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

Abstract

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...

Marital Quality Spillover and Young Children's Adjustment: Evidence for Dyadic and Triadic Parenting as Mechanisms

“…Our results were consistent with earlier work (e.g., Davies et al, 2009), in showing that marital functioning was related to fathers' responsiveness (but not mothers'; see Stroud et al, 2011, for a discussion of this finding), but mothers' responsiveness (but not fathers') was related to child adjustment. This suggests that although mothers may be able to contain emotions and insecurities generated in the marriage (e.g., Davies et al, 2009), when their parenting is compromised by other factors (e.g., Nelson et al, 2009), child adjustment may be more strongly linked to mothers' responsiveness. This finding adds to a mixed literature regarding the relative influence of mothers' versus fathers' parenting.…”

“…However, to establish an intervening mechanism, direct paths between the predictor and outcome variables need not be significant (MacKinnon et al, 2002). That is, even if marital functioning is not directly related to children's level of adjustment, marital functioning may be indirectly related to child adjustment via parenting (e.g., Davies et al, 2009). Thus, to examine whether parenting may serve as a mediating or an intervening variable, we estimated the magnitude of the direct paths between marital functioning and children's adjustment by constraining the indirect paths to zero.…”

“…Responsiveness includes the recognition of and appropriate response to a range of social overtures and signals for attention, cooperation, or compliance (i.e., “bids”) made by parent and child to each other (Kochanska & Aksan, 2004). Prior work suggests that marital discord may be related to reduced parental responsiveness, at least among fathers (e.g., Davies, Sturge-Apple, Woitach, & Cummings, 2009; Nelson, O'Brien, Blankson, Calkins, & Keane, 2009; Stroud, Durbin, Wilson, & Mendelsohn, 2011) and may be one mechanism linking the marital system and child adjustment (Sturge-Apple, Davies, Cicchetti, & Manning, 2010; Sturge-Apple et al, 2006). However, research has not examined children's responsiveness to parents as an indicator of parent–child relationship quality, and whether it is also a mechanism of spillover effects.…”

Parenting stress and harsh discipline in China: The moderating roles of marital satisfaction and parent gender

“…Marital dissatisfaction, in contrast, may lead to mothers feeling more stressed by their childcare responsibilities (Goldberg & Easterbrooks, 1984), which may increase the possibility that the stressed mothers would use harsh discipline with their children. This finding suggested that unlike in American contexts where fathering may be more influenced by their marital relationship (Coiro & Emery, 1998;Cummings et al, 2010;Davies et al, 2009;Stroud et al, 2011), in Chinese contexts, mothering may be more likely determined by the state of the marital relationship than fathering. That is, although there is some research with Western samples supporting fathering-vulnerability hypothesis (Cummings et al, 2010;Davies et al, 2009;Stroud et al, 2011), the present research provided at least some support for the mothering-vulnerability hypothesis in Chinese societies.…”

“…According to this perspective, the associations between marital satisfaction and harsh discipline may be different for mothers and fathers. Indeed, in the few studies that investigated the spillover effects between marital relationship and parent-child relationship, it was found that negative marital relations had stronger effects on father-child relationships than on mother-child relationships, supporting fathering-vulnerability hypothesis (Cummings, Merrilees, & George, 2010;Davies, Sturge-Apple, Woitach, & Cummings, 2009;Stroud, Durbin, Wilson, & Mendelson, 2011). Given the theoretical hypothesis and empirical findings, it is possible that unsatisfying marital relationship may be more likely to lead the fathers who experienced parenting stress to use harsh discipline compared to the mothers with similar experiences.…”