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

Abstract

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.According to family systems theory, families consist of a number of interrelated subsystems (Minuchin, 1985). One important subsystem is the coparental unit. As detailed by Feinberg (2003), coparenting consists of support and coordination (or lack thereof) between individuals who share responsibility for rearing children. Research has established the uniqueness of coparenting and its potential to influence children's socioemotional adjustment, above and beyond marital quality or dyadic parenting (Belsky, Putnam, & Crnic, 1996;Karreman, van Tuijl, van Aken, & Deković, 2008;McHale & Rasmussen, Please address correspondence to J. Claire Cook, The University of 314 Gentry Hall, Columbia,.edu. Portions of this study were presented at the 2007 National Council on Family Relations conference in Pittsburgh, PA. 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/fam. (2007) found that when faced with a more unadaptable infant, couples with lower marital quality were rated by observers as demonstrating greater undermining and less supportive coparenting behavior. Similarly, McHale et al. (2004) demonstrated that prebirth marital quality was an especially important predictor of postpartum coparenting cohesion when infants were characterized by high levels of negative reactivity. Thus,...

Father Participation in Child Psychopathology Research

“…That is, coparenting conflict led to increases in negative parenting which, in turn, led to increases in child problem behavior, findings congruent with the links among family variables found in the existing literature (e.g., Benson et al, 2008; Dishion & Patterson, 2006) and with mothers in the current study. In addition, similar to mothers, our data suggested that child problem behaviors led to an increase in father-reported coparenting conflict – a finding that also aligns with previous longitudinal research (e.g., Cook et al, 2009; Jenkins, Simpson, Dunn, Rasbash, & O’Connor, 2005; Schermerhorn, Cummings, DeCarlo, & Davies, 2007). As our findings for fathers generally map onto those in the literature and with mothers in the current study, they provide evidence suggesting MTurk is an appropriate methodology for examining fathers within the family context.…”

“…This model was chosen because of theory to support the individual and interdependent links [e.g., family systems (Cox & Paley, 1997), the spillover hypothesis (Krishnakumar & Buehler, 2000), and the coercion hypothesis (Patterson, 1982)], as well as empirical work to support each link (see below), and relevance to clinical, developmental, and family researchers. The model examined the circular process by which child behavior problems elicit higher levels of coparenting conflict (e.g., Cook, Schoppe-Sullivan, Buckley, & Davis, 2009; Schermerhorn, Cummings, DeCarlo, & Davies, 2007) which, in turn, can spillover into hostile (i.e., negative) parenting practices (e.g., Benson et al, 2008; Kaczynski, et al, 2006). Hostile parenting practices then negatively influence child behavior problems (e.g., Dishion & Patterson, 2006; Wood et al, 2003), restarting the circular process.…”

Within- and between-family differences in cooperative and competitive coparenting.

“…This research suggests that positive marital relationships can buffer families from the potential stresses of parenting a child with a difficult temperament. In contrast, Cook et al (2009) found that preschoolers’ negative affectivity was associated with less supportive coparenting only when marital adjustment was high. Together, these findings allude to potential differences in these associations depending on the age of the child.…”

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

“…In addition, higher levels of triadic hostility were related to marital functioning among families of girls but not boys. This highlights the need to consider other factors, such as aspects of parents (e.g., psychopathology, personality, and attachment style; Belsky et al, 1995) and children (e.g., temperament; Cook, Schoppe-Sullivan, Buckley, & Davis, 2009) that contribute to the development of triadic hostility, particularly in families with boys.…”