Effects on Marriage of a Psycho-Communicative-Educational Intervention With Couples Undergoing the Transition to Parenthood, Evaluation

This article reports the results on marriages of a randomized clinical trial for couples experiencing the transition to parenthood. In addition to a control group, there was 1 intervention, a psycho-communicative-educational 2-day couples ’ workshop. The outcome measures were marital quality, postpartum depression, and expressed hos-tile affect (assessed using an observational coding of marital conflict discussions vid-eotaped in couples’homes). Data were collected at 3 time points: before the interven-tion in the last trimester of pregnancy, when the baby was 3 months old, and when the baby was 1 year old. Results showed that, in general, the preventive intervention us-ing a psycho-communicative- educational format was effective compared to a con-trol group for wife and husband marital quality, for wife and husband postpartum de-pression, and for observed wife and husband hostile affect scored from videotapes of marital conflict. This article reports the results of a preventive intervention study with couples ex-periencing the transition to parenthood. It is now well accepted that the transition to parenthood can be stressful for marriages and parent–infant relationships. This was not always the case. In 1957, LeMasters claimed that 83 % of new parents wen