Emotional, cognitive, and family systems mediators of children's adjustment to interparental conflict.

Emotional, cognitive, and family systems processes have been identified as mediators of the association between interparental conflict and children's adjustment. However, little is known about how they function in relation to one another because they have not all been assessed in the same study. This investigation examined the relations among children's exposure to parental conflict, their appraisals of threat and blame, their emotional reaction, and triangulation into parental disagreements. One hundred fifty ethnically diverse 8- to 12-year-old children and both of their parents participated in the study. Comparisons of 3 models proposing different relations among these processes indicated that they function as parallel and independent mediators of children's adjustment. Specifically, children's self-blaming attributions and emotional distress were uniquely associated with both internalizing and externalizing problems, whereas perceived threat uniquely predicted internalizing problems and triangulation uniquely predicted externalizing problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interparental conflict and children's school adjustment: The explanatory role of children's internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships.

This study examined how children's insecure internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships served as explanatory mechanisms in multiple pathways linking interparental conflict and parent emotional unavailability with the emotional and classroom engagement difficulties the children had in their adjustment to school. With their parents, 229 kindergarten children (127 girls and 102 boys, mean age = 6.0 years, SD = .50, at Wave 1) participated in this multimethod, 3-year longitudinal investigation. Findings revealed that children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship were a significant intervening mechanism in associations between observational ratings of interparental conflict and child and teacher reports on children's emotional and classroom difficulties in school over a 2-year period. Moreover, increased parental emotional unavailability accompanying high levels of interparental conflict was associated with children's insecure representations of the parent-child relationship and children's difficulties in classroom engagement at school entry. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the intrinsic processes that contribute to difficulties with stage-salient tasks for children who are experiencing interparental discord. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional expression in the family as a context for children's appraisals of interparental conflict.

The cognitive contextual framework proposes that the emotional climate in the family plays a role in shaping how children perceive and evaluate interparental conflict. This hypothesis was tested in a sample of 144 8- to 12-year-old children and their parents. Children in families that expressed high levels of negative affect and low levels of positive affect reported greater self-blame for conflict, but parents' expressiveness did not predict children's threat appraisals. Positive and negative expressiveness moderated the association between exposure to parental conflict and children's internalizing and externalizing problems. These data suggest that the broader family context can shape the meaning of conflict to children and increase understanding of the conditions under which parental discord leads to child maladjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of child adrenocortical functioning in pathways between interparental conflict and child maladjustment.

This study examined the interplay between interparental conflict and child cortisol reactivity to interparental conflict in predicting child maladjustment in a sample of 178 families and their kindergarten children. Consistent with the allostatic load hypothesis (McEwen & Stellar, 1993), results indicated that interparental conflict was indirectly related to child maladjustment through its association with individual differences in child cortisol reactivity. Analyses indicated that the multimethod assessment of interparental conflict was associated with lower levels of child cortisol reactivity to a simulated phone conflict between parents. Diminished cortisol reactivity, in turn, predicted increases in parental reports of child externalizing symptoms over a 2-year period. Associations between interparental conflict, child cortisol reactivity, and child externalizing symptoms remained robust even after demographic factors and other family processes were taken into account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's appraisals of interparental conflict: Measurement and links with adjustment problems.

The present study investigated 2 questions pertinent to understanding developmental aspects of children's conflict appraisals: (a) Do 7- to 9-year-old children make reliable distinctions between their perceptions of conflict and their appraisals of threat and self-blame? (b) Do threat and blame appraisals mediate the association between exposure to interparental conflict and adjustment problems in this age group? Factor analysis of a new version of the Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale (CPIC-Y) designed for younger children showed that 179 7- to 9-year-old children distinguished properties of conflict from their appraisals of it. Moreover, as predicted by the cognitive-contextual framework, threat and self-blame appraisals mediated the link between conflict and internalizing problems but not externalizing problems. This study provides compelling evidence that appraisals of interparental conflict can be reliably measured at relatively young ages and suggests that perceptions of threat and self-blame function similarly in 7- to 9-year-olds as they do in older children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Genetic and environmental influences on global family conflict.

