Longing for grandparenthood: Its association with life satisfaction in late middle adulthood.

The present study applies the life-span theoretical concept of life longing (Sehnsucht) to grandparenthood as an important normative transition of middle and late adulthood that can be hoped for but not acted upon. A cross-sectional online study was conducted with N = 477 parents (73.5% women; age range: 40-81 years) whose adult children have not (yet) had offspring. Longing for grandparenthood was measured with a grandparenthood-specific adaptation of an established self-report questionnaire (Life Longing Questionnaire) and by employing a bifactor exploratory structural equation model (ESEM). As expected, strong expressions of longing for grandparenthood were associated with lower life satisfaction. Emotional support by the partner (here, perceiving the partner as understanding this Sehnsucht) offset this negative relationship (as did dispositional optimism, which an ancillary analysis revealed). By contrast, control over the longing fantasies did not help to attenuate the association between longing for grandparenthood and life satisfaction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

How perceived maternal gatekeeping affects fathers: An 8-week study.

Maternal gatekeeping describes mothers' attempts to influence father involvement in child-rearing. While the effect of maternal gatekeeping on the father-child relationship has been explored, less is known about how fluctuations in the perception of maternal gatekeeping influences fathers' family outcomes and whether father's attachment might moderate these associations. Building on family systems theory, this study explores the within-person effect of negative maternal gatekeeping on father's weekly reports of romantic relationship quality and feelings of exclusion from the family and tests father attachment as a moderator of these associations. Two hundred seventy-seven Canadian and German fathers with children under the age of 6 took part in an 8-week online diary study. Data were analyzed using multilevel structural equation modeling. During weeks when fathers perceived more maternal gatekeeping than was typical, they reported lower positive romantic relationship quality, higher negative romantic relationship quality, and felt more excluded from the family system. Avoidant attachment moderated the within-person effect of perceived maternal gatekeeping on negative romantic relationship quality, such that within-person increases in perceived maternal gatekeeping were more strongly linked with higher than-average negative romantic relationship quality among more avoidant fathers. Our findings shed new light on the within-person effects of perceived maternal gatekeeping on fathers' feelings regarding the family system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Child-related bliss and couples' partnership satisfaction in the early parenthood period: A longitudinal dyadic perspective.

This research investigates the impact of parents' feelings of fulfillment and joy aroused by their infant and parenthood-referred to as child-related bliss-on their partnership satisfaction in the early period of parenthood between 6 and 24 months postpartum. In addition, the influence of partnership satisfaction during pregnancy and after childbirth on child-related bliss is investigated. Guided by family systems theory, we assumed both parents' child-related bliss to be positively associated with individual (i.e., spillover effects) as well as the spouse's partnership satisfaction (i.e., crossover effects). Longitudinal dyadic data from N = 135 heterosexual couples were analyzed using the actor-partner interdependence model, which takes interdependencies between couples into account. Taken as a set, the findings suggest that fathers' child-related and partnership-related perceptions are more closely linked than is the case for mothers. Fathers' child-related bliss 6 months postpartum positively influenced their partnership satisfaction at that time, and at 12 and 24 months postpartum. For mothers, in contrast, such spillover effects were not detected. Most importantly with respect to interdependencies between couples, the results indicate crossover effects from fathers to mothers, that is, fathers' child-related bliss positively contributed to mothers' partnership satisfaction in the postnatal period. In contrast, mothers' bliss did not influence fathers' partnership satisfaction. The study demonstrates that fathers' parental feelings of fulfillment and bliss contribute to their individual and to mothers' partnership satisfaction. This highlights gender-specific couple dynamics, that is, an influence of fathers' blissful child-related feelings on mothers' partnership satisfaction in the postnatal period. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).