Coparenting in Diverse Family Systems

Abstract

In this chapter, we address a dynamic that lies inextricably at the core of most family systems around the world—that of the coparenting collaboration operative between the important adults who shoulder responsibility for the socialization and upbringing of each individual child. The acknowledgment by the Handbook of Parenting (2nd ed.) that across diverse families parenting of children is brokered not just dyadically, but also within a system that involves, at minimum, three people, made a bold, innovative, and transformative contribution to the landscape of the parenting field as it had taken shape in 2002. McHale and colleagues noted that there had been a recent groundswell of scholarly activity devoted to understanding coparenting, but “most of what we know about coparenting to date is based on research with heterosexual, married, European American or European two-parent families” (p. 76). This situation has gradually changed in the years since, with studies exploring, weighing, and documenting the nature of coparenting dynamics as they are revealed in a variety of different family collectives and structures around the globe in which adults parent children together. Progression has been, in one sense, very modest and, in another, extraordinarily expansive. Our aims in this chapter are to mark progress in the field and define vistas yet to be explored.

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