Description
This study examines the influence of key psychological, social and biological factors on the development of parenting thoughts, feelings and behaviors beginning during pregnancy and across the first months of postnatal development. Mothers and fathers are being recruited from obstetrics and midwifery clinics in the City of Detroit. The central aim of the study is to understand the underlying processes that parents experience as they prepare to parent a new baby. Data gathered from this study will contribute to our understanding of these prenatal psychological processes - especially for fathers - with the explicit aim of improving intervention services to fathers who are struggling to parent in the face of psychosocial and contextual adversity. Importantly, we will examine protective factors, in addition to risk factors, that may bolster the ability of fathers to care for their partner and child during pregnancy and early infancy.
Qualifications
- GPA of 3.0 or above
- Enthusiastic
- Works well as a member of a team
- Self Motivated
- Intellectually curious
- Interested in early parenting processes
Project Timeline
- Ongoing developmental psychology research project
- Students must complete a minimum of 2 semesters on the study
- Students must devote a minimum of 6 hours a week to the study
Duties
- Recruiting subjects at community locations including medical clinics
- Running subjects in the developmental laboratory: collecting saliva samples, administering qualitative interviews, collecting self-report data from parents; administering parenting protocols, operating the video and physiological data collection equipment, entering data, transcribing interviews, and other duties as assigned
- Must be available for afternoon and weekend labs
Last Updated
September 27, 2014