Parent-Child Symbolic Relationship in Utero: Parents’ Prenatal Expectations Regarding Their Child’s Temperament and Their Own Parenting

This chapter explores parents’ schemas regarding the parent-child relationship during pregnancy. It examines whether parents’ questionnaire-reported expectations regarding their future child’s temperament related to their expectations regarding their own parenting. For both mothers (N = 786) and fathers (N = 490), expected child’s effortful control and surgency related positively to expected parental warmth and negatively to parental rejection. Expected child’s difficult temperament related negatively to expected warmth and positively to expected rejection. A closer look revealed differences in these patterns between mothers and fathers, and between parents expecting boys and parents expecting girls. The authors discuss the importance of these findings, and suggest theoretical, methodological, and clinical implications they may have on the parent-child postnatal relationship and young children’s positive development and flourishing.