Interparental Conflict on Italian Adolescent Adjustment: The Role of Insecurity within the Family

Abstract

Despite its importance, limited research has examined mechanisms underpinning how interparental conflict affects adolescents in Europe. Using a sample of 141 Italian families (mothers, fathers, and adolescents, Mage = 17.25 years, SD = 0.64), this study explores whether three types of adolescents’ emotional insecurity, which describes adolescents’ vulnerability to conflict, play a role in the association between interparental conflict and adolescents’ adjustment. Participants completed questionnaires related to adolescents’ conflict exposure, adjustment, and emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent, interparental, and family relationships. As hypothesized, indirect associations were observed involving adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent and interparental relationships. Surprisingly, the indirect association involving emotional insecurity within the interparental relationship rather than within the family emerged the strongest indirect association of the three types of emotional insecurity. These effects, however, were indistinguishable from the indirect effects of insecurity about the parent-adolescent relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Family Economic Strain and Adolescent Aggression during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Roles of Interparental Conflict and Parent–Child Conflict

“…Some interventions such as brief psychological education can be adopted to teach families constructive methods of addressing conflicts, which have been shown to have a positive impact on children development (Miller-Graff et al, 2016 ). Social workers can assist children in adopting coping strategies on interparental conflicts and parent–child conflicts, which may help reduce their risk of aggression (Silva et al, 2020 ). In addition, although the findings showed a non-significant direct effect of family economic strain on adolescent aggression, family economic strain can indirectly influence adolescent aggression by increasing family conflict.…”

The Influence of Interparental Conflict and Violence on Parenting and Parent–Child Relationships

“…From the EST perspective, the parent–child relationship was proposed to capture parent–child attachment security (Cummings & Davies, 2002), but measures of parent–child relationship vary (Erel & Burman, 1995). The IPC studies generally implement some form of emotional connection (or lack thereof) between a parent and a child, including different measures of parent–child attachment battery (e.g., Brock & Kochanska, 2016; de Silva et al, 2021; Grych et al, 2004), emotional quality of parent–child relationship (Gao & Cummings, 2019; Kouros et al, 2014), and parent–child conflict, particularly with older children (Bradford et al, 2008; El‐Sheikh & Elmore‐Staton, 2004; Sherrill et al, 2017; Skinner et al, 2021). Other specific aspects of parent–child relationship that have been investigated include communication quality (Mills et al, 2021), warmth (Skinner et al, 2021), and negative interactions, support, and behavioral control (Mastrotheodoros et al, 2019).…”

“…Thus, according to children's reports, they feel rejected by their parents (Shelton & Harold, 2008) and fear that parents might withdraw their love (Lux & Walper, 2019). Additionally, children are less likely to view their parents as a source of emotional security (de Silva et al, 2021; El‐Sheikh & Elmore‐Staton, 2004), a finding replicated even among toddlers (Brock & Kochanska, 2016). Moreover, destructive IPC, including parental withdrawal behaviors, was related to less parental support and more negative interactions, with fathers showing greater levels of vulnerability (Harold et al, 2012; Mastrotheodoros et al, 2019; Mills et al, 2021).…”

The role of parental conflict in predicting adolescent depression symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal study

“…Previous research indicates that parental conflict is an important family influencing factor, and might harm adolescent adjustment from different perspectives (Krishnakumar & Buehler, 2000;Mueller et al, 2015;Niziurski & Schaper, 2021;Wang et al, 2014). For example, emotional security theory (Cummings et al, 2014;De Silva et al, 2021) asserts that when adolescents are exposed to their parents' conflict, they feel vulnerable about the stability of their family relationships, and tend to preserve their emotional insecurity within their familial relationships by manifesting various psychopathological symptoms related to this conflict such as displaying an emotional problem. Other research indicates that parental conflict has a negative impact on children's adjustment to adults through transferring the negative inter-adult emotion (Bradford et al, 2008) or the negative perceptions of their parents (Grych & Fincham, 1990).…”