Children's coping with marital conflict and their adjustment and physical health: Vulnerability and protective functions.

Children's strategies for coping with parental marital conflict were examined as predictors, mediators, and moderators of the relations between marital conflict and 8- to 11-year-olds' internalizing, externalizing, and physical health problems. In the context of marital conflict, a higher level of active coping and support coping combined was a protective factor against girls' depression symptoms and self-esteem problems and both boys' and girls' health problems. Further, avoidance coping was a vulnerability factor for externalizing, internalizing, and physical health problems in boys, and distraction coping was protective against children's depression and health problems. These findings extend the literature by delineating coping strategies that either protected children against, or heightened their vulnerability to, adjustment and health problems associated with exposure to parental marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fathering in family context and child adjustment: A longitudinal analysis.

This study focuses on relations between fathers’ behavior in family context and children’s adjustment, including the roles of paternal depressive symptoms, paternal marital conflict behaviors, paternal parenting, and children’s emotional security. Participants included 235 families with a six-year-old child, with families followed longitudinally each year for three years. In terms of fathers’ adjustment, paternal problem drinking was related to paternal negative marital conflict behaviors and decreased positive parenting, which was associated with children’s externalizing and internalizing problems. Fathers’ depressive symptoms were directly related with children’s internalizing problems. Children’s emotional security was an intervening variable in relations between father’s behavior in family context and children’s development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Appraisals of marital conflict and children's adjustment, health, and physiological reactivity.

Children's appraisals of marital conflict were examined as moderators and mediators of conflict and children's adjustment, physical health, and physiological reactivity. Mothers completed measures of marital conflict and children's adjustment and physical health, and elementary school children provided information on their parents' marital conflict, appraisals of perceived threat and self-blame in relation to parents' conflicts, and their internalizing symptomatology. Children's heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and skin conductance response and level were examined during both a baseline and an interadult argument. Higher levels of both self-blame and perceived threat functioned as robust vulnerability factors for children exposed to higher levels of marital conflict in relation to internalizing behaviors, health problems, and higher levels of cardiovascular reactivity to the argument. Further, a higher level of perceived threat was a vulnerability factor for externalizing problems associated with exposure to marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's responses to mothers' and fathers' emotionality and tactics in marital conflict in the home.

Addressing a gap in methodological approaches to the study of links between marital conflict and children, 51 couples were trained to complete home diary reports on everyday marital conflicts and children's responses. Parental negative emotionality and destructive conflict tactics related to children's insecure emotional and behavioral responses. Parental positive emotionality and constructive conflict tactics were linked with children's secure emotional responding. When parents' emotions and tactics were considered in the same model, negative emotionality was more consistently related to children's negative reactions than were destructive conflict tactics, whereas constructive conflict tactics were more consistently related to children's positive reactions than parents' positive emotionality. Differences in children's responding as a function of specific parental negative emotions (anger, sadness, fear) and parent gender were identified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Patterns of marital conflict predict children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors.

Reports the results of a longitudinal study on how marital interaction affects children. Observational assessment of marital interaction during conflict resolution obtained when children were 5 yrs old predicted teachers' ratings of internalizing and externalizing behaviors when the children were 8 yrs old. Two distinct and uncorrelated marital interaction patterns were related to specific forms of child outcomes. The Mutually Hostile pattern, which correlated with later marital dissolution, also predicted externalizing behavior patterns in children 3 yrs later. The Husband Angry and Withdrawn pattern predicted child internalizing behaviors. Marital satisfaction and child temperament did not relate to child outcomes, nor did they interact with marital patterns to produce deficits in child adjustment. Findings suggest that the specific behaviors couples use when resolving marital disputes may contribute differentially to the presence of externalizing and internalizing behavior patterns in children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital and severe parent-to-adolescent physical aggression in clinic-referred families: Mother and adolescent reports on co-occurence and links to child behavior problems.

This study examined the interplay of marital and severe parental physical aggression, and their links to child behavior problems, in 232 families of clinic-referred adolescents. Combined reports from mothers and adolescents indicated that two thirds of adolescents exposed to marital aggression in the past year had also experienced parental aggression. Mothers and fathers who used and/or were victims of marital aggression were both more likely to direct aggression toward their adolescent. Mother and youth reports of marital aggression were tied to each party's report of greater externalizing problems and to youth reports of greater internalizing problems. Severe parental aggression uniquely predicted maternal reports of both behavior problems, after controlling for marital aggression; the reverse was not true. Also, adolescents exposed to both types of family aggression did not display greater maladjustment than those subjected to only one type of family aggression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital conflict, maternal and paternal parenting, and child adjustment: A test of mediation and moderation.

Parenting was examined as a mediator of associations between marital and child adjustment, and parent gender was examined as a moderator of associations among marital, parental, and child functioning in 226 families with a school-age child (146 boys). Parenting fully mediated associations between marital conflict and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Parent gender did not moderate associations when data from the full sample or families with girls only were evaluated. Parent gender did moderate associations when families with boys were evaluated, with the association between marital conflict and parenting stronger for fathers than mothers. A trend suggested fathers' parenting may be more strongly related to internalizing behavior and mothers' parenting may be more strongly related to externalizing behavior in boys. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linking marital conflict and children’s adjustment: The role of young children’s perceptions.

