Actor–partner interdependence of humility and relationship quality among couples transitioning to parenthood

Abstract

The transition to parenthood is a challenging experience that often strains relationships, but perceiving one’s partner as humble (actor relational humility) and being perceived by one’s partner as humble (partner relational humility) were hypothesized to benefit couples during this transition. Married couples (N = 69) were tracked from the third trimester of pregnancy through 21 months postpartum. Husbands and wives provided ratings of relational humility and dyadic adjustment. Actor–partner interdependence models tested actor and partner effects of relational humility on dyadic adjustment across the transition. Although couples declined in dyadic adjustment over the transition at the same rate regardless of relational humility (counter to Hypothesis 2), those higher in relational humility reported greater dyadic adjustment at each time point during the transition (consistent with Hypothesis 1). These findings support the benefits of relational humility to relationship quality, and we call for further research into humility’s benefits during times of relationship transition.

Keywords:

• Humility
• relationships
• dyadic adjustment
• transition to parenthood

Acknowledgments

We thank Samantha Gerstbrein, Charlene Gaw, Rachel Balow, Joseph Newton, Divya Patel, Amber Palla, Gabrielle Mormille, Heidi Imperio, and Marla DiMercurio for their assistance in participant recruitment and data collection. We want to express our gratitude to the Fetzer Institute (#2266, Forgiveness and Relational Spirituality) and the John Templeton Foundation (#14979, Relational Humility; #48321, Behavioral Measures of Humility in Couples) for contributing the funding toward the current project that made it possible. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Fetzer Institute or the John Templeton Foundation.

Notes

1. Due to researcher error, the last two items from the original scale were omitted unintentionally.

2. APIM analysis procedures vary depending on whether dyad members are distinguishable or indistinguishable. Kenny et al. (2006) recommend that dyad members should be treated as indistinguishable if a potentially distinguishing factor does not affect their responses.

3. By default, SAS does not compute average or total scores for individuals who are missing data at the item level of a scale. Thus, individuals who were missing item-level data on the DAS scale were not included in the APIM analyses. Including individuals with missing data at the item level of the DAS would give individuals the appearance of lower dyadic adjustment as a result of simply not completing all of the scale items.

4. We also examined this model with the addition of sex as both a predictor of dyadic adjustment and as a within-dyad moderator in the relationships between actor and partner relational humility and dyadic adjustment; no effects involving sex were significant (ps ranged from .40 to .69).

5. We ran an additional model to examine whether sex had an effect on dyadic adjustment or interacted with actor relational humility, partner relational humility, or time; no effects of sex were significant (ps ranged from .13 to .79).

6. It is also possible that a larger sample size may be more likely to yield a significant interaction between relational humility and time.