Marital Conflict, Child Emotional Security about Family Relationships and Child Adjustment

Addressing a gap in process‐oriented understanding of relations between marital conflict and children's adjustment, propositions of the emotional security hypothesis from a family‐wide perspective were tested in a longitudinal research design. Participants were 181 families and their 11–12 year‐old‐child (115 boys, 76 girls) living in Wales, in the United Kingdom. Relations between marital conflict, children's emotional security about marital conflict and parenting, respectively, and children's adjustment were assessed based on reports by mothers, fathers, and children and videotaped analogue procedures completed by children. Structural equation modelling indicated that children's emotional security about interparental conflict (emotional regulation, cognitive representations and behavioural regulation) mediated the relation between marital conflict and children's security about parenting. Processes pertaining to children's security in multiple family systems (i.e., interparental and parent–child) provided an indirect mechanism through which interparental conflict affected children's symptoms of psychological distress (internalising and externalising problems) assessed 12 months later. Future directions for further tests of comprehensive, theoretically based models for the effects of marital conflict on children are discussed.     

Marital Conflict and Children's Adjustment: Parental Hostility and Children's Interpretations as Mediators

The associations between marital conflict, maternal and paternal hostility, children's interpretations of marital conflict, and children's adjustment were examined in a sample of 136 school‐aged children and their parents. Observational measures were collected from videotapes of marital interaction and family interaction. Self‐report data were collected from parents and children. Results showed that mothers’ and fathers’ hostility mediated the association between martial conflict and children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Children's feelings of being to blame for marital conflict and being threatened by it mediated between marital conflict and children's internalizing problems but not their externalizing problems.     

Marital Conflict and Children's Adjustment: The Mediating and Moderating Role of Children's Coping Strategies

This prospective, longitudinal study examined the role of children's coping strategies in the link between interparental conflict and children's psychological adjustment. Using a sample of 100 parents and children aged 11–14 years, this study investigated children's venting of negative emotion, social support seeking, and problem solving strategies as mediators and moderators of the relationship between marital conflict and child adjustment. Venting negative emotion mediated the long‐term effects of marital conflict on children's psychological adjustment. This coping response also moderated the relationship between marital conflict and children's anxiety‐depression. The role of non‐constructive coping strategies as a mechanism through which marital conflict affects children's psychological well‐being is discussed, together with the need for research to identify intervention strategies aimed at improving children's coping efficacy in the context of interparental conflict.     

Constructive and Destructive Marital Conflict,Parenting, and Children's School and Social Adjustment

This study addresses the links between destructive and constructive marital conflict and mothers' and fathers' parenting to understand associations with children's social and school adjustment. Multi‐method, longitudinal assessments of 235 mothers, fathers, and children (129 girls) were collected across kindergarten, first, and second grades (ages 5–7 at time 1; ages 7–9 at time 3). Whereas constructive marital conflict was related to both mothers' and fathers' warm parenting, destructive marital conflict was only linked to fathers' use of inconsistent discipline. In turn, both mothers' and fathers' use of psychological control was related to children's school adjustment, and mothers' warmth was related to children's social adjustment. Reciprocal links between constructs were also explored, supporting associations between destructive marital conflict and mothers' and fathers' inconsistent discipline. The merit of examining marital conflict and parenting as multidimensional constructs is discussed in relation to understanding the processes and pathways within families that affect children's functioning.     

Attachment, Temperament, and Preschool Children's Peer Acceptance

This study examined the relations between preschool children's attachment security, temperament, and peer acceptance. Ninety‐eight preschool children and their mothers were recruited through childcare centers in the southeast. Mothers and their children participated in two two‐hour home observations. Attachment security was assessed using the Waters Attachment Behavior Q‐set (AQS) completed by observers, and mothers reported on their children's temperament. Standard picture‐sociometric nominations and paired‐comparisons were used to measure children's peer acceptance. Results revealed significant associations between security and temperament. In addition, both attachment and temperament made significant and unique contributions to peer acceptance whereas temperament was found to be a stronger predictor of children's peer rejection. These findings underscore the dynamic interplay of inter‐ and intrapersonal factors that influence preschool children's peer relations. Implications of the findings for theory building and future research are discussed.     

