Glossary

Term · Postpartum: Mind

coparenting

Also: co-parenting, coparenting relationship, parenting alliance

How two adults share the work of raising a child, including how they support each other, divide tasks, and handle disagreements. The quality of coparenting affects both parents and the child.

In plain words

Coparenting is the way two adults work together to raise a child. It covers how they share tasks like feeding, nights, and chores, how they talk about decisions, and how they back each other up. It may be a couple, two people who are not together, or a parent and a grandparent or other caregiver. Good coparenting can make the easier for both adults. When it is strained, parents may feel alone, and mothers can carry more of the load. Coparenting is a relationship, not a checklist. Couples can find ways to talk about it, with help from a counselor or a parenting program if that feels useful.

The deeper version

Coparenting is the supportive or undermining quality of the relationship between adults responsible for a child, distinct from the couple relationship, and it is associated with parental mental health and child adjustment. Interventions include the (Shapiro and Gottman, Journal of Family Communication, 2005), which showed improvements in couple satisfaction and in a randomized evaluation with modest samples, and Family Foundations (Feinberg and colleagues, multiple trials from 2008 onward), which showed small to moderate improvements in coparenting and child adjustment with follow-up to age 7. A meta-analysis by Pinquart and Teubert (Family Relations, 2010) of couple-focused transition-to-parenthood programs found small effects on couple communication and satisfaction. Effects are generally modest, and the field debates how much programs should target coparenting versus the couple relationship directly.

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Sources

  • Feinberg ME et al. — Family Foundations: coparenting and child adjustment outcomes. Journal of Family Psychology 2008 onward
  • Pinquart M, Teubert D — Effects of parenting education with expectant and new parents: a meta-analysis. Family Relations 2010

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