Coparenting and child functioning meta-analysis

Coparenting is known to be a crucial factor in promoting families’ well-being. It refers to parents’ way of working with and supporting each other, regarding childrearing and parental practices (Feinberg, 2003). Various theoretical models of coparenting exist (see Favez et Farascolo, 2013), but according to Margolin et al. (2001), coparenting can be understood trough three dimensions: coparental support, conflict, and triangulation. Through meta-analytical work, these three dimensions have been linked to children’s psychological functioning via exteriorized and interiorized symptoms (Teubert & Pinquart, 2010). Empirical research has also shown that coparenting quality is negatively associated to various mental health symptoms and diagnoses in children, such as autism (Downes & Cappe, 2021), intellectual disability (Norlin & Broberg, 2013), and developmental delay (Rosencrans & McIntyre, 2020). In fact, these types of special needs can increase parental stress, which lessens coparenting quality, hence creating a family environment prone to the emergence or aggravation of child difficulties (Feinberg et al., 2010; Downes & Cappe, 2021). These findings emphasize the importance of coparenting when studying child development. There is a need to synthesize the scientific literature on child’s psychological functioning (e.g., mental health symptoms compared to well-being, indices of cognitive development) and their contribution to subsequent coparenting quality, given the surge in empirical studies on coparenting in the past few years. Meta-analytic work found small to moderate links between coparenting and child mental health, but it does not (1) include the numerous recent studies in this field (notably, all studies since the COVID-19 pandemic), (2) always use a systematic review protocol, or (3) considered children’s type of special needs or mental health difficulties as a potential moderator (Teubert & Pinquart, 2010; Zhao et al., 2022). Furthermore, no meta-analytic work has, to our knowledge, studied children’s cognitive development as an outcome, although it has been linked to coparenting quality (Shai, 2019). Since the literature has primarily focused on mothers’ experience of coparenting (Pierce et al., 2024), deeper comprehension on fathers’ and mothers’ distinct perspectives on coparenting is also required (Johnson et al., 2023). A variety of measures (e.g. self-report, child report, naturalistic observation, etc.) have been used to assess coparenting quality (Rosencrans & McIntyre, 2020); comparing the findings derived from every assessment method would enrich the psychometrical comprehension of coparenting. Thus, the present study aims to investigate the link between coparenting and child’s psychological functioning (pertaining either to mental health or cognitive development), trough systematic review and meta-analysis. Various mediators will also be examined, such as parent and child gender, types of child special needs, assessment methods, etc.