This study examined genetic and environmental influences on global family conflict. The sample comprised 872 same-sex pairs of twin parents, their spouses/partners, and one adolescent child per twin from the Twin and Offspring Study in Sweden. The twins, spouses, and child each reported on the degree of family conflict, and there was significant agreement among the family members’ ratings. These shared perspectives were explained by one common factor, indexing global family conflict. Genetic influences explained 36% of the variance in this common factor, suggesting that twins’ heritable characteristics contribute to family conflict, via genotype-environment correlation. Nonshared environmental effects explained the remaining 64% of this variance, indicating that twins’ unique childhood and/or current family experiences also play an important role. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of mothers' and fathers' adrenocortical reactivity in spillover between interparental conflict and parenting practices.

Guided by the affective spillover hypothesis, the present study examined the mediational role of parental adrenocortical reactivity to interparental conflict in explaining associations between interparental conflict and subsequent changes in mothers' and fathers' parenting practices over a 2-year period in a sample of 202 parents and their 6-year-old children. Results of autoregressive path models indicated that marital withdrawal was associated with increases in adrenocortical reactivity to conflict for mothers but not fathers. Furthermore, elevated adrenocortical reactivity in turn predicted greater psychologically controlling parenting practices and inconsistent discipline over time for mothers, but was not associated with changes in maternal warmth. Implications for clinicians and therapists working with maritally distressed parents and families are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A process analysis of the transmission of distress from interparental conflict to parenting: Adult relationship security as an explanatory mechanism.

Toward advancing conceptualizations of the spillover hypothesis, this study examined the conditions and mechanisms underlying the transmission of distress from the interparental relationship to parenting difficulties over a 2-year period in a sample of 233 mothers (M = 35.0 years) and fathers (M = 36.8 years) of kindergarten children. Findings from autoregressive structural equation models indicated that parents’ gender moderated associations between interparental conflict and parental psychological control and insensitivity to children’s negative affect. Pathways between interparental conflict and parenting difficulties over the 2-year period were significant for fathers but not mothers. Analysis of insecurity and depressive symptoms as affective mechanisms of spillover revealed that adult relationship insecurity was a significant mediator in the pathways between interparental conflict and parenting difficulties experienced by fathers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's appraisals of interparental conflict: Situational and contextual influences.

Children's appraisals of interparental conflict have been linked with their adjustment and their strategies for coping with conflict, but the factors that influence the appraisal process are less clear. This study examined cognitive and emotional responses of 60 7–12-year-old children to audiotaped conflictual interactions. Properties of the conflict, family factors, and child characteristics were related to children's appraisals; the most consistent predictors were the level of hostility expressed in the interaction, children's prior experience with physically aggressive interparental conflict, and children's age. These findings indicate that children's perceptions and interpretations of interparental conflict are influenced by the larger context in which a conflict occurs as well as the way the conflict is expressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Work and family satisfaction and conflict: A meta-analysis of cross-domain relations.

This meta-analysis is a review of the literature examining the relations among stressors, involvement, and support in the work and family domains, work-family conflict, and satisfaction outside of those domains. Results suggest that a considerable amount of variability in family satisfaction is explained by work domain-specific variables, whereas a considerable amount of variability in job satisfaction is explained by family domain-specific variables, with job and family stress having the strongest effects on work-family conflict and cross-domain satisfaction. The authors propose future directions for research on work and family issues focusing on other explanatory mechanisms and moderators of cross-domain relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of aggressive personality and family relationships in explaining family conflict.

This study investigated whether genetic and environmental influences on global family conflict are explained by parents' personality, marital quality, and negative parenting. The sample comprised 876 same-sex pairs of twins, their spouses, and one adolescent child per twin from the Twin and Offspring Study in Sweden. Genetic influences on aggressive personality were correlated with genetic influences on global family conflict. Nonshared environmental influences on marital quality and negative parenting were correlated with nonshared environmental influences on global family conflict. Results suggest that parents' personality and unique experiences within their family relationships are important for understanding genetic and environmental influences on global conflict in the home. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prospective effects of interparental conflict on child attachment security and the moderating role of parents' romantic attachment.

