BACKGROUND Various research studies have suggested that among other variables that couples remain married if they successfully manage their interactions (marital communication based on acceptance of individual differences, problem solving skills, forgiveness, collaborative decision making, empathy and active listening) and constructively manage conflict. PURPOSE The study was aimed at examini...

We examined the cross-sectional association between conflict in families and child psychological adjustment in 72 4th-5th graders. Multiple informants (parents, children, and teachers) assessed conflict and anger in the social climate of the home, marital discord, negative emotional tone in the parent-child relationship, and child adjustment. As predicted, child adjustment was more strongly rel...

Marital conflict is a distressing context in which children must regulate their emotion and behavior; however, the associations between the multidimensionality of conflict and children's regulatory processes need to be examined. The current study examined differences in children's (N = 207, mean age = 8.02 years) emotions (mad, sad, scared, and happy) and behavioral strategies to regulate confl...

Addressing a gap in process-oriented understanding of relations between marital conflict and children’s adjustment, propositions of the emotional security hypothesis from a family-wide perspective were tested in a longitudinal research design. Participants were 181 families and their 11–12 year-old-child (115 boys, 76 girls) living in Wales, in the United Kingdom. Relations between marital conf...

results two hundred and ninety-nine respondents completed the leisure time and marital conflict questionnaires. five major leisure patterns were identified accounting for 60.3% of the variance in data. the most dominant pattern was family-oriented activities (e.g. spending time with family outdoors and spending time with family indoors) and was negatively linked to marital conflict (standardize...

In these two studies, the authors used children's perceptions of family relationships to examine simultaneously direct and indirect links between marital conflict and child adjustment. With data pertaining to 146 sixth and seventh graders, Study 1 supported direct and indirect effects of perceptions of marital conflict on internalizing behaviors, and indirect effects for externalizing behaviors...

According to family systems theory, children's emotional development is likely to be influenced by family interactions at multiple levels, including marital, mother-child, and father-child interactions, as well as by interrelations between these levels. The purpose of the present study was to examine parents' marital conflict and mothers' and fathers' distressed responses to their infant's nega...

We examined the association between marital conflict and child abuse potential in N = 86 Dutch families from low socioeconomic backgrounds. The percentage of parents who exceeded the upper 5 percent cut-off score on Milner’s Child Abuse Potential Inventory was 17%. It was found that lower socioeconomic status, relatively inadequate marital conflict strategies, and fewer marital conflicts predic...

Parent-child attachment security and dyadic measures of parent-child positive and negative emotional reciprocity were examined as possible mediators and moderators of the connection between marital conflict and children's peer play behavior. Eighty parents were observed in a laboratory play session with their 15- to 18-month-old child. Subsequently, at 36 months children were observed interacti...