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Objective: This study aimed to examine the quality of life (QOL) in Japanese couples during the transition to parenthood with their first child., Background: Relevant literature suggests that the health status of women drop during pregnancy and the postpartum period. However, less is known about their partner's well-being during the transition to parenthood and little research has addressed the relationship between couples' QOL across multiple domains., Method: Participants included 9216 married Japanese men and women, including 3729 couples, who were expecting or raising their first child under the age of three. They independently completed questionnaires on baseline demographics and on WHOQOL-BREF., Results: Men showed higher scores for psychological QOL, while women had higher scores for social and environment QOL. A significant interaction between gender and stage of transition to parenthood was found. The moderating effect of age between the stage and QOL was found for men on the physical and psychological domains. Couples' QOL scores were weakly to moderately correlated., Conclusion: Findings suggest that both men and women had lower QOL, with the exception of women's physical QOL, after childbirth, but they showed different trends during the transition to parenthood across different domains of QOL.

Purpose: The present study aimed to examine the relationship between sociodemographic factors and domains of quality of life (QOL) among married adults in Japan who were either rearing or expecting their first child. Our research focus was on whether different sociodemographic variables interacted with each other in predicting the first-time parents' QOL., Method: In total, 4374 (mean age = 34.9 years, SD = 8.4, range 18-71) community-based married couples pooled from two surveys provided their sociodemographic information (i.e., age, years of education, and annual income) and responded to the brief version of the QOL instrument developed by the World Health Organization (WHOQOL-BREF in Psychological Medicine 28(3):551-555, 1998)., Results: Series of multilevel regression analyses revealed that household annual income and education were associated with all domains of QOL, and other sociodemographic variables worked in a domain-specific manner. In addition, the effect of educational attainment on psychological domain was significant for mothers only, whereas the effects of household income on psychological and environmental domains were stronger for the younger (below age 26) than the older (over 43) couples., Conclusion: The effects of sociodemographic factors at couple as well as individual levels on the first-time parents' QOL were examined for the first time in Japan using couple data. In addition to corroborating previous findings on the main effects concerning these variables, the present study demonstrated the complex patterns of interaction across different levels. These findings provide evidence for the need for financial and health measures targeted at specific parent populations.

Positive internal characteristics and social relations have been investigated for their effects on global life satisfaction in adolescence. However, their relative importance to life satisfaction and developmental differences in their effects on life satisfaction have not been uncovered. The present study tested a model which assumed that internal characteristics and social relations were directly related to life satisfaction, and that at the same time social relations were associated with internal characteristics even after controlling for the effects of gender and parents' educational backgrounds. Responses on self-report measures by 7th grade (n =254) and 10th grade (n =368) students were utilized in SEM analyses. The results supported the model, and subsequent multi-group analysis showed that the relationships and degrees of association among factors were comparable between the two cohorts. One exception to this cross-age finding was that the link between family relationship and internal characteristics were significantly stronger for 7th grade students, implying that the family environment has a more important role in enhancing positive internal characteristics in early adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]