This study investigated the impact of parents' observed conflict behavior on subsequent child attachment security, both as a main effect and as moderated by parents' romantic attachment. Participants were 80 heterosexual couples involving men from the Oregon Youth Study and their first-born children. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to predict child security with each parent. Interparental psychological aggression predicted lower child security with father, regardless of romantic attachment. If the father was insecure, interparental positive engagement predicted lower child security with him. If either the mother or father was avoidant, interparental withdrawal did not predict lower child security, though it did for more secure parents. Results are discussed in terms of implications of attachment-(in)congruent behavior for parents' emotional availability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Daily work–family conflict and alcohol use: Testing the cross-level moderation effects of peer drinking norms and social support.

In the current study, we conducted daily telephone interviews with a sample of Chinese workers (N = 57) for 5 weeks to examine relationships between daily work–family conflict and alcohol use. Drawn from the tension reduction theory and the stressor–vulnerability model, daily work–family conflict variables were hypothesized to predict employees’ daily alcohol use. Further, social variables (i.e., peer drinking norms, family support, and coworker support) were hypothesized to moderate the relationship between work–family conflict and alcohol use. Results showed that daily work-to-family conflict but not family-to-work conflict had a significant within-subject main effect on daily alcohol use. In addition, there was significant between-subject variation in the relationship between work-to-family conflict and alcohol use, which was predicted by peer drinking norms, coworker support, and family support. The current findings shed light on the daily health behavior consequences of work–family conflict and provide important theoretical and practical implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental, family, and ethnic in influences on adolescent alcohol usage: A growth curve approach.

The influence of the developmental process of individuation, family conflict and cohesion, and ethnicity on adolescent alcohol use was examined in a 3-year longitudinal study. Participants included non-Hispanic White, Mexican American, and African American adolescents (n?=?6,522) from 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. They were surveyed annually for 3 years. Depending on which aspect of individuation was measured, hierarchical linear modeling indicated that changes in adolescent individuation were related to either increases or decreases in alcohol use over the 3-year period. Separation and family conflict were related to increases in alcohol use, and intergenerational individuation and family cohesion were related to decreases in alcohol use. White and Mexican American adolescents had a faster rate of increase in alcohol use than did African American youth. Separation and family process similarly influenced adolescent alcohol use from different ethnic groups. Implications for prevention and intervention programs are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of work–family conflict on employees’ well-being: The moderating role of recovery strategies.

Based on the effort-recovery model, this study links work–family conflict (WFC) and family–work conflict (FWC) with the concept of recovery. The authors hypothesize that 2 recovery strategies—psychological detachment from work and verbal expression of emotions—moderate the relationship of these 2 types of conflict with 2 indicators of well-being, namely psychological strain and life satisfaction. For our sample of 128 emergency professionals from Spain, psychological detachment from work moderated the relationship between WFC and psychological strain, and between FWC and life satisfaction. Verbal expression of emotions moderated the relationship between both types of conflict and psychological strain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A process model of adolescents' triangulation into parents' marital conflict: The role of emotional reactivity.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 24(2) of Journal of Family Psychology (see record 2010-07067-002). In the article “A Process Model of Adolescents’ Triangulation Into Parents’ Marital Conflict: The Role of Emotional Reactivity” by Cheryl Buehler and Deborah P. Welsh (Journal of Family Psychology, 2009, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 167–180), the abstract contains an error. The sample size for the study was 416 rather than 426.] This study examined adolescents' emotional reactivity to parents' marital conflict as a mediator of the association between triangulation and adolescents' internalizing problems in a sample of 2-parent families (N = 426). Four waves of annual, multiple-informant data were analyzed (youth ages 11–15 years). The authors used structural equation modeling and found that triangulation was associated with increases in adolescents' internalizing problems, controlling for marital hostility and adolescent externalizing problems. There also was an indirect pathway from triangulation to internalizing problems across time through youths' emotional reactivity. Moderating analyses indicated that the 2nd half of the pathway, the association between emotional reactivity and increased internalizing problems, characterized youth with lower levels of hopefulness and attachment to parents. The findings help detail why triangulation is a risk factor for adolescents' development and which youth will profit most from interventions focused on emotional regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital conflict typology and children's appraisals: The moderating role of family cohesion.

