From couples to coparents in England: Factors that contribute to the process of change in coparents’ parenting practices

Abstract

Recently, interest in families has increased amongst researchers, practitioners and policymakers in England. This includes a renewed focus on understanding parenting and supporting families through parenting programmes. Many programmes demonstrate positive outcomes for mothers and children, but do not typically consider the coparenting between mothers and fathers. Additionally, most evaluations overlook the ‘process of change’ or ‘active ingredients’ for promoting change in parenting practices. Consequently, the current study investigates the process of change in coparenting practices, using a mixed-method design beginning with semi-structured interviews and followed by questionnaires. The study found that coparents were influenced by various elements, which were underpinned by the coparents’ perceptions of one another. These included the developing coparenting alliance, process-oriented parenting and parenting programme support for both parents. This study concludes that only through understanding how change occurs in families, can services be developed, designed and delivered to meet families’ needs.

Keywords:

• couple relationships
• coparenting
• process of change
• parenting programmes

Acknowledgement

Thank you to the parents and the parenting programme for their participation in this research.

Notes

1. The term ‘parenting programmes’ will be used throughout this article and is synonymous with other terms including parent support programmes, parent education and parenting interventions.

2. A third phase was conducted to gather feedback from parents regarding these and other findings. The findings reported here were confirmed; however, no new information on this topic was gleaned. For more information, see Huntington and Vetere (accepted).

3. For more detailed information on coparenting and parenting programmes, please see Huntington and Vetere (accepted).

4. According to mothers as coparents’ perspectives only.

5. Only three will be explored due to relevance and space.

6. According to fathers as coparents’ perspectives only.

7. This is a slightly higher stress value than should ideally be used; however, analysis at the three-dimensional space did not aid interpretability.