Parent and Child Cognitive Representations of Social Situations and Children's Social Competence

The current study examines the relations among parent and child social information processing components and their links to children's social competence. Ninety‐seven kindergarten children and their mothers and fathers responded to open‐ended vignettes that involved conflict with a peer. Goals and strategies for both parents and children were assessed. Results show that there is some consistency between parents and children in the types of goals and strategies that are provided. Further, fathers’ and children's goals and strategies were related to children's social competence but only limited support for children's cognitions as a mediator between parental cognitions and peer competence was found. The implications for the role of social information processing in the development of children's social competence are noted.     

Dynamics of Young Children's Socially Adaptive Resolutions of Peer Conflict

How do young children negotiate conflicts with peers that result in mutually beneficial resolution and peaceful interaction after conflict? A few studies suggest that when children use conciliatory strategies in conflict, socially adaptive outcomes are more likely to be achieved. The present study explores the relative associations of types of children's conciliatory conflict resolution strategies (i.e., prosocial, compliance‐oriented, solution‐oriented, and verbal clarification/apology) with conflict outcomes to contribute to knowledge of the discrete behaviors that might have salience for conflict resolution training. Socially adaptive conflict outcomes were expected to strongly relate to children's resolution strategies of a prosocial nature as well as to teacher or peer interventions encouraging prosocial behavior or empathy. Sampled conflicts (N = 521) were collected through field observations of 107 ethnically/racially and socioeconomically diverse four‐ to seven‐year‐old children. Logistic regression analyses with bootstrap‐based inference suggested that children's prosocial behaviors in conflict were most strongly tied to mutually beneficial resolution and peaceful postconflict interaction, when controlling for relevant covariates. Other conciliatory strategies varied in their association with socially adaptive outcomes. The hypothesis regarding third‐party interventions encouraging prosociability or empathy could not be examined due to infrequent occurrence. Insights for future research on children's socially adaptive conflict negotiations are discussed.     

Parental Depressive Symptoms, Children's Representations of Family Relationships, and Child Adjustment

This study extends the investigation of family process models of parental dysphoria and child adjustment, by examining depressive symptoms in both fathers and mothers, and by examining children's representations of family relationships as possible explanatory mechanisms. Participants were 232 children (Time 1 mean age: 5.99; 105 boys, 127 girls) and their cohabiting parents, who participated for three consecutive years. Children's internal representations of multiple family relationships were assessed by means of a story stem completion task. Structural equation modeling indicated that children's inter‐parental and attachment representations are part of the process whereby parental depressive symptoms influence child externalizing symptoms. Maternal depressive symptoms also predicted changes in children's representations of marital and attachment relationships over time. The implications for family process models of relations between parental depressive symptoms in community samples and child development are discussed.     

An Integrative Examination of Peer Conflict: Children's Reported Goals, Emotions, and Behaviors

The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the interrelations among children's typical emotions, goals, and behavior during peer conflict and to examine emotions and goals as joint predictors of behavior. Children (7 to 11 years old) described recent conflicts with peers and were questioned about their emotions, goals, and behaviors. The friendliness of children's reported goals during conflict was associated with low anger intensity and with high intensity of sadness. Children who tended to report nonconstructive behavior also tended to report relatively intense anger and relatively unfriendly goals. Furthermore, in regression analyses, the friendliness of goals uniquely predicted the constructiveness of children's behavior after controlling for the effects of anger intensity, age, gender, provoking event, and friendship with the peer. Although boys and girls reported similar levels of anger and sadness, girls reported friendlier goals and more constructive behavior than did boys. The use of self‐reports of actual events to examine peer conflict during middle childhood is also discussed.     

