Coparenting Within the Family System: Review of Literature

Abstract

Family systems theory which postulates that family-level processes affect children's development over and above any individual subsystem, has changed the emphasis in research on children and families. Previous research of child development in families focused on associations with individual parent-child relationships or on connections between the marital relationships and child adjustment. In contrast, researchers have recently articulated distincitive family group dynamic, coparenting which uniquely predicts children's social and emotional adaptation over and above the effect of parenting and marital processes. This article reviews the literature on recent coparenting research and studies linking this family relationship to important indicators of children's development and adjustment. The implications for clinical practice and directions for future research are discussed.