Poster #142 - Longitudinal links between early mother-father conflict and prosocial and aggressive behaviors in late childhood

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Interparental conflict has been consistently identified as a risk factor for children’s well-being and behavioral problems, and there is increasing evidence for longitudinal relations between interparental conflict or hostility and children’s later externalizing and internalizing behaviors (Davies et al., 2006). However, these studies are often confined to conflict during childhood (e.g., Cummings et al., 2006) and few studies have considered the long-term effects of conflict in infancy on outcomes in late childhood or early adolescence. The current study builds on previous work by considering these relations in a sample of low-income families. Low-income families may be especially at-risk and vulnerable to conflictual relationships. Furthermore, with few exceptions (e.g., McCoy, Cummings, & Davies, 2009), researchers have largely examined the links between interparental conflict and children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors; (Cummings et al., 2006) little is know about how interparental conflict may affect children’s positive behaviors, such as prosocial behaviors (actions intended to benefit others).
There is also a need to consider the intervening mechanisms, such as parenting quality that may underlie those associations. Consistent with systems theory and the Family Stress Model, high levels of interparental conflict may spill-over into the parent-child relationship and lead to more negative and less supportive parenting, which in turn, may affect children’s outcomes (Conger et al., 1994; Minuchin, 1974), including prosocial behaviors (Carlo et al., 2014). Therefore, maternal directiveness (a form of control in which the parent restricts children’s autonomous behaviors and agendas; Ispa et al., 2004) and supportiveness may mediate the relations between interparental conflict and children’s prosocial outcomes.
Self-regulation may also serve as another explanatory mechanism in the relations between early interparental conflict and children’s later social behaviors. Several scholars have emphasized the importance of the family context in the development of children’s regulatory abilities (Morris et al., 2007). Therefore, self-regulation may be jointly predicted by early interparental conflict and parenting behaviors and has been linked to prosocial behaviors (Eisenberg et al., 2006). The present study examined the longitudinal links between early mother-father conflict and children’s later prosocial and aggressive behaviors, and considered the mediating roles of parenting and children’s self-regulation in these associations.
Participants included 2,844 mothers and children (48.9% female; 38.9% White; 36.3% African American, 24.8% Latino) enrolled in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project and used data from four measurement points: when children were 14 months, 24 months, 36 months, and in 5th grade. Path analysis was conducted to test the hypothesized model. Results indicated that interparental conflict positively predicted later maternal directiveness and aggression and negatively predicted later maternal supportiveness and children’s self-regulation. Maternal supportiveness positively predicted children’s emotion regulation, which in turn, positively predicted children’s later prosocial behaviors and negatively predicted later aggressive behaviors. Multi-group analyses indicated that this pattern of associations held regardless of child gender and ethno-racial group. Discussion will focus parenting and self-regulation as explanatory mechanisms of the longitