Political violence and child adjustment in Northern Ireland: Testing pathways in a social–ecological model including single-and two-parent families.

Moving beyond simply documenting that political violence negatively impacts children, we tested a social–ecological hypothesis for relations between political violence and child outcomes. Participants were 700 mother–child (M = 12.1 years, SD = 1.8) dyads from 18 working-class, socially deprived areas in Belfast, Northern Ireland, including single- and two-parent families. Sectarian community violence was associated with elevated family conflict and children's reduced security about multiple aspects of their social environment (i.e., family, parent–child relations, and community), with links to child adjustment problems and reductions in prosocial behavior. By comparison, and consistent with expectations, links with negative family processes, child regulatory problems, and child outcomes were less consistent for nonsectarian community violence. Support was found for a social–ecological model for relations between political violence and child outcomes among both single- and two-parent families, with evidence that emotional security and adjustment problems were more negatively affected in single-parent families. The implications for understanding social ecologies of political violence and children's functioning are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longitudinal relations between marital conflict and child adjustment: Vagal regulation as a protective factor.

Although associations between marital conflict and children's adjustment problems are established, less is known about child individual differences that can have an impact on these relations. The authors examined longitudinal relations between marital conflict and children's adjustment using a community sample of elementary school-age children and young adolescents and assessed the role of children's vagal regulation in moderating the conflict-child problems link. Elevated marital conflict was predictive of negative child outcomes, and greater vagal suppression to a simulated argument was protective against internalizing problems associated with marital conflict. Findings are supportive of the value of a biopsychosocial perspective and illustrate that child vagal regulation can contribute to the aggregation or amelioration of risk for maladjustment in the context of exposure to marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of the Oregon model of Parent Management Training (PMTO) on marital adjustment in new stepfamilies: A randomized trial.

Effects of intervention with the Oregon model of Parent Management Training (PMTO?) on marital relationship processes and marital satisfaction in recently married biological mother and stepfather couples were examined. Sixty-seven of the 110 participating families were randomly assigned to PMTO, and 43 families to a non-intervention condition. Intervention had reliable positive indirect effects on marital relationship processes 24 months after baseline which in turn were associated with higher marital satisfaction. These indirect effects were mediated by the impact of PMTO on parenting practices 6 months after baseline. Enhanced parenting practices resulting from PMTO prevented escalation of subsequent child behavior problems at school. Consistent with a family systems perspective and research on challenges to marital quality in stepfamilies, improved co-parenting practices were associated with enhanced marital relationship skills and marital satisfaction as well as with prevention of child 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)     

Children's influence in the marital relationship.

In a 3-wave longitudinal study, the authors tested hypotheses regarding children's influence on the marital relationship, examining relations between interparental discord and children's negative emotional reactivity, agentic behavior, dysregulated behavior, and psychosocial adjustment. Participants were 232 cohabiting mothers and fathers who completed questionnaires and a marital conflict resolution task. Consistent with theory, interparental discord related to children's negative emotional reactivity, which in turn related to children's agentic and dysregulated behavior. Agentic behavior related to decreases in interparental discord, whereas dysregulated behavior related to increases in discord and elevations in children's adjustment problems. Person-oriented analyses of agentic and dysregulated responses indicated distinct clusters of children linked with meaningful individual differences in marital and psychosocial functioning. Results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms of child effects, such as increased parental awareness of children's distress potentially leading to reduced marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing coparenting in families of school-age children: Validation of the Coparenting and Family Rating System.

Studied (1) the psychometric properties of an observational co-parenting measure and (2) the relationship between co-parenting and the adjustment of school-age children. Ss were 67 couples in the US with a 1st-born, 7-11 yr old child. Family interactions during unstructured family play in a laboratory setting were coded with the Coparenting and Family Rating System (CFRS; J. P. McHale et al, 2000). Three self-report measures of marital adjustment, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale were administered. For boys, the CFRS measure Hostility-Competitiveness correlated with anxiety (Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale) and with mother-reported internalizing, externalizing, and overall problems (CBCL). For girls, the CFRS measure Parenting Discrepancy correlated with mother-reported internalizing (CBCL). The possibility of sex differences in co-parenting-adjustment links is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A genetically informed study of associations between family functioning and child psychosocial adjustment.

Research has documented associations between family functioning and offspring psychosocial adjustment, but questions remain regarding whether these associations are partly due to confounding genetic factors and other environmental factors. The current study used a genetically informed approach, the Children of Twins design, to explore the associations between family functioning (family conflict, marital quality, and agreement about parenting) and offspring psychopathology. Participants were 867 twin pairs (388 monozygotic; 479 dizygotic) from the Twin and Offspring Study in Sweden, their spouses, and children (51.7% female; M = 15.75 years). The results suggested associations between exposure to family conflict (assessed by the mother, father, and child) and child adjustment were independent of genetic factors and other environmental factors. However, when family conflict was assessed using only children's reports, the results indicated that genetic factors also influenced these associations. In addition, the analyses indicated that exposure to low marital quality and agreement about parenting was associated with children's internalizing and externalizing problems and that genetic factors also contributed to the associations of marital quality and agreement about parenting with offspring externalizing problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

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)     

Security, emotionality, and parental depression: A commentary.

New studies suggest that changes in family environments due to parental depression increase children's risk for psychopathology. However, some aspects of family and child functioning may not be adversely affected. Future directions include (a) more precise definition of the response processes that are at risk in children and (b) differentiation of response processes linked with different dysfunctional family processes (e.g., parenting, marital conflict). Little elaboration of conceptual models has occurred in response to recent findings. Emotional security provides an explanatory construct for how certain family environments associated with parental depression increase children's risk for psychopathology. New directions are outlined for the study of relations between family environments associated with parental depression and children's emotional security. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital conflict and child adjustment: An emotional security hypothesis.

An emotional security hypothesis that builds on attachment theory is proposed to account for recent empirical findings on the impact of marital conflict on children and to provide directions for future research. Children's concerns about emotional security play a role in their regulation of emotional arousal and organization and in their motivation to respond in the face of marital conflict. Over time these response processes and internalized representations of parental relations that develop have implications for children's long-term adjustment. Emotional security is seen as a product of past experiences with marital conflict and as a primary influence on future responding. The impact and interaction of other experiential histories within the family that affect children's emotional security are also examined, with a focus on parent–child relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Congruence of parental perception, marital satisfaction, and child adjustment.

Fathers and mothers of 95 children 5–7 yrs old completed the Short Marital Adjustment Test, Interpersonal Checklist, and the Children's Behavior Checklist to assess marital satisfaction, congruence of self- and mate-perceptions, and agreement in parents' perceptions of their child and child adjustment, respectively. All variables were significantly, positively intercorrelated. Strongest association was between congruence in parents' perceptions of the child and child adjustment. Similarity in partners' self-concepts and psychological empathy were significantly associated with marital satisfaction and child adjustment. A general dimension of family harmony (vs conflict) is seen as contributing to children's social adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family relationships and children's adjustment in clinical and nonclinical stepfather families.

Investigated differences in marital and family process, children's behavioral adjustment in clinical and nonclinical stepfather families, and the relationship of family process to children's psychosocial adjustment. Nonclinical stepfamilies had better parent–child relations, better marital adjustment, and more marital individuation than clinical stepfamilies. Children in clinical stepfamilies had more behavior problems rated with fewer prosocial behaviors, and had more shy and withdrawn behavior than children in nonclinical stepfamilies. More negative and less positive child-to-parent interactions and less spousal individuation correlated with more behavior problems and less prosocial behavior of children. Implications for clinical interventions and future research on stepfamilies are discussed. (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)     

Are some children harder to coparent than others? Children’s negative emotionality and coparenting relationship quality.

The current study examined relations between child temperament—specifically, negative emotionality—and parents’ supportive and undermining coparenting behavior, and further tested whether marital adjustment moderated relations between child negative affect and coparenting. One-hundred eleven two-parent families with a 4-year old child participated in this study. Parents completed questionnaires to provide information on children’s negative affectivity, marital adjustment, and the quality of their coparenting relationships. Furthermore, parents and children participated together in two 10-minute task-oriented interactions that were coded to assess coparenting behavior. As hypothesized, parents of children higher on levels of negative affect demonstrated greater undermining coparenting behavior. In addition, marital adjustment moderated relations between children’s negative affect and parents’ supportive coparenting behavior. However, contrary to expectations, couples with higher levels of marital adjustment were most vulnerable to effects of child negativity on supportive coparenting. Results suggest that high-quality marital relationships may not buffer the coparenting relationship from the effects of temperamentally difficult preschoolers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mother's emotional expressivity and children's behavior problems and social competence: Mediation through children's regulation.

