Parental relationship quality as a resource for the early socio-emotional development during the first years

Transition to parenthood is associated with various challenges for the couple's relationship, such as definition of new roles, lack of sleep, and less time spend as a couple. This can lead to an increased number of conflicts and decrease in marital relationship quality which not only poses a risk to the relationship itself but also to the socio-emotional development of the child during the first years of life. In contrast, a successful, resilient adaptation of the parents and their relationship to the new challenges is associated with development-promoting parent behavior such as high sensitivity, high parental engagement, and constructive conflict-resolution strategies. The mediation of the marital relationship quality and early childhood socio-emotional development through parent-child-processes, such as emotional security, emotional spillover, and model learning as well as coparenting, is presented taking into account the vulnerability-stress-adaptation-model and the family stress model. Subsequently, various options for strengthening marital relationship quality in the transition to parenthood are presented. Structural, state funding opportunities are considered as well as targeted clinical pedagogical prevention and intervention measures.