Inter‐parent Aggression as a Precursor to Disengagement Coping in Emerging Adulthood: The Buffering Role of Friendship Competence

Abstract

Using multi-informant data drawn from a prospective study involving 184 youth, mother perpetrated and father perpetrated partner aggression during early adolescence (age 13) was examined as a predictor of five types of disengagement coping strategies in emerging adulthood (age 21): behavioral disengagement, mental disengagement, denial, substance use, and restraint. The ability to develop close friendships, or friendship competence, was examined as a moderator of these links. Results suggest that inter-parent aggression in early adolescence can predict reliance on disengagement coping eight years later, but that friendship competence can buffer against the reliance on disengagement coping. Moreover, close friendship competence was not directly related to partner aggression by mothers or fathers, suggesting that friendship competence develops along an independent developmental track, and thus may truly serve as a buffer for young adults with a history of exposure to inter-parent aggression.

Family Conflict in Childhood and Adolescence and Depressive Symptoms in Emerging Adulthood: Mediation by Disengagement Coping

“…Within these environments, however, less is known about the person-level mechanisms that help explain how discordant families contribute to poor mental health outcomes later in life. Strategies for managing interpersonal stress represent a likely pathway, but existing research has primarily explored coping among child and adolescent populations (Oudekerk et al, 2013). This study undertook an examination of engagement and disengagement coping as potential mechanisms explaining the relation between family conflict in childhood and depressive symptoms among young adults.…”

“…As compared to more engaged efforts, disengagement coping strategies require fewer cognitive resources and might be easier to draw on during the heightened negative emotional climate of conflictual family interactions (Oudekerk, Brown, Szwedo, & Allen, 2013).…”

“…Exposure to high levels of childhood family (Michael, Torres, & Seemann, 2007) and interparental conflict (Oudekerk et al, 2013;Rodrigues & Kitzmann, 2007) has been shown to predict reliance on disengagement methods to cope with stressors later in life and outside of the family context. Reliance on disengagement coping strategies might be particularly maladaptive during the developmental transition to young adulthood.…”

Neural mediators of the intergenerational transmission of family aggression

“…The “attenuation hypothesis” (Susman, 2006) has been proposed to explain a link between adverse and stressful early environments and subsequent antisocial and aggressive behavior. Although aggressive family conflict may lead to hypervigilance and sensitized patterns of stress responding in young children, adolescents in high-conflict family environments may be more likely to show avoidant, withdrawn, and disengaged coping strategies (Brown, Oudekerk, Szwedo, & Allen, 2013; Michael, Torres, & Seemann, 2007; Pine et al, 2005). These behaviors may be mirrored by physiological responses to stress: Early, chronic stressful experience appears to downregulate the stress system of some children, an adaptive strategy that protects them from continued adrenocortical overload (Gunnar & Donzella, 2002; Susman, 2006).…”

The mediating role of coping self‐efficacy beliefs on the relationship between parental conflict and child psychological adjustment

“…Children raised in a family environment of parental conflict can develop a range of negative outcomes which include aggression, defiant behaviors, and sleep problems (Cummings & Davies, ; El‐Sheikh & Kelly, ; Grych & Fincham, ). One possible explanation for these outcomes is that parental conflict elicits negative emotions in children, which, in conjunction with a perceived lack of control over the conflict and a perception of parental conflict as threatening, may lead to negative psychological outcomes in children (Brown, Oudekerk, Szwedo, & Allen, ; DeBoard‐Lucas & Grych, ; Fosco & Feinberg, ; Griffith, Dubow, & Ippolito, ).…”