Darby E. Saxbe

Objective: Language and physiology each carry information about how couples attune, yet are rarely studied together, especially during vulnerable periods such as the transition to parenthood. Semantic synchrony , or shared meaning across partners’ speaking turns, is a potential marker of relational functioning that may reflect couples’ use of active listening and reflection to validate one another’s concerns. Semantic synchrony may also intersect with other dimensions of health-relevant synchrony such as covariation in partners’ hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Methods: The present study examined semantic and HPA-axis/cortisol synchrony in 100 expectant parent dyads during lab-based discussions in pregnancy and at six months postpartum. Results: Semantic synchrony was present across all conversations and was strongest during discussions of conflict. Positive HPA-axis synchrony emerged at both timepoints, but semantic and HPA-axis synchrony were unrelated. Semantic synchrony during discussions about relationship conflict was negatively associated with partners’ validation of one another (i.e., communicating sincere understanding), but this association was primarily attributable to couples’ backchanneling (e.g., “ mmhm ,” “ uh-huh ”) – brief verbal expressions that communicate understanding without interrupting the speaker. Neither form of synchrony predicted relationship quality at either visit, with one exception: postpartum HPA-axis synchrony marginally predicted couples’ relationship quality ( P =.04). Moreover, partners’ backchanneling during discussions of conflict was positively associated with participants’ relationship quality. Conclusions: Together, these findings suggest that it is backchanneling, not semantic synchrony, that is associated with greater validation and relationship quality and may therefore serve as a potential linguistic marker of relational functioning.

Fearful facial expressions signal vulnerability and may be especially salient in caregiving contexts. Like women, men undergo neurobiological transformation as they become parents, but no study has focused on how expectant and new fathers process fearful faces. To fill this gap, we administered a behavioral and fMRI emotion perception task to characterize fear responses in men transitioning to fatherhood. First‐time fathers completed a forced‐choice behavioral emotion recognition task and an fMRI emotion perception task before ( n = 38, M _age = 32.33 years) and after ( n = 34, M _age = 33.25 years) their child's birth. We examined behavioral fear recognition and neural responses to fearful adult faces prenatally and ~8 months postpartum. Additionally, we examined whether fathers' fear recognition and postpartum bonding difficulties were associated with neural response. Before their child's birth, fathers showed heightened neural activation to fearful expressions (versus rest) in the inferior frontal gyrus, anterior cingulate, insula, amygdala, periaqueductal gray, pre and postcentral gyri, fusiform gyrus, and visual cortex. Fathers who exhibited stronger periaqueductal gray activation towards fearful faces also showed more accurate fear recognition. After their child's birth, fathers responded to fearful faces in many of the same regions, but also showed activation in the dorsal striatum. Higher dorsal striatum activation was associated with fewer father‐infant bonding problems. A longitudinal region‐of‐interest analysis revealed a trend towards increased nucleus accumbens activation to fearful expressions from prenatal to postpartum. An exploratory whole‐brain analysis also found that responses to fearful faces increased in the angular gyrus and decreased in the secondary visual cortex over the transition to fatherhood. Consistent with theory proposing caregivers must be willing to approach others in distress, our findings suggest that first‐time fathers recruit reward regions in addition to canonical fear processing regions after their child's birth, and that striatal responding to fearful faces is linked with father‐child bonding. This is the first longitudinal study to examine fear processing across the transition to fatherhood and provides insight into how men adapt to the fatherhood role.

Growing evidence suggests that fathers have distinct influences on parent and child health and well‐being through their engagement in parenting. Although fathers have increased their involvement in parenting in recent decades, father involvement remains more variable than that of mothers. The present paper applies a biopsychosocial perspective to the transition to fatherhood to elucidate the factors that may promote positive adaptation to fatherhood. We review research on the biological, psychological, and social factors that strengthen fathers' parenting. Overall, recent findings suggest that a range of biopsychosocial changes facilitate positive adaptation to fatherhood, which may have broader implications for family health and well‐being. However, there is also heterogeneity in findings, and much of the research in this area remains preliminary due to the paucity of large longitudinal studies that comprehensively assess biopsychosocial factors among expectant and new fathers. We propose that integrated, longitudinal, biopsychosocial research designs that consider the family as an interdependent system embedded within a broader context will help address existing research gaps. Ultimately, such research will more comprehensively characterize the complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors in expectant and new fathers and advance biopsychosocial research and theory on fatherhood. We also discuss the significance of biopsychosocial research on fathers for prevention and intervention efforts to support parent, child, and family health.