Young children’s (n = 96) perceptions and appraisals of their parents’ marital conflict were evaluated at age 5 and again at age 6. Concurrent reports of marital conflict by each parent and teachers’ reports of children’s classroom adjustment served as criteria against which to evaluate the validity of young children’s perceptions. Children’s perceptions of their parents’ marital relationship were significantly correlated with spouses’ reports at ages 5 and 6, as well as correlated with teacher reports of internalizing and externalizing problems. Consistent with the cognitive–contextual theory, children’s tendency to blame themselves for their parents’ conflict partially mediated the link between marital conflict and children’s internalizing symptoms. In contrast, children’s reports that they become involved in their parents’ conflict partially mediated the effect of marital conflict on externalizing problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital conflict and support seeking by parents in adolescence: Empirical support for the parentification construct.

Parentification, a parent-child dynamic wherein children come to provide ongoing emotional support for their parents, has been documented extensively in the clinical literature; however, it rarely has been studied systematically. Using a community sample of 83 couples and their adolescent children (mean age = 15.26 years; 52% male, 48% female), the authors linked adolescent self-report of parentification to specific youth and adult behaviors using multiple methods and examined its associations with youth adjustment problems. The parentification measure demonstrated strong internal consistency and 1-year stability. Parentification was associated with marital conflict, youth perceptions of threat, low warmth in the parent-child relationship, and the tendency for youths to intervene in marital conflict. Links were also found with youth reports of internalizing and externalizing behavior and poorer competency in close friendships. These findings thus support the parentification construct and provide evidence that parentification may contribute to poor youth outcomes by burdening children with developmentally inappropriate responsibilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital Adjustment, Child-Rearing Disagreements, and Overreactive Parenting: Predicting Child Behavior Problems.

Using structural equation modeling, the authors evaluated the hypothesis that the relation between marital adjustment and children's behavior problems is mediated by child-rearing disagreements, whose effects are mediated by parents' overreactive discipline. In a community sample, fully or partially mediated models of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems of 3- to 7-year-old boys (N = 99) and girls (N = 104) were supported for mothers and fathers in 7 of 8 cases. Child-rearing disagreements always mediated the relation of marital adjustment and child behavior problems, and overreactive discipline was a final mediator in 3 cases. More variance was accounted for in mothers' than fathers' ratings. For mothers' ratings, the most variance was accounted for in boys' externalizing and girls' internalizing behavior problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family Functioning and Children's Adjustment: Associations Among Parents' Depressed Mood, Marital Hostility, Parent-Child Hostility, and Children's Adjustment.

Relations between parents' depressed mood, marital conflict, parent-child hostility, and children's adjustment were examined in a community sample of 136 ten-year-olds and their parents. Videotaped observational and self-report data were used to examine these relations in path analyses. A proposed model was tested in which mothers' and fathers' depressed mood and marital hostility were associated with children's adjustment problems through disruptions in parent-child relationships. Results showed that both mothers' and fathers' marital hostility were linked to parent-child hostility, which in turn was linked to children's internalizing problems. Fathers' depressed mood was linked to children's internalizing problems indirectly through father-child hostility. Fathers' depressed mood was directly linked to children's externalizing problems and indirectly linked through father-child hostility. For mothers, marital hostility was directly linked to children's externalizing problems, and marital hostility in fathers was indirectly linked to children's externalizing problems through father-child hostility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital psychological and physical aggression and children's mental and physical health: Direct, mediated, and moderated effects.

Relations between marital aggression (psychological and physical) and children's health were examined. Children's emotional insecurity was assessed as a mediator of these relations, with distinctions made between marital aggression against mothers and fathers and ethnicity (African American or European American), socioeconomic status, and child gender examined as moderators of effects. Participants were 251 community-recruited families, with multiple reporters of each construct. Aggression against either parent yielded similar effects for children. Children's emotional insecurity mediated the relation between marital aggression and children's internalizing, externalizing, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. No differences were found in these pathways for African American and European American families or as a function of socioeconomic status or child gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A family process model of marital hostility, parental depressive affect, and early adolescent problem behavior: The roles of triangulation and parental warmth.

This study examined a family process model of early adolescent problem behavior in a community sample of 416 two-parent families. With family systems theory, a model was developed that suggests (a) marital hostility and parental depressive affect are conjoint familial stressors for youths, (b) youth triangulation mediates the association between marital hostility and adolescent problems, and (c) parental warmth buffers the negative effects of parental depressive affect and youth triangulation. With structural equation modeling, youth-perceived triangulation mediated the association between marital hostility and adolescent internalizing problems. Marital hostility was associated with externalizing problems. Mothers' depressive affect was associated with internalizing problems, and fathers' depressive affect was associated with internalizing and externalizing problems. Parental warmth was not a significant moderator. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental drinking problems and children's adjustment: Vagal regulation and emotional reactivity as pathways and moderators of risk.

