UC Riverside

The influence of parents’ marital instability on children has been thoroughly investigated in the literature. However, how couples’ pre-parenthood experiences affect marital relationships and child adjustment outcomes is less understood. One significant pre-parenthood experience is infertility, often shared by both partners but differentially experienced by women and men. Based on a prospective longitudinal study of adoptive families with a history of infertility challenges (N = 461), the current dissertation aimed to achieve two goals: (1) to examine the impact of pre-parenthood infertility distress on couples’ perceived marital instability trajectories in the 11 years of adoptive parents’ parenthood, and to test the moderating effect of social support from the partner and others; and (2) to explore the spillover effect from parents’ pre-parenthood infertility distress to child internalizing and externalizing outcomes in early adolescence, with marital instability and overreactive parenting as potential mediators. Results from growth curve analyses revealed inverse U-shaped curves of marital instability for mothers and fathers. Mothers’ infertility distress predicted higher marital instability and a faster increase in marital instability at child age of 4.5 years, and their satisfaction with partner support mitigated the association between infertility distress and marital instability. No such effect was identified for fathers. Results from path analyses illustrated two indirect paths from mothers’ infertility distress to child externalizing symptoms at age 11: one via overreactive parenting at child age 7 years, and the other via marital instability in childhood (the average marital instability from child age 18 months to 6 years) and overreactive parenting at child age 7 years. No cascading effect was found linking fathers’ infertility distress to child outcomes. Overall, results indicate that adoptive mothers’ infertility distress before parenthood serves as a risk factor for marital instability and overreactive parenting, which then spill over to child externalizing problems in adolescence. This dissertation underscores the importance of considering pre-parenthood experiences in later family functioning and child development, and the infertility struggle seems to play a particularly salient role in the family life for women. Discussion elaborates on the differing results for mothers and fathers, and implications for future research and intervention.