Investigating moderators of daily marital to parent–child spillover: Individual and family systems approaches

Abstract

ObjectiveWe tested whether cognitive reappraisal and coparenting quality moderate marital to parent–child spillover in mothers and fathers.BackgroundThe influence of marital relationship quality on parent–child relationships, referred to as the spillover effect, is well documented. Factors that may attenuate the occurrence of spillover, however, remain unclear. Cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy that promotes the reframing of emotional situations as neutral or positive, and coparenting—the intermediate subsystem between the marital and parent–child relationships—may buffer the effects of marital to parent–child spillover.MethodUsing daily diary data from mother–father couples (N = 96) of young children (Mage = 3.22 years), we investigated coparenting quality and cognitive reappraisal as moderators of marital and parent–child spillover within and between days.ResultsDyadic multilevel models revealed within‐day spillover of marital emotional climate and parent–child emotional climate for both mothers and fathers. Whereas cognitive reappraisal moderated spillover for fathers, no significant moderators emerged for mothers. Fathers also experienced next‐day associations between marital emotional climate and parent–child emotional climate the following day, whereas mothers did not. Coparenting quality accounted for next‐day associations between fathers' marital emotional climate and parent–child climate.ConclusionOverall, our results evince that although spillover can be attenuated by both cognitive reappraisal and coparenting quality for fathers, the same is not true for mothers.ImplicationsThese results signify the importance of considering mother and father differences in empirical investigations of spillover effects and processes within the family system, and the clinical implications recommended to marriage and family therapists.

A process model of parental executive functioning as a spillover mechanism linking interparental conflict and parenting difficulties across parenting domains.

“…Our longitudinal view of spillover processes was influenced by research demonstrating that to cogently affect parenting over time, spillover must transform into stable individual differences that require time to accumulate (e.g., Davies et al, 2009). However, recent research has begun to examine proximal daily spillover of IPC to parenting behaviors (e.g., Kuo et al, 2022; Mastrotheodoros et al, 2020; Sears et al, 2016)—an equally important line of inquiry. The study of parental EFs as spillover mechanisms would benefit from future research that tests how parental EF may play a role in day-to-day spillover.…”

Parent emotion regulation and parenting self-efficacy: The moderating role of coparenting

“…Additionally, in a study of U.S. parents with toddlers, Murphy and colleagues (2017) found cooperative coparenting was positively associated with fathers’ support of mothers and fathers’ involvement in parental decision-making, but these associations did not extend to mothers. A recent study of U.S. parents with young children found cognitive reappraisal attentuated the effect of marital relationship quality on parent-child relationship quality among fathers but not mothers (Kuo et al, 2022).…”