PSY BEH 101D Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Coparenting
14 May 2018
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• Dec. 7, 2017
• Divorce and Adults' Well Being
o Selection Effect
• Selection Effect Example
o Neuroticism: characterized by anxiety, worry, frustration
o One of the Big 5 Personality traits found in adults
• Bradbury & colleagues
o Pre-Divorce: higher neuroticism scores associated with increases in depressive symptoms
and anxiety
o Higher neuroticism scores associated with lower levels of marital satisfaction in men, r =.30,
and women r=1.41
o Post-Divorce: recently divorced individuals have higher neuroticism, depression, and anxiety
scores than non-divorced individuals
• Divorce and Children's Well-Being
o Is divorce bad for children - yes, but small
• Small, consistent negative effects:
o Emotional problems, lower test scores/grades, difficultly with social relationships, less likely
to remain married, poorer health
o Important caveats: some effects due to selection: children's disadvantage in part due to
divorced parents bringing risky traits into marriage
o Other effects due to stress of process of divorce
• Predictors of better well being following divorces
o Authoritative parenting
o Co-parenting
o Low parental conflict
o More stable post-divorce environment (school)
Transition: Old Age
• 1/5 (or more) over 65
• People are having fewer children & living longer
• Changes that accompany the aging population:
o Individual: physical health versus functional health
o Absence of Disease vs
• Can you: walk a quarter of a mile, walk up a flight of stairs, stand/sit for 2 hours, bath
yourself, feed yourself, obtain basic necessitites
o Individual: physical health versus functional health, well-being
o Family: structural, support
o Societal: changing demands, settings, medical, housing
• Why we age: theories
o "Wear & Tear theory": proposed in 1882
• Cells simply wear out over time because of continued use - like a machine
• Speed of wear and tear might be attributed to stress
• Basic Definitions of Stress:
o Engineering def: the force exerted upon a body that tends to strain or deform its shape
(Webster, 2002)
o Human def: stress refers to the pressure that life exerts on us and the way the pressure
makes us feel (McEwan 2002)
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