Relationships and Roles Survey – Help Needed from First-Time Parents!

[RachelnZachsmom]

Hello!

My name is Laura McCarthy. In addition to being a parent, I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Counselor Education at the University of Florida. I would like to ask for your help in a study of couples who have recently become parents; the study is part of my dissertation research project. Participation involves completing an anonymous survey, and takes about 10-20 minutes. Results from the study will help us better understand how couples adjust to parenthood, how they complete various tasks related to caring for their baby and their household, and how they handle conflicts.

For the purpose of this study, only married couples who are sharing a household are eligible to participate. Couples must have one child between the ages of 2 months and 13 months (or have a baby pretty close to those ages – a couples weeks younger or older is fine). Unfortunately, if this is not the first child for both you and your spouse, you will not be able to participate in the study. **Because we need more information about how both mothers and fathers cope with the changes that come along with becoming a parent, I will only be able to use your responses if both you and your spouse each complete the survey.**

You can access the survey online at http://plaza.ufl.edu/lmccarth/survey.htm. I have also included links to various Internet resources for parents on the website. After the study is completed, all participants will have the option to receive information about how couples strengthen their marriages across the transition to parenthood. Feel free to contact me at Lmccarth@ufl.edu if you have any questions or if you would prefer to complete a paper-based version of the survey.

As a parent of a toddler and a 4 month old, I certainly know how valuable your time is to you during that first year after your baby's arrival. Therefore I greatly appreciate your taking the time to help with my research. Thank you for your help with this important study!

Laura McCarthy, M.Ed., Ed.S.
Doctoral Candidate
Principal Investigator

P.S. Please pass this information on to other new parents who might be interested in completing this survey. Thanks!

[RachelnZachsmom]

Hi!

Mothering kindly allowed me to post my request for survey participants last week. I just wanted to follow-up to say thank you to all of you who have already taken the survey -- I really appreciate the help! If you haven't yet completed the survey, please check it out at http://plaza.ufl.edu/lmccarth/survey.htm. Also, if you took the survey but your spouse hasn't yet, please remind them to do so. Because this is a study of couples' transition to parenthood, I can only use your responses if both partners each complete a survey. A lot of past research on the transition to parenthood has not included dads, so we don’t know much about their experiences. I also need responses from both partners so I can see how moms and dads are similar and different in their roles and relationships, and how one partner’s responses are related to the other’s.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions (Lmccarth@ufl.edu). Thanks again for your help!

Laura

[bjorker]

Uhm, so only legally married couples can participate, huh?
If that is so, I am very interested to know the reasoning behind this. Seems a little presumptuous, I hope I am wrong.

[RachelnZachsmom]

Hello!

My survey is nearly complete, but I wanted to reply to your post because I think you raise a very valid concern. I had originally planned to include non-married couples in the study as well, but chose to limit it to legally married couples for a couple reasons. The first is that I need for my participants to be quite similar so that when I analyze my data, I will hopefully be able to find connections between the variables I am examining (i.e., the couple's division of labor, their conflict resolution style, their satisfaction with their relationship, and their individual well-being). My understanding is that there is more variation among non-married couples than married couples (inasmuch as non-married couples could include partners who have been in a long-term loving and committed relationship, moms and dads who did not expect to become parents and haven't been in a committed relationship, teen parents, etc.). Accounting for this variation was beyond the scope of this particular study, although I would be eager to repeat the study with non-married couples to see if the findings are similar (as I expect they would be for partners in committed relationships). The second reason I chose to limit the study to married couples concerns a primary variable of this study, the couple's division of household labor and the care of their child. Heterosexual couples' divisions of labor tends to be highly influenced by gender, but the institution of marriage may especially heighten a couple's awareness of and use of "traditional" gender roles. I am curious to see what impact various role-arrangements have on the couple's relationship. I also hope to see how married couples, despite the tradition of prescribed gender roles in the institution of marriage, manage to negotiate a more equal division of labor.

I hope this helps clarify my choices for this study, although I know my reasoning may not be completely satisfactory to everyone. I would be interested to hear more thoughts about this issue, though, and invite you to e-mail me at Lmccarth@ufl.edu. Thanks!

Laura