Research in the area of marital and family development has suggested that children of conflictual marriages demonstrate a variety of adjustment difficulties, including aggression, poor impulse control, noncompliance, and poor self-esteem. Researchers have suggested two pathways by which marital conflict influences children. First, marital conflict may influence children directly through parental modeling of poor conflict management strategies and faulty interaction patterns. Second, marital conflict may serve to disrupt the parent-child relationship, thus placing the child at risk by indirect means. Despite the recognition that there are multiple pathways by which marital conflict influences children, research in this area has focused primarily on the effects of marital conflict on parent-child relationships. The proposed study will examine children and their parents in three contexts: in a marital problem solving interaction task, in a parent-child interaction task, and in the child's peer setting. By observing children and their parent in these different domains, the current study will provide us with a better understanding of the relationships between marital interactions, parent-child interactions, and child outcome.
| Clements, Mari L; Martin, Sarah E; Randall, David W et al. (2014) Child and Parent Perceptions of Interparental Relationship Conflict Predict Preschool Children's Adjustment. Couple Family Psychol 3:110-125 |
