Coparenting,Couple Conflict,Social Support,and Relationship Quality: A Dyadic Exploration of Couples From LIEM Backgrounds

Abstract

Economically marginalized families may face enduring vulnerabilities that make adaptive relational processes leading to healthy, long-term relationships more difficult. Informed by the vulnerability-stress-adaptation framework, we utilized an actor-partner interdependence model and dyadic data from a sample of 199 low-income couples who were expecting or had recently given birth to investigate the association of two adaptive processes (couple conflict and coparenting alliance) and two personal resources (instrumental and emotional support) with their relationship quality. Results indicated significant actor effects of men’s and women’s coparenting alliance and men’s instrumental support on their own reports of relationship quality. Additionally, results indicated three significant conjoint actor-partner effects—couple conflict and couple emotional support on women’s relationship quality and couple conflict on men’s relationship quality. These findings contribute to the literature on the transition to parenthood and extend the literature examining dyadic relational processes in families from low-income and economically marginalized backgrounds.

Keywords

coparenting alliance couple conflict low-income couples relationship quality social support

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