The relations between mothers' expressed positive and negative emotion and 55–79-month-olds' (76% European American) regulation, social competence, and adjustment were examined. Structural equation modeling was used to test the plausibility of the hypothesis that the effects of maternal expression of emotion on children's adjustment and social competence are mediated through children's dispositional regulation. Mothers' expressed emotions were assessed during interactions with their children and with maternal reports of emotions expressed in the family. Children's regulation, externalizing and internalizing problems, and social competence were rated by parents and teachers, and children's persistence was surreptitiously observed. There were unique effects of positive and negative maternal expressed emotion on children's regulation, and the relations of maternal expressed emotion to children's externalizing problem behaviors and social competence were mediated through children's regulation. Alternative models of causation were tested; a child-directed model in which maternal expressivity mediated the effects of child regulation on child outcomes did not fit the data as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What about the kids? Parenting and child adjustment in the context of couple therapy.

Little research examines parenting and children's adjustment when couples engage in therapy. We examined how couples with and without children improve with couple therapy and whether they also report improvements in parenting and child adjustment. With up to twenty six sessions of couple therapy, 134 couples, 68 of whom had children, showed improved marital satisfaction during treatment, which was ultimately maintained over the 2-year follow-up, regardless of whether they had children. Couples married relatively longer, both with and without children, evidenced greater improvement. Couples with children reported less conflict over child rearing and better child adjustment during treatment, but only improvements in the former were maintained. Conflict over child rearing mediated the relationship between marital distress and child adjustment over therapy and the 2-year follow-up. These preliminary results suggest that couples in therapy may decrease their conflict over child rearing during treatment and they may be able to maintain these gains for at least two years following treatment; moreover, over the course of treatment, this decreased conflict is tied to improved child adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relations between early child care and schooling.

The purpose of this article is to examine relations between aspects of early child care (age entered, full- or part-time structure, and number of child-care arrangements and their quality) and school adjustment. The early child-care experiences of 87 children who entered a laboratory elementary school at 3 years, 9 months of age were documented, and their first-grade adjustment was assessed 3 years after school entrance. Although single-parent families and families in which the mother was employed used more child care and enrolled their children at earlier ages, maternal education was more closely associated with children's school adjustment than was maternal employment or marital status. After family characteristics were accounted for, academic progress, school skills, and few behavioral problems were predicted by high-quality, stable child care. The structure of the early child care (full- or part-time) was not associated with school adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children and marital conflict resolution: Implications for emotional security and adjustment.

This study addresses multiple gaps in understanding the implications of marital conflict resolution for children. Mothers' diary home reports (N = 102 mothers, N = 578 reports) of marital conflict resolution (i.e., compromise, apology, submission, agreement to disagree, withdrawal) and of children's responses, along with the reactions of children (N = 163) to analogue presentations of the same conflict endings in the laboratory, were examined. The significance of specific marital conflict endings, including the emotionality of endings, was supported and demonstrated for the first time in the home. Parents' and children's appraisals of resolution were generally similar, although for some endings these appraisals differed, supporting the notion that children are sensitive to the broader implications of conflict endings for interparental relations and family functioning. Children's responses to conflict resolution were related to their broader adjustment, further indicating the significance of conflict endings to understanding the impact of marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family Income and Its Relation to Preschool Children's Adjustment for Families in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care.

The current study examines relations of mean-level estimates, linear changes, and instability in income and family processes to child outcomes and addresses whether income, through its impact on family functioning, matters more for children living in poverty. Temporal changes and instability in family processes, but not income, predicted children's adjustment. Cross-sectional mediational analyses indicated that for families living at the poverty threshold, family processes fully mediated the effect of average income over the study period on social behavior but only partially mediated its effect on cognitive-linguistic development. The strength of these associations diminished as average income exceeded the poverty threshold. That is, income had a greater impact on the family functioning and development of poor children than of nonpoor children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)