Following, Balancing, or Self-Regulating? Parental Leave-Dependent Emotion Dynamics in New Mothers and Fathers

How do first-time parents regulate their own and each other’s emotions as they navigate maternity and paternity leave? Using experience sampling, we tracked Danish mothers and fathers’ emotion states six times daily for a week across maternity (N = 88) and paternity leave (N = 56). Bayesian multilevel coupled-oscillator models revealed distinct emotion regulation patterns that varied systematically with leave arrangements. Arousal amplified self-regulation dynamics specifically for parents not on leave, while co-located partners (verified through GPS) displayed emotional synchrony in both valence and arousal that disappeared in randomly paired couples. Mothers’ regulatory responsesto fathers shifted across leave periods, following fathers’ emotions during maternity leave but counterbalancing them during paternity leave, whereas fathers provided weak counterbalancing responses across both periods. These findings, combined with substantial couple-level variation, establish that couples function as mutually regulating systems where individual capacity and leave configurations jointly shape how first-time parents coordinate their emotional lives.