Coparenting in divorced and married parents and children’s psychosocial adjustment

As a distinct construct from both marital relationship and parent-child relationship, coparenting refers primarily to the extent to which parents experience joint responsibility for children’s well-being, are able to cooperate and coordinate in the decisions regarding their children, and trust each other. These aspects concern visible behaviors and interactions between parents, together with their perceptions. In the past decades, a growing number of studies have demonstrated the influence of coparenting on marital and parent-child relationships, and on children’s psychosocial adjustment, from early toddlerhood through adolescence. Coparenting and its effects have been mostly explored among divorced parents or intact families separately. The present study was aimed at comparing perceptions of coparenting in divorced and married parents (100 divorced parents and 85 married parents), both fathers and mothers, and assessing the relation between coparenting and school-age and adolescent children’s psychosocial adjustment. Results showed that divorced parents, especially fathers, perceived a lower level of coparenting. Moreover, children’s adjustment were related to coparenting only in the group of divorced parents.