How marital conflict is handled is crucial to the well-being of children, marriages, and families. On the one hand, marital conflict is linked with children's adjustment problems. On the other, it is inevitable and many forms of conflict expression are normal and likely benign. What are the constructive and destructive marital conflict styles from the children's perspectives? Which mediating and moderating processes and contextual factors are critical? Answering these questions has far-reaching mental health and societal implications. The proposed study investigates the processes and factors that mediate and moderate the positive and negative effects of marital conflict on children between elementary-school age and adolescence (N=249) within a cohort sequential design. Multi-method/dimension assessment of marital conflict, children's stress and coping, and child and family functioning are utilized in the study of developmental pathways. Child outcomes are assessed at three time points to increase the interpetability of causal modeling. Among the questions to be addressed are: (a) identifying mother's and father's marital conflict styles that are most constructive, and destructive, from the children's perspective, (b) identifying the processes and mechanisms that mediate effects, including effects associated with children's stress and coping with marital conflict and changed parenting practices, (c) changes in developmental pathways associated with marital conflict across an understudied period of development, and (d) specifying the moderating effects of parents' and children's gender, and parental adjustment. The research will provide much better defined and applicable take-home messages for family researchers and therapists, and ultimately, our society's parents, than has been possible with earlier cross-sectional studies based upon limited measurement strategies and conceptual models.
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