Dr. Brandon McDaniel

Research Interests & Areas

Research Interests: • Coparenting and couple relationships • Media/technology in family life • Transition to parenthood • Daily diary designs My research tends to focus on influences on, the development of, and outcomes of couple and coparenting relationships, especially at the daily level in order to capture life as it is really lived and experienced by individuals and families. Although I have and continue to examine relationships in a variety of avenues (e.g., daily and longitudinal examinations of coparenting, daily emotion work and sacrifice in relationships, parenting stress, sexual satisfaction, etc.), one of the main directions for my current and future research focuses on technology use and the influence of technology and media use on parents, children, and family relationships (as well as utilizing my expertise in daily diary and dyadic research to examine these processes). For example, I have published work on technoference--or technological interruptions and intrusions--in couple and coparenting interactions, sexting, infidelity behaviors on social media sites, parent distraction with mobile devices and child behavior, etc. In a sense, my work is focused on understanding many of these "new age" influences on family relationships so that we are better able to serve families' and children's needs and improve the quality of their relationships.