Quality of early family relationships affects children's mental health. The birth of a child is often a long-awaited and deeply meaningful event, but the transition to parenthood also forces the parents to revise their interparental romantic relationship. At the same time as the parents learn how to cope with the new situation, the infant undergoes one of the most intense developmental periods in human life. Attachment research has demonstrated the importance of the mother-infant relationship to children’s emotional development, but there is still relatively little research on the role of fathers, the marital relationship and the family as a whole. Source 4r.