Children's emotional regulation (as indexed by vagal suppression) and children's emotional reactivity during an argument were examined as moderators and mediators of parental problem drinking and children's adjustment in a sample of 6- to 12-year-olds. Cardiac vagal tone was assessed during both a baseline condition and exposure to an audiotaped argument. Vagal suppression was calculated by subtracting vagal tone during the baseline from that recorded during the argument, with a higher number representing increased suppression of vagal tone during the argument. Emotional reactivity was based on both observations of overt behaviors of children and their reported feelings during the argument. A higher level of vagal suppression was a protective factor against children's externalizing, internalizing, and social problems associated with exposure to parental problem drinking. Emotional reactivity was a vulnerability factor, and children's increased anger and fear, and to a lesser degree sadness, each moderated and exacerbated the effects of parental problem drinking on child outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interparental conflict, negative parenting, and children's adjustment: Bridging links between parents' depression and children's psychological distress.

Pathways linking parental depressive symptoms, adult relationship insecurity, interparental conflict, negative parenting, and children's psychological adjustment (internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems) were assessed using a 3-wave longitudinal research design. Two-parent families (N = 352) with 11- to 13-year-old children (179 boys, 173 girls) participated in the study. Maternal and paternal depressive symptoms were associated with insecurity in adult close relationships assessed 12 months later, which was concurrently related to heightened levels of interparental conflict. Controlling for children's initial symptom levels, interparental conflict was related to child appraisals of father and mother rejection assessed an additional 12 months later, which were related to children's internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems, respectively. Results are discussed with regard to the implications for understanding the complex interplay between adult depressive symptoms, attributions in close adult relationships, interparental conflict, negative parenting, and children's psychological adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental depression and interparental conflict: Children and adolescents’ self-blame and coping responses.

The present study examined the role of children and adolescents’ perceptions of self-blame specific to interparental conflict and children and adolescents’ coping behaviors in the context of parental depression as predictors of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in a sample of 108 youth (age 9–15 years old) of parents with a history of depression. Higher levels of current depressive symptoms in parents were associated with higher levels of interparental conflict and higher levels of internalizing symptoms in children and adolescents, and interparental conflict was positively associated with both internalizing and externalizing symptoms in children/adolescents. Consistent across a series of multiple regression models, children and adolescents’ perceptions of self-blame and use of secondary control coping (acceptance, distraction, cognitive restructuring, positive thinking) were significant, independent predictors of both internalizing and externalizing symptoms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parent, family, and child characteristics: Associations with mother- and father-reported emotion socialization practices.

The present research examined parental beliefs about children’s negative emotions, parent-reported marital conflict/ambivalence, and child negative emotionality and gender as predictors of mothers’ and fathers’ reported reactions to their kindergarten children’s negative emotions and self-expressiveness in the family (N = 55, two-parent families). Models predicting parents’ nonsupportive reactions and negative expressiveness were significant. For both mothers and fathers, more accepting beliefs about children’s negative emotions were associated with fewer nonsupportive reactions, and greater marital conflict/ambivalence was associated with more negative expressiveness. Furthermore, interactions between child negative emotionality and parental resources (e.g., marital conflict/ambivalence; accepting beliefs) emerged for fathers’ nonsupportive reactions and mothers’ negative expressiveness. In some instances, child gender acted as a moderator such that associations between parental beliefs about emotions and the emotion socialization outcomes emerged when child and parent gender were concordant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physical violence and other forms of marital aggression: Links with children's behavior problems.

Two studies examined whether physical marital violence and other forms of marital aggression (e.g., threats, throwing objects) correlate with children's behavior problems in families marked by recent spousal violence. Study 1 included 55 families seeking marital therapy. Study 2 included 199 families at battered women's shelters. In the marital therapy sample, both physical marital violence and other forms of marital aggression correlated positively with children's externalizing problems. In the women's shelter sample, physical violence and other forms of marital aggression correlated positively with children's externalizing and internalizing problems. After accounting for the frequency of physical marital violence, forms of marital aggression other than physical violence still related to children's externalizing problems in the marital therapy sample and to children's internalizing problems in the women's shelter sample. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment relationships among children with aggressive behavior problems: The role of disorganized early attachment patterns.

Reviews attachment-related studies of early aggression to show that aggressive behavior toward peers is related to disorganized or controlling patterns of attachment behavior toward parents but not to avoidant or ambivalent patterns. Longitudinal attachment studies indicate that risk factors identified in cross-sectional studies of aggressive school-age children, such as family adversity, parental hostility, parental depression, and child cognitive deficits, are already evident in infancy and predictive of later aggression, before the onset of coercive child behavior. In infancy, these risk factors are associated with disorganized attachment behaviors toward the caregiver characterized by signs of fear or dysphoria, irresolvable conflict between opposing behavioral tendencies, and elevated cortisol levels after separation. Disorganized attachment behaviors, in turn, predict aggression in school-age children with other family factors controlled. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)