title: "Couples as Partners and Parents over Children's Early Years"
abstract: We used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine how couple relationship quality and parental engagement are linked over children's early years-when they are infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Our sample included 1,630 couples that were coresident over years 1 to 3 and 1,376 couples that were coresident over years 3 to 5 (1,196 over both periods). Overall, we found that better relationship quality predicted greater parental engagement for both mothers and fathers-especially in the infant to toddler years; in contrast, we found little evidence that parental engagement predicted future relationship quality. Married and cohabiting couples were generally similar in how relationship quality and parenting were linked.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706 ( carlson@ssc.wisc.edu ).
authors.forename: Marcia J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Carlson
authors.forename: Natasha V
authors.initials: NV
authors.lastname: Pilkauskas
authors.forename: Sara S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: McLanahan
authors.forename: Jeanne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Brooks-Gunn