Transition to Parenthood: A Replication and an Extension

In this study an attempt was made to replicate an earlier study and to determine whether variability among published findings on adjusting to the first child may be due in part to the use of different measuring instruments. An effort was also made to test the hypothesis that the amount of difficulty in adjusting to the first child was positively correlated with the child's age and to ascertain whether difficulty with the first child was negatively correlated with parents' marital adjustment scores. The replication confirmed that parenthood was not as severely stressful as earlier studies had suggested. Findings varied considerably when two indexes were used with the same research subjects, but checklist scores and interview ratings were correlated to a statistically significant degree. The amount of difficulty in adjusting to the first infant and parents' marital adjustment scores were negatively correlated to a statistically significant degree for checklist scores but not for ratings of interviews.