ABSTRACT
In the past decade, a number of longitudinal research projects have documented the experiences of men, women and their marriages during the transition to parenthood (Belsky, Gilstrap, & Rovine, 1984; Cowan & Cowan, 1992; Feldman & Aschenbrenner, 1983; Grossman, Eichler, & Winickoff, 1980; Heinicke, Diskin, Ramsay-Klee, & Oates, 1986; Lewis, Owen, & Cox, 1988). Analyses of group data demonstrate that becoming a family entails dramatic shifts in personal identity and family life. In addition to provoking a rearrangement of work and family roles and reducing the time and energy for the marital relationship, the process of family formation alters the central aspects of men’s and women’s self-concepts and their relationships to spouses, parents, friends, and the society at large (For reviews of research of the transition to parenthood, see Berman & Pedersen, 1987; Cox, 1985; Michaels & Goldberg, 1988; Palkovitz & Sussman, 1988).
