality's association with coparenting.