Alongside collaborators at the University of Georgia and the University of Minnesota, the Williamson Lab has published the second in a series of articles examining the relationships of first-time Black mothers during the first 4 months postpartum. In this article, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, we explored patterns and predictors of relationship dissolution and relationship formation during the early postpartum period. We find that among mothers who were in a relationship at 1 week postpartum (N = 126), 20% of these relationships ended by Week 8 or 16. Mothers whose relationships ended reported lower relationship functioning at Week 1 than mothers whose relationships remained intact. Among mothers who were single at 1 week postpartum (N = 86), over 50% subsequently reported being in a relationship at Week 8 or 16. Mothers who started relationships reported lower overall social support at Week 1 relative to mothers who remained single. Together, these findings indicate that changes in relationship status during the early postpartum period were common and provide initial insights into factors characterizing mothers who experienced relationship transitions. Future work would benefit from considering changes in relationship status as well as other relational changes during the transition to parenthood to reflect a wider range of experiences among new parents.
Lab News
Presentations at IARR
The Williamson lab will be well represented during the upcoming International Association for Relationship Research conference in Boston from July 5-8.
First, former Williamson lab post doctoral fellow Dr. Betul Urganci will be giving a talk on a collaborative project titled “Household Income Moderates Effects of Financial Strain on Relationship Quality Among African American Couples” on Sunday at 10:30am.
On Sunday afternoon at 2pm Dr. Williamson will be giving a talk about cultural biases in the study of couple communication during the Methodological Challenges in Relationship Science Symposium.
Dr. Inmaculada Valor-Segura will give a talk on collaborative research conducted during Dr. Williamson’s time as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Granada. This talk is titled “Can positive couple relationship functioning buffer against the effects of socioeconomic status on health and well-being?” and will be on Sunday at 3:30pm.
Finally, graduate student Nick Chen will be presenting his project, titled “Examining the Role of Supportive Equity in Marital Relationships in Later Life” on Monday at 9am.
In addition, incoming PhD student Jayda Branch will be presenting her undergraduate research from the University of Houston, entitled “Examining Anxious Attachment as a Moderator between Emotional Jealousy and Psychological Abuse” during the Sunday morning poster session at 8am.
New paper in press at Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
Graduate student Nick Chen has a new first-authored publication in press at the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. In this article we, along with collaborator Dr. Phakkanun Chittham of the Faculty of Psychology at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, examined whether there are cross-cultural differences in the process of transformation of motivation in close relationships. Transformation of motivation occurs when one must suppress their instinct to behave in a self-focused manner in order to engage in behavior that is beneficial for their relationship. Across two studies, we found no overall differences in the extent to which U.S. and Thai individuals engage in the process of transformation of motivation, but there were cross-cultural differences in the types of pro-relationship behaviors that people from these two countries chose to engage in.
Grant awarded to support international research
The Williamson Lab was recently awarded a $10,000 grant from Texas Global to support an international research project in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Granada. We will use the funds to conduct a cross-national study in the United States and Spain which examines how social relationships and socioeconomic status interact to contribute to health and well-being outcomes.
New article in press in Family Process
Alongside collaborators at the University of Georgia and the University of Minnesota, the Williamson Lab has a new paper in press in the journal Family Process which examines the relationships of first-time Black mothers during the first 4 months postpartum. Although a robust literature has identified characteristics that predict changes in relationship satisfaction during the transition to parenthood, the relationships of Black mothers postpartum remain understudied. We found that mothers who reported more commitment and partner support were higher in initial satisfaction, as were mothers who were married or cohabiting with a partner (relative to mothers who were not cohabiting with their partner). Mothers with clinically significant depressive symptoms at 1 week postpartum had lower initial relationship satisfaction than mothers without clinically significant depressive symptoms. Finally, mothers experiencing more sleep difficulties and racial discrimination experienced larger declines in satisfaction.
Congratulations to Dr. Williamson
November 21, 2023
Dr. Williamson was recently awarded the Early Career Contributions to Couple Relationships Award by the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Couples Special Interest Group, which was presented (in absentia) at the ABCT annual conference in Seattle last week. Congratulations!
New paper in press at Journal of Marriage and Family
November 21, 2023
Dr. Williamson has a new paper in press at the Journal of Marriage and Family which discusses methods that family science researchers can use to improve the samples they use in their research. This manuscript was an invited contribution to JMF’s Mid-Decade Special Issue on Theory and Methods, which will be released in Feb 2025.
Fulbright Mediterranean Research Seminar
November 21, 2023
![Fulbright Mediterranean Research Seminar group photo](https://sites.cns.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/styles/os_news_full/public/williamson/files/fulbright_group.jpg?m=1700562522&itok=HgX7O5LI)
This past weekend Dr. Williamson attended the Fulbright Mediterranean Research Seminar in Alicante, Spain. Fulbright Scholars who are conducting research in Mediterranean countries across all disciplines were in attendance. Dr. Williamson presented preliminary results from research conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the Universidad de Granada examining the impact of close relationships on health and well-being in Spain and the U.S.
New paper in press at Family Relations, with presentations at NCFR and ABCT
November 7, 2023
The Williamson Lab has a new paper in press at the journal Family Relations which examines whether treatment outcomes for relationship education differ by level of pre-treatment relationship functioning. Using data from ~1600 low-income couples who participated in an RCT of relationship education, we first used latent class analysis (LCA) to identify distinct sub-groups based upon their pre-treatment reports of their relationship happiness, commitment, perceived partner commitment, and thoughts that the relationship was in trouble. Four classes of pre-treatment relationship functioning emerged: Happy, Stable (44%), Moderately Distressed (39%), Highly Distressed Women (10%), and Highly Distressed Men (7%).
We next tested for treatment effects (compared to the no treatment control condition) within each LCA group. Significant 12-month treatment effects were found only for women in the Happy, Stable group. Thus, we find that a large number of distressed couples enroll in relationship education programs (56% of couples in this sample), but do not benefit from the intervention. We suggest that in order to ensure that all couples receive an intervention that is effective for them, changes to the current delivery of community-based relationship educaiton programs is needed. Couples should be screened for their level of relationship functioning and assigned to an intervention that is appropriate for their needs. To accomplish this, relationship education curricula may need to be adapted to address the needs of distressed couples, or relationship education providers may need to partner with agencies delivering more intensive treatment (such as couple therapy).
Post-doc Betul Urganci and PhD student Nick Chen are authors on this manuscript, and both will be presenting this work at conferences in the coming weeks. Nick will present at NCFR in Orlando on Nov 9 and Betul will present at ABCT in Seattle on Nov 17.
New article in press in Social and Personality Psychology Compass
May 5, 2023
In an article newly published in the journal Social and Personality Psychology Compass we use the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to test a classic theory about how different levels of stress impact relationships. Tesser and Beach originally raised the possibility that moderate levels of stress are the most harmful for relationships in a 1998 study in which they found that the association between stress and individual well-being was linear, whereas the association with relational well-being was non-linear. The current study sought to conceptually replicate this study within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by examining associations between stress and individual versus relational well-being, using a sample of 654 individuals who were in a committed relationship in the early weeks of the pandemic. Results were somewhat consistent with those of the original study: the association between stress and depression was linear, but the association between stress and relationship satisfaction was non-linear. However, the form of the association between stress and relationship satisfaction was different than observed in the original study. These results point toward the need to better understand how the severity of a stressor impacts relational outcomes, including the characteristics of stress that lead to stress spillover and the circumstances under which relational outcomes are resilient to high levels of stress.