This cross-sectional study examined the hypothesis that parentchild emotion dialogues among interparental violence (IPV) exposed dyads (n ¼ 30; 4-12 years) show less quality than dialogues among nonexposed dyads (n ¼ 30; 4-12 years). Second, we examined whether parental posttraumatic stress symptoms and parental adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) were associated with the quality of the dialogues. As expected, in the IPV-exposed group, quality of mother-child emotion dialogues was of lesser quality; dyads often showed a lack of elaboration in their dialogue; mothers showed less sensitive guidance; and children showed less cooperation and exploration, compared to dialogues, dyads, mothers, and children in the nonexposed group. Although maternal posttraumatic stress symptoms and maternal history of ACEs were significantly higher in the IPV-exposed families than in the nonexposed families, these variables were not associated with the quality of emotion dialogues. Clinical implications and study limitations are discussed.
KEYWORDSChild maltreatment; domestic violence; parent-child emotion dialogues; parent-child relationship; parental posttraumatic stress Exposure to interparental violence (IPV) has considerable direct effects on children. Children exposed to IPV are at risk to develop posttraumatic stress symptoms, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems (Evans, Davies, & DiLillo, 2008;Kitzmann, Gaylord, Holt, & Kenny, 2003). An important protective factor for children in the aftermath of IPV exposure is the parentchild relation (Afifi & MacMillan, 2011). For children to process difficult and even traumatic life events, it is important to form a coherent narrative of the events (Cohen, Mannarino, & Murray, 2011). Parent-child relations in which children feel safe to give meaning to the traumatic events may enhance their recovery (Fivush, 2007). Especially in IPV-exposed families talking about the traumatic events may be a problem because IPV affects the family system as a whole. Therefore, parents as well are at risk for posttraumatic stress symptoms, and other forms of psychopathology (Campbell, Kub, Belknap, & Templin, 1997;Cascardi, O'Leary, & Schlee, 1999). This vulnerability, in turn, may negatively affect parenting and the parent-child relationship (Levendosky, Huth-Bocks, Shapiro, & Semel, 2003), and thus, the impaired parent-child relation may impede children's narrative formation.Although there has been a concerted research effort to determine the direct and indirect effects of IPV on children's functioning (Buehler & Gerard, 2002;Davies, Winter, & Cicchetti, 2006;Hungerford, Wait, Fritz, & Clements, 2012), a minimal amount is known regarding the capacity of IPV-exposed parent-child dyads to talk about emotions and to compose coherent narratives about emotional events in children's lives. In the present study, we compare emotion dialogues in parent-child dyads between IPV-exposed and nonexposed families. Additionally, we examine the role of parental posttraumatic stress and parents' own ...