Prior research has found that mothers report greater relationship satisfaction when couples divide infant care more equally, but less is known about how parents arrive at their division of infant care. The present study examines the expectations for infant care that first-time coparents formulate together during pregnancy, how these expectations compare to their reported division of infant care at six months postpartum, how these expectations differ by the gender of the parent, and how they influence the couple’s postpartum wellbeing. A sample of 93 heterosexual, cohabitating couples expecting their first child participated in two discussion tasks—one during pregnancy and another at approximately six months postpartum—focused on the division of infant care. Couples completed an adapted version of the Who Does What scale (Cowan & Cowan, 1988) together. Couples on average predicted a more egalitarian division of infant care during pregnancy than they achieved after birth. Fathers both expected and reported a more equal division of labor than did mothers. A more equal division of postpartum infant care was associated with lower parenting stress for both parents and higher relationship satisfaction for mothers, but not for fathers. Couples who more accurately predicted their division of infant care reported higher relationship satisfaction at postpartum. Exploratory analyses revealed a curvilinear relationship between prenatal discussion specificity and expectation accuracy, such that parents who were moderately specific were most accurate. Understanding how prenatal expectations differentially shape parenting stress and relationship functioning for mothers and fathers has important implications for both practice and policy.

Parents activate brain regions linked with social cognition, reward processing, and emotion when viewing their own infant. Neural responses to own‐infant stimuli may be driven by familiarity, self‐relevance, or by the unique features of infant faces. The current study sought to clarify these distinctions in first‐time fathers by contrasting video stimuli of their infant, an unfamiliar infant, and their pregnant partner. In addition, we examined associations with fathers' self‐reported bonding and parenting stress. Fathers (n = 32) scanned approximately 8 months after the birth of their first child completed an fMRI scan while watching videos of their infant, an unfamiliar infant, their pregnant partner, and an unfamiliar pregnant woman. We compared neural responses to the participant's own infant to these other stimuli using both traditional univariate methods and multivariate searchlight analyses. Lastly, we ran additional multivariate pattern analyses to determine discriminability between infant and adult stimuli, as well as familiar and unfamiliar stimuli. Consistent with previous studies, fathers showed greater activation to their own infant versus an unfamiliar infant in regions including the precuneus, posterior cingulate, orbitofrontal cortex, and inferior frontal gyrus. In addition, fathers exhibited heightened activation to their own infant versus their partner in the precuneus. Fathers who reported stronger antenatal and postpartum bonding and lower parenting stress 3 months after birth subsequently showed stronger activation in the precuneus and posterior cingulate to their own infant. Multivariate pattern analyses revealed that in addition to these regions, the parahippocampus differentiated own‐infant stimuli versus other conditions. Neural patterns distinguished infant/adult and familiar/unfamiliar stimuli in mentalizing, visual, and affective areas. These findings replicate and extend previous research on the parental brain and suggest that cortical midline mentalizing network regions, as well as visual and reward areas, are particularly important in first‐time fathers' processing of their own infants.

Perinatal reductions in gray matter volume have been observed in human mothers transitioning to parenthood, with preliminary evidence for similar changes in fathers. These reductions have been theorized to support adaptation to parenting, but greater investigation is needed. We scanned 38 first-time fathers during their partner’s pregnancy and again after 6 months postpartum, and collected self-report data prenatally and 3, 6, and 12 months postpartum. Significant gray matter volume reductions were observed across the entire cortex but not the subcortex. Fathers who reported stronger prenatal bonding with the unborn infant, and planned to take more time off from work after birth, subsequently showed larger cortical volume decreases. Larger reductions in gray matter volume also emerged among fathers who reported stronger postpartum bonding with the infant, lower parenting stress, and more time spent with their infant. Larger volume reductions predicted more postpartum sleep problems and higher levels of postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychological distress, controlling for prenatal sleep and mental health. Volume reductions were smaller among fathers whose infants were older at the postpartum scan, indicating potential rebound. These results suggest that perinatal gray matter volume reductions might reflect not only greater parenting engagement but also increased mental health risk in new fathers.

The present study investigated how meaning-making around a birth experience predicts relationship quality and parenting stress across the transition to first-time parenthood, a time that many new parents find stressful and challenging. Childbirth experiences may set the stage for these challenges, and how new parents make meaning of childbirth could play a role in their subsequent postpartum adjustment. Meaning-making processes (sense making, benefit finding, and changes in identity) were coded from birth narratives collected from 77 mixed-sex biological parent dyads (n = 154 individuals) shortly after the birth of their first child. Parents reported on their relationship quality during pregnancy and at 6 months postpartum, and on their parenting stress postpartum. Mothers' greater sense making and benefit finding buffered longitudinal declines in their own relationship quality, and maternal sense making also buffered declines for fathers. Fathers' greater sense making and benefit finding predicted lower levels of their own parenting stress, whereas mothers' greater sense making and benefit finding were linked with higher paternal parenting stress. Finally, fathers' discussion of changes in identity predicted lower levels of parenting stress in mothers. These results suggest the importance of meaning-making following childbirth for couples adjusting to parenthood and highlight the value of studying meaning-making processes dyadically. Clinicians may be able to support new parents by facilitating their coconstruction of meaning during their shared birth experience and transition to parenthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).