Associations among coparenting, parenting, and socio -emotional development in toddlers

The goal of the present study was to describe the early development of social emotional competence and behavior problems in toddlers and to examine associations among coparenting, individual parenting, and socio-emotional outcomes in toddlers. Sixty seven (67) working- and middle-class, two-parent families with toddlers aged 16 to 36 months and their non-parental child care providers participated in the present study. The participating families made a one-time laboratory visit (approximately 70 minutes) that consisted of three consecutive observation sessions (mother-child, father-child, and both parents-child) and administration of parent questionnaires. The non-parental child care providers also completed a brief child social emotional assessment. The findings of the present study highlighted toddler years as unique and important period for social emotional development. The hypothesis about direct and indirect associations between coparenting and child social emotional development received limited support, suggesting that each family subsystem has an impact on other subsystems, and thus individual behaviors may be understood in the whole family context (Munichin, 1985). The present study intended to fill a gap of inconsistent findings in past coparenting studies by using multi-dimensional constructs of coparenting, parenting, and child outcomes and employing multiple methods. In addition, a hypothesis about the unique contribution of fathering and coparenting, as well as a hypothesis predicting differentiated associations of coparenting with mothering and fathering were supported with limited evidence