Intense and frequent marital conflict is associated with greater appraisals of threat and self-blame in children, but little else is known about contextual factors that might affect appraisals. Systemic family theories propose that to understand child adaptation, it is necessary to understand the interconnected nature of family subsystem relationships. In a sample of 257 families with 8- to 12-year-old children, this study examined whether a four-level typology of marital conflict management was related to children's perceptions of marital conflict and their appraisals of perceived threat and self-blame. In addition, family cohesion was tested as a moderator of the relationship between marital conflict style and children's appraisals. Observational coding was used to group couples into Harmonious, Disengaged, Conflictual-Expressive, and Conflictual-Hostile groups. Children's report of the intensity, frequency, and degree of resolution of interparental discord corresponded well with observers' ratings. The relationship between marital conflict style and appraisals of threat and self-blame was moderated by family cohesiveness. At high levels of family cohesiveness, no group differences were found for either perceived threat or self-blame, whereas when family cohesiveness was low, threat was higher for the Harmonious and Conflictual-Hostile groups, as compared to the Conflictual-Expressive group, and self-blame was higher for both conflict groups (expressive and hostile), as compared to the Disengaged group. The results provide further evidence of interconnected nature of family subsystem relationships and the importance of distinguishing among different approaches to marital conflict management for understanding the complex and perhaps subtle but meaningful effects different family system factors have on child adaptation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping with family-to-work conflict: The role of informal work accommodations to family.

The purposes of this study are to (a) construct and validate a scale measuring informal work accommodations to family (IWAF), (b) test the moderating effect of IWAF on the relationship between family-to-work conflict and work stress, and (c) examine the relationships between IWAF and a set of relevant antecedents and coping constructs. Two survey-based nonexperiments are used to accomplish these goals. Results indicate that (a) the IWAF scale is reliable, content valid, and meaningfully correlated to work-family and coping constructs; (b) more frequent use of IWAF attenuates the positive relationship between family-to-work conflict and stress; and (c) IWAF, along with organizational policies and climates, may be important for workplace stress management. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Work-supportive family, family-supportive supervision, use of organizational benefits, and problem-focused coping: Implications for work-family conflict and employee well-being.

Employees (n = 230) from multiple organizations and industries were involved in a study assessing how work-family conflict avoidance methods stemming from the family domain (emotional sustenance and instrumental assistance from the family), the work domain (family-supportive supervision, use of telework and flextime), and the individual (use of problem-focused coping) independently relate to different dimensions of work-family conflict and to employees' affective and physical well-being. Results suggest that support from one's family and one's supervisor and the use of problem-focused coping seem most promising in terms of avoiding work-family conflict and/or decreased well-being. Benefits associated with the use of flextime, however, are relatively less evident, and using telework may potentially increase the extent to which family time demands interfere with work responsibilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Siblings of military servicemembers: A qualitative exploration of individual and family systems reactions.

How does having a sibling in the military affect young adults? Despite increasing attention to the challenges faced by spouses and children of servicemembers, the siblings of servicemembers have been largely ignored in the existing literature. This qualitative investigation uses unstructured narratives to explore siblings' perceptions of changes in their lives and changes in the family of origin associated with having a family member enlist in the United States military. Thematic analyses revealed an acute period of conflict followed by reorganization, awareness of the parents' distress, changes in the emotional climate of the family, shifts in family roles, admiration for the military sibling, and increased meaning and purpose for the family following the servicemember's enlistment. Computer-assisted text analyses revealed both positive and negative emotional expressions associated with the siblings' military service. For professional psychologists who come into contact with siblings of servicemembers, it is important to recognize that military enlistment can have ripple effects and complicate other common individual and family stresses. More generally, it is important to provide siblings and the family of origin with information about what to expect during and after the servicemember's enlistment, especially since these families may lack support from and contact with others going through similar transitions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)