Social support network during family transitions to parenthood

The social support network is essential to the individual and his/her family when they face normative and non-normative transitions throughout the developmental process. This article aims to describe the alterations in the family network during transitions to parenthood due to the birth of babies. Fifteen working class fathers and their wives/partners from two groups (A: Pregnant mothers; B: Mothers with babies aged from one to six months) answered a questionnaire and a guide of a semi-structured interview. According to the mothers, the increase of psychological support was considered the main alteration in the network; to the fathers, it was the increase of financial and material help. All mothers reported that the most important support came from their husbands or partners. Our data suggest that it is necessary to know about the relationships between the family subsystems and the social context in which the families are embedded in order to better understand the alterations in the social support network and in the father's engagement in the family during transitions to parenthood.

social support network; family; birth of babies; mother and father; grandparents