The transition to parenthood is accompanied by declined self-esteem levels, which may be explained by parents’ relationship satisfaction. However, prior research examined self-esteem only shortly before and after childbirth and had no or only unmatched childless respondents as a control group, limiting the possibility to examine long-term adaptive processes and the causal interpretation of the associations. Thus, we used panel data (10 years, 4,075 individuals, and 16,122 observations) to compare self-esteem and relationship satisfaction trajectories of parents with matched childless respondents using propensity score matching. We found a quadratic trajectory for parents’ self-esteem, which declined and increased before birth and declined and returned to baseline levels after birth. In contrast, matched childless respondents’ self-esteem decreased linearly before childbirth and then recovered. The quadratic postpartum process in parents was significantly associated with reduced relationship satisfaction. Thus, a fulfilling relationship may help to maintain the positive effects of childbirth on self-esteem in parents.

向父母身份的转变伴随着自尊水平的下降，这可以用父母的关系满意度来解释。然而，先前的研究仅在产前和产后不久检查自尊，没有或只有无与伦比的无子女受访者作为对照组，这限制了研究长期适应性过程和关联的因果解释的可能性。因此，我们使用面板数据（10年，4,075个人和16,122个观察值），通过倾向得分匹配比较了父母与匹配的无子女受访者的自尊和关系满意度轨迹。我们发现了父母的自尊的二次轨迹，该轨迹在出生前下降并增加，在出生后下降并返回基线水平。相反，匹配的无子女受访者的自尊在分娩前呈线性下降，然后恢复。父母的二次产后过程与降低的关系满意度显着相关。因此，一种令人满意的关系可能有助于维持分娩对父母自尊的积极影响。