Coparenting relationship quality and parenting satisfaction, concerns, and strain among Japanese mothers and fathers in early parenthood

Coparenting relationship quality is a key interpersonal context in which parents’ emotional experiences of childrearing take shape. In Japan, where traditional gendered expectations of ‘mothers as primary caregivers’ coexist with growing norms of paternal involvement, little is known about how multidimensional coparenting relates to parents’ affective attitudes towards parenting or whether these associations differ for fathers and mothers. This study explored patterns of association between multiple facets of coparenting and affective attitudes towards parenting among fathers and mothers in Japan during early parenthood from a gender-informed perspective.

A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 547 parents (261 fathers, 286 mothers) whose oldest child was aged 3 years or younger. Six dimensions of coparenting were analysed: agreement, closeness, exposure to conflict, support, undermining, and endorsement of partner parenting. Affective attitudes towards parenting were assessed as three subjective affective evaluations: parenting satisfaction, parenting concerns, and parenting strain.

Multiple-group path analysis was used to estimate associations while adjusting for socio-demographic covariates. On balance, model comparisons favoured the constrained-equal structural path model over the unconstrained structural path model, suggesting that fathers and mothers shared a broadly similar association structure. Correspondingly, gender differences in individual paths were limited.

Within this shared structure, closeness and support were positively associated with parenting satisfaction, agreement was negatively associated with parenting concerns, and exposure to conflict was positively associated with both parenting concerns and parenting strain; undermining and endorsement of partner parenting showed no unique associations. These findings suggest that, in Japan’s transitional context of shifting gender norms and institutional conditions surrounding childrearing, fathers and mothers may share similar patterns linking coparenting dynamics to their affective attitudes towards parenting, highlighting the importance of couple-level processes in family support. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the parents who participated in the study and cooperated with the research team.

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (grant number 19K19728) and Faculty of Nursing Discretionary Expenses of Toyama Prefectural University, Japan, for fiscal year 2024. Toyama Prefectural University, Toyama, Japan Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan The authors declare no competing interests. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee for Research Involving Human Participants at Toyama Prefectural University, Toyama, Japan (approval number: R6-15; approval date: 7 August 2024).

The approval covered the survey procedures reported in this article, including participant recruitment, informed consent, data collection, data management, and analysis. All procedures involving human participants were conducted in accordance with the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki; the Ethical Guidelines for Medical and Biological Research Involving Human Subjects, issued jointly by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry; and the Toyama Prefectural University Regulations on Ethical Review of Research Involving Human Subjects. Informed consent was obtained electronically by the investigators via the online survey system from all participants before they began the questionnaire.