PhD position (100%) on coparenting in families

Within the Parenting and Special Education Research Unit (Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences), we (a) investigate the antecedents, nature and consequences of typical and atypical parenting and typical and atypical developmental, learning and behavioral processes, and (b) aim to contribute to the development of effective strategies for the prevention, diagnosis and intervention of parenting, developmental, learning and behavioral problems. This position concerns family studies, which focuses on the study of coparenting in the family and its importance for the well-being and development of parents and children.
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Project

In this four-year PhD project, you will explore coparenting, the scientific term for the way parents and other caregivers interact with each other in the care and upbringing of a child for whom they share responsibility, regardless of financial, legal or partnership relationships. The coparenting relationship can, for example, be about how parents support or undermine each other or how they divide up the tasks in the family. Under the direction of Prof. Karla Van Leeuwen (https://ppw.kuleuven.be/pserg/psergstaff/00055523), who will act as supervisor of the PhD student to be recruited, a number of lines of research have now been established on this topic, for example on how co-parenting is related to the well-being of parents and children, or to the quality of the partner relationship with the current or former partner, or how parents and grandparents cooperate in the upbringing of a (grand)child. Prof. Martijn Van Heel (Vrije Universiteit Brussel; https://researchportal.vub.be/en/persons/martijn-van-heel), who will be co-supervisor of the PhD student to be recruited, is also involved in some of these lines of research. As research into co-parenting is a relatively young field of research, there are still many opportunities to design studies. Karla Van Leeuwen and Martijn Van Heel have extensive research experience in the fields of family pedagogy and (developmental) psychology and are part of an international network of researchers working on co-parenting.

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Interested?

For more information please contact Prof. dr. Karla Van Leeuwen, tel.: +32 16 32 62 32, mail: karla.vanleeuwen@kuleuven.be.

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