Representations of Parent–Child Alliances in Children's Family Drawings

The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between children's representations of parent–child alliances (PCA) and their peer relationship quality, using a new scale that was developed to rate representations of PCA in children's family drawings. The parent–child alliance pattern is characterized by a relationship between parent and child that is stronger than the marital relationship. We used family drawings to assess children's (at the ages of 4–8 years) representations of alliances because it is often difficult for children to express their perceptions of family dynamics verbally. Children whose drawings were rated higher in PCA were rated lower in prosocial behavior and assertiveness and higher in social problems by their teachers. These relationships were stronger for boys than for girls.     

Children's Physiological Regulation and Sibling Conflict as Correlates of Children's Conscience Development

Children's conscience, including the ability to experience guilt and engage in rule‐compatible behavior, develops across early childhood. The current study investigated whether within‐family variation in children's baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and sibling conflict behavior were associated with individual differences in children's guilt and internalized conduct. Between‐family differences across sibling dyad gender compositions were also examined. A within‐family design that included 70 families with two siblings between the ages of 2 and 5 was utilized. Children's baseline RSA was measured while sitting quietly with their family. Mothers and fathers completed questionnaires that assessed siblings’ conflict behavior, guilt, and internalized conduct. Older siblings had higher levels of guilt and internalized conduct than younger siblings. Results from actor‐partner interdependence models indicated that there were no direct effects of children's baseline RSA. The interaction effects approached significance (p's ≤ .08) suggesting that older siblings’ conflict moderated the association between older siblings’ baseline RSA and both older and younger siblings’ guilt. In contrast, older siblings’ conflict was positively associated with older and younger siblings’ internalized conduct. Guilt and internalized conduct also differed for older and younger siblings in different dyad gender compositions. The results underscore the need for greater clarity regarding the function that siblings serve in promoting children's moral development during early childhood.     

Family conditions, parental acceptance, and social competence and aggression in Chinese children

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relations among family ecological factors including parental educational and occupational status, family income and housing conditions, the quality of the marital relationship and social support, parental acceptance and rejection, and social competence in a sample of Chinese children. Four hundred and seventy-six primary school children in Shanghai, P.R. China, and their parents participated in the study. Children were administered a peer assessment measure of social behavior and a measure of their perceptions of parental behavior. Parents completed questionnaires concerning family background, parental acceptance and rejection, perceived social support, and marital conflict and satisfaction. Teachers completed a rating scale concerning children's behaviors in school. Information on children's leadership was collected from the school administrative records. Results indicated that parental educational and occupational status was associated with family psychological conditions which, in turn, were predictive of parental acceptance. Family capital resources were negatively related to parental acceptance. Results also indicated that parental acceptance was associated positively with prosocial-competent behavior in children and negatively with aggressive behavior in children. Parental educational and occupational status was directly associated with children's competent behavior. Finally, it was found that family psychological resources were positively related to competent behavior and negatively related to aggression in children, through the mediation of parental acceptance and rejection. Family capital resources were indirectly and positively associated with child aggression through the mediation of parental acceptance and rejection.     

Do mothers' perceptions and concerns about preschoolers' peer competence predict their peer-management practices?

Although parents' management behaviors have been associated with children's competence with peers, relatively little is known about factors that may determine parents' management practices. In this study, measures of mothers' perceptions and concerns, mother' peer-related management practices, and children's social competence were obtained with 62 preschool children and their mothers. Results indicated that mothers differentiated between prosocial behavior and peer sociability when assessing children's progress relative to peers. Girls received higher progress ratings from their mothers than did boys, and mothers tended to view their children's prosocial skills as less well developed than their sociability toward peers. Mothers who reported lower estimates of their children's sociability tended to have higher levels of concern and were less involved in the management of their children's informal peer relations. Conversely, mothers who managed children's social lives by facilitating informal peer activities and promoting children's social autonomy tended to see their children as more sociable with peers.     

