Towards 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 two 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 parent gender moderated associations between interparental conflict and parental psychological control and insensitivity to child negative affect. Pathways between interparental conflict and parenting difficulties over the two 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.In serving as the relationship hub of the family system, the quality of the interparental relationship has significant implications for how adults approach the developmental challenge of raising children. For example, novel use of experimental designs have shown that mothers randomly assigned to participate in a conflictual interaction with their partners were less attentive to their sons in an ensuing parent-child interaction task than mothers who participated in a non-conflictual interaction (Jouriles & Farris, 1992). Longitudinal research has shown that observations of destructive interparental conflict predicted subsequent decreases in parent emotional availability one year later (Sturge-Apple, Davies, & Cummings, 2006). Lending further support to the impact of marital conflict on parenting, parent participation in interventions that are specifically designed to improve the marriage has been shown to promote more effective parenting practices. In contrast, participation in another program designed to Correspondence should be addressed to Patrick Davies, Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627. patrick.davies@rochester.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/journals/dev. improve parenting did not yield any enhancement in interparental relationship quality . Taken together, the various findings provide strong support for the thesis that interparental conflict progressively undermines child-rearing practices (Cowan, Cowan, Pruett, & Pruett, 2007;Mikulincer & Goodman, 2006). However, the question remains as to why...

In response to the societal premium placed on understanding the difficulties faced by children from high-conflict homes, emotional security theory aims to understand precisely how and why interparental discord is associated with children's psychological problems. One of its main premises is that interparental discord increases children's vulnerability to mental illness by undermining their sense of safety or security in the context of the interparental relationship. In this article, we highlight the main assumptions of a new ethological formulation of emotional security theory and its predictions and findings regarding the organization, precursors, and consequences of individual differences in children's emotional insecurity. We conclude with a synopsis of the value of the new formulation for future work.

This study examined the role of attention difficulties as a mediator of associations between children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship and their school adjustment in a sample of two hundred and sixteen 6-year-old children. Consistent with hypotheses, findings from structural equation models indicated that observer ratings of children's insecure representations of interparental relationships in a story completion task predicted computerized task assessments and parent reports of children's attention difficulties 1 year later. Children's attention difficulties, in turn, were associated with concurrent levels of school problems and increases in school problems over a 1-year period as indexed by teacher reports. Attention difficulties accounted for an average of 34% of the association between insecure internal representations and school problems.