Longitudinal Effects of PostDivorce Interparental Conflict on Children's Mental Health Problems Through Fear of Abandonment: Does Parenting Quality Play a Buffering Role?
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: O'Hara KL
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8273193 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Little is known about the role children's processing of emotions plays in altering children's vulnerability to interparental conflict. To address this gap, the present study examined whether the mediational cascade involving children's exposure to interparental conflict, their insecure responses to interparental conflict, and their psychological problems varied as a function of children's preexisting biases to attend to angry, fearful, sad, and happy expressions. Participants included 243 children (M age = 4.60 years) and their parents assessed at 3 annual measurement occasions. Moderated-mediation analyses within a cross-lagged autoregressive design indicated that the indirect paths among interparental conflict, emotional insecurity, and psychological problems were significant for children who exhibited greater attentional biases toward angry and fearful emotions. Greater attention to anger and fear specifically moderated the first link in the mediational path. Interparental conflict was a significantly stronger predictor of emotional insecurity for children who attended to angry and fearful cues longer. Consistent with environmental sensitivity theories, children with attentional biases to angry and fearful emotions exhibited disproportionately higher levels of emotional insecurity following exposure to heightened interparental conflict but also lower levels of emotional insecurity after experiencing minimal interparental conflict. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
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Project description:Although an extensive literature has linked couple conflict with the development of children's externalizing behavior problems, longer term protective effects of positive dimensions of couple relationships on children's externalizing behavior remain understudied, particularly in relation to underlying mechanisms. Supportiveness in the dyadic couple relationship may enhance mothers' and fathers' individual parenting skills and protect against children's behavior problems, but the contribution of coparenting (couples' support for one another's individual parenting) remains unclear. This observational study investigated associations between couple supportiveness in children's infancy and middle childhood externalizing problems, exploring pathways involving coparenting and/or mothers' and fathers' individual parenting using data from the U.K. Millennium Cohort Study (MCS; N = 5,779) and the U.S. Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFS; N = 2,069). Couple supportiveness was associated with reduced externalizing problems 8 to 10 years later (standardized betas: MCS = -.13, FFS = -.11, both ps < .001). Much of this effect (60% MCS, 55% FFS) was attributable to coparenting and parenting when children were aged 3 to 5 years. Pathways from couple supportiveness involving negative parenting were stronger than those via positive parenting, pathways via mothers' parenting were stronger than those via fathers' parenting, and there were pathways via coparenting alone (without affecting parenting). Pathways involving coparenting were similar in magnitude (MCS), or larger (FFS), than those involving parenting alone. Consistent findings across different population samples suggest that helping parents to support one another in coparenting and to develop their individual parenting skills may lessen the longer term impact of couple relationship problems during early childhood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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