Children's Coping with Marital Conflict: The Role of Conflict Expression and Gender

This study compared boys’ and girls’ coping responses to videotaped representations of marital conflict that varied in conflict content, tactic, and the gender of the parent engaging in conflict behaviour. Participants were 398 children (208 boys, 190 girls) aged 12–13 years old living in the United Kingdom. Child‐related conflict exchanges characterized by hostile behaviour (e.g., physical aggression) elicited greater mediation efforts by children. Children were more likely to mediate father‐enacted conflict. Girls, relative to boys, endorsed more mediation to fathers’ physical aggression and mothers’ pursuit of an issue and were more avoiding of mothers’ physical aggression and threats to intactness of the family. Findings underscore the importance of considering parent and child gender in determining children’s coping efforts in the context of interparental conflict.     

Aggressive and Prosocial Peer Group Functioning: Effects on Children's Social,School, and Psychological Adjustment

This study examined the effects of aggressive and prosocial contexts of peer groups on children's socioemotional and school adjustment. Data on informal peer groups, social functioning, and different aspects of adjustment were collected from multiple sources in a sample of elementary school children (149 boys, 181 girls; M age = 10 years). Multilevel analyses indicated that group aggressive and prosocial orientations made direct contributions to children's social, school, and psychological functioning. Group contexts also moderated the individual‐level relations between social behavior and self‐perceptions; prosocial behavior was associated with social or scholastic self‐perceptions more evidently in low prosocial and high aggressive groups. The results suggest that the peer group is an important context for children's performance and adjustment in various domains.     

Mothers' Cognitions about Children's Self‐control: Implications for Mothers' Responses to Children's Helplessness

This research examined the role of mothers' cognitions about children's self‐control in their responses to children's helplessness. Mothers and their four‐year‐old children (N = 109) were asked to work on a difficult task in the laboratory. Mothers' hostility and warmth as well as children's helpless (vs. mastery) behavior were coded every minute. Mothers also completed a set of questionnaires assessing their cognitions about children's self‐control. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated variability among mothers in their minute‐to‐minute hostility, but not warmth, in response to children's helplessness. Mothers' cognitions contributed to this variability: The more mothers placed importance on, worried about, and believed they could influence their children's self‐control, the more hostility they demonstrated following their children's helplessness.     

Children's Disclosure and Secrecy: Links to Maternal Parenting Characteristics and Children's Coping Skills

The relations between maternal parenting characteristics, child disclosure and secrecy, and child outcomes (positive and negative strategies for coping with distress), were examined in a study of 140 children (10–12‐year‐olds) and their mothers. Child disclosure and secrecy were shown to be distinct but related constructs with authoritativeness predictive of disclosure and dispositional anger predictive of secrecy. These relations held even when child compliance was included as a control variable. Mothers' authoritative parenting predicted disclosure which in turn predicted children's use of positive coping strategies. Mothers' dispositional anger predicted secrecy which mediated the relation between maternal anger and children's use of negative coping strategies. Results are discussed in terms of parent–child communication and opportunities for mothers to use knowledge gained from child disclosure to teach children successful ways of dealing with distress.     

Children's and adolescents’ conversations with mothers about offenders’ and victims’ responsibility for harm in their experiences of being hurt by a peer

This study investigated mothers’ and children's constructions of meaning about responsibility for harm in conversations about two experiences when children were hurt by a peer and felt they had either contributed or not contributed to the situation. The sample included 105 Canadian mothers (75% White) and their children (53 girls, 52 boys) across three age groups (M ages = 6.92, 11.14, 15.89 years). Overall, mothers and children emphasized different aspects of responsibility; mothers made more evaluations of acts and discussed the avoidability of harm whereas children referred more to hurtful acts, consequences, reasons, and subsequent responses. Discussions of the child's and peer's responsibility were responsive to the child's perspective on events. The child's responsibility for self-protection was particularly emphasized by mothers and when the child felt they had not contributed to the situation. Children more often mitigated their responsibility as compared to their mothers, and older children referred more to their own and their peer's responsibility for harm. Findings illuminate how conversations with mothers may inform children's judgments of their own and others’ roles in peer conflict.