It is hard for couples to maintain the same level of intimacy with the arrival of the baby. Husbands frequently feel excluded from being a full partner in parenting and can feel like their wives care more about the new baby than them. In addition, many parents don't know much about how to help their child develop in an emotionally healthy way. The research project offers workshops for the new parents with information on how to maintain intimacy, include the father, and how to help the child develop emotionally. In addition to the workshops, we will be going into the homes of the couples in the study to film their marital interactions and their interactions with their babies over the first several years of the children's lives.
Students helping with our research can participate in several aspects of the study.
Students can help us conduct the experiments. Assisting with the home visits includes learning about the links between family communication patterns and both marital quality and child development outcomes. Students working in our laboratory also have an opportunity to learn behavioral coding systems we use to predict the success or failure of marriages. Students need to be able to work 6-9 hours a week. We like to have students make a committment of 3 to 4 quarters because there is an extensive amount of information to learn in order to help on the project.