2-026 - Expanding Our Conceptions of Interparental Conflict as a Risk Process: Cascade Models for Child and Adolescent Development.

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

This symposium focuses on applying a cascade model approach to illuminate the impact of interparental conflict (IPC) on child and adolescent development. Considerable work documents a robust, consistent association between IPC and youth adjustment (e.g., Buehler et al., 1997; Rhoades, 2008). However, less is known about the long-term consequences of youth exposure to IPC and the processes by which their development is undermined. This symposium offers three large-scale, long-term, longitudinal studies that can provide new insight into the impact of interparental conflict during different developmental periods and outcomes, ranging from conduct problems during the school transition, social competence, and substance use.

The first study followed families of two-year old children through age 9 to examine the process by which IPC in early childhood impacts parent-child relations, ultimately disrupting their conduct as they enter school and their ability to adjust to school-age developmental demands. The second study tests a cascade model in which 6-year-old children’s exposure to IPC exacerbates emotional insecurity into adolescence, which in turn is associated with decreases in subsequent peer affiliation and social competence by age 15. The third study tests the developmental risk processes by which early adolescents exposure to IPC is associated with threat appraisals, internalizing problems, and the implications for substance use trajectories over 6 years. Finally, a leading scholar in family science and family systems processes, Dr. Martha Cox, will provide her insights as a discussant. Combined, this symposium will draw on different developmental periods and a broad range of developmentally-salient outcomes.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Gregory M Fosco, Pennsylvania State University

Discussant

• Martha J Cox, Univ of North Carolina

Individual Presentations

• Cascade Model of Early Childhood Inter-parental Relationship Satisfaction, Parent-Child Conflict, and School-Aged Conduct Problems - Presenting Author: Chelsea M Weaver, University of Pittsburgh; Stephanie L Sitnick, University of Pittsburgh; Lindsay Elizabeth Taraban, University of Pittsburgh; Daniel S. Shaw, Univ of Pittsburgh; Thomas J Dishion, Arizona State University; Melvin N Wilson, Univ of Virginia

• Cascading Effects of Interparental Conflict: Implications for Adolescent Substance Use - Presenting Author: Gregory M Fosco, Pennsylvania State University; Mark Ethan Feinberg, Penn State Univ

• Children’s Vulnerability to Parental Conflict: Cascading Processes of Emotional Insecurity and Disrupted Friendship Affiliation - Presenting Author: Patrick Davies, Univ of Rochester; Meredith J Martin, University of Rochester; E. Mark Cummings, University of Notre Dame