How will things go after the baby comes? Will your child’s other parent do things the way you think they should be done? Or will your new parenting roles divide your family, as you and your partner argue over the right way to raise your child?

A new study set out to get an advance look at how parents will work together  – or not – following the birth of a baby.  Researchers got that look by videotaping parents as they interacted with a doll a few weeks ahead of their real baby’s birth.

You read that right: a doll.

Researchers visited 182 couples at home during the third trimester of pregnancy with a first child. They brought with them a doll made from a newborn-sized footed sleeper stuffed with 7 to 8 pounds of uncooked rice and topped by a head made of green fabric. As you can imagine, this doll was as heavy and as floppy as a real newborn but looked nothing at all like the expectant parents themselves!

Researchers then videotaped the parents-to-be as they interacted with this pretend baby, first individually, then together, and then as the parents discussed the interaction experience. Nine months later, after the real babies were born, the researchers again visited the families and videotaped parents as they interacted with their children.

Parents differed in their levels of support of each other during the pretend-baby interactions, including how well parents cooperated with each other, how playful parents were, the levels of warmth each parent expressed, and how much each parent seemed to use intuitive parenting behaviors. But the key finding was that the ways parents behaved with the pretend baby pretty much predicted how they would behave nine months later, after their real baby was born. Things don’t change after the baby is born. Parents continue to be the people they were before and to interact with their partners in the same ways.

Lead author Lauren Altenburger said, “Some of the couples were very positive, saying nice things to each other about their parenting. With the doll they might say ‘You’re going to be such a great dad.’ After the birth of the baby, their talk would be very similar: ‘You’re such a natural.'” But others, with both the doll and the baby,  were not so kind to their partner. They said things like “You’re not going to hold the real baby like that, are you?” They were critical of each other, she said.

So this is pretty interesting. I, for one, can’t wait to stuff a sleeper with rice and see how much it seems like an infant. But  – without getting out the baby dolls – what does this study mean for you?

1. Your partner is who he or she is and will continue to be the same person even after your children are born.  While becoming a parent is certainly a life-changing experience, parents’ personalities don’t change and you shouldn’t expect that to happen, for you or for your partner.
2. If you tend to be critical of others or overly perfectionistic – if you like everything to be done exactly your way – then now is the time to work on lightening up. Now, before the baby arrives. A new baby brings out the protective streak in most adults but you don’t want to alienate your child’s other parent by insisting that your way is always the best.
3. Notice the excellent qualities in your baby’s other parent and celebrate those. What is your partner bringing to the parenting experience and how do you complement each other? Parenting isn’t a competition and goodness knows every parent needs someone else to collaborate with.  Creating a happy family really requires partnership.

It’s a commonplace thought that we parent our children the same way our parents raised us. This might be true, and if it is, it supports the idea that how we might pretend to be parents carries over into our real life actions as moms and dads. It means our parenting instincts run deeper than the latest parenting advice books. But what really matters – what has always mattered – is that parents get along and respect and support each other.

Now, before your baby arrives or now even after your children are around, is the time to do just that.

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.

New parents often share a sunny fantasy: they will manage their child perfectly, they will apply the latest theories and advice faultlessly, and their baby will develop into the perfect child.

This fantasy lasts just as long as it takes for Baby to assert his own ideas. Parents quickly discover that child-rearing isn’t something they do alone; their child is a full partner in the process.

A new study of over 14,000 pairs of infant twins confirms this fact. Babies’ inborn predispositions and inclinations shape their behavior and influence how their parents treat them. Babies are not passive recipients of their parents’ efforts. Babies shape their own family’s dynamics.

Researchers compared family interactions in homes of identical twins to those in homes of fraternal (not-identical) twins. They speculated that if babies’ genetic predispositions influence parents’ behavior that moms and dads would treat identical twins similarly to each other but would treat fraternal twins less-similarly.

This is exactly what they found. Babies who share 100% of their genetic inheritance were treated very similarly by their parents. Babies who share only 50% of their genes (as all children in a family who are not identical twins do), were treated differently from each other. This indicates that parents respond to babies’ preset traits and inclinations. Babies influence their parents.

This might seem obvious, but notice that most parents act as if it’s not. As lead researcher, Reut Avinun says, “There is a lot of pressure on parents these days to produce children that excel in everything, socially and academically. Since children are not born [as a blank slate], I felt it was important to explore their side of the story, to show how they can affect their environment, and specifically parental behavior.”

Not only do new parents tend to believe they have total control over their children’s academic and athletic futures, they also believe everything they read in parenting guides. But these guides can never take into account the child’s side of the story. Avinun says, “There isn’t one style of ideal parenting. Each child requires a different environment to excel.”

Parent-child interactions, then, are a dialogue, not part of a plan formulated by adults. The child’s inborn personality influences how parents respond to them. These responses influence the child’s actions in return. This interplay of personality and inclinations is what makes every child’s experience different, even children in the same family. According to Avinun, “parents should not invest a lot of effort in trying to treat their children similarly, but instead, be aware of the variation in their children’s attributes and nurture them accordingly.”

What does this mean for us, in practical terms?

• We should abandon our own intentions to shape our children in a particular image and instead let the children’s intentions emerge. We have influence but we don’t have control.
• We should not worry about treating different children in the family differently if each child seems to need something unique. Children are not all the same and trying to make them all the same is frustrating for everyone. (This includes identical twins, by the way, who may be identical genetically but will be shaped by different life experiences.)
• We should not obsess over parenting perfection. Good parenting is not based in some advice guide but is based in our relationships with our children. It’s a dance we engage with our children, gradually moving into harmony.

Finally, we should remember that children are people too. Funny, special, quirky, surprising people. They have the power to show us things we never could have imagined.

Letting children be themselves develops the best in both of us.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.