"Ultimately we’re together": Understanding New Parents' Experiences of Co-parenting

DOI

Positive co-parenting is critical for parenting and child outcomes, especially for new parents, who suffer from an increase in conflicts and decreased marital relationships. Investigating the practices, strategies, and challenges of new parents' co-parenting, including collaborating, supporting, and relating to each other, can help better understand this vulnerable parenting period. Furthermore, this understanding can bring insights to inform technology design for supporting co-parenting. In this paper, we present an overview of related research on parents' collaboration, support, and relationships. We then report findings from an exploratory semi-structured interview study with 11 pairs of new parents who are interested in co-parenting skills and unpack their helpful co-parenting strategies, tools, and challenges when applying those strategies. We conclude with a discussion of the design implications and connections of these implications to technology ideas aiming to support new parents' positive co-parenting in their day-to-day lives and an observation that couples' co-parenting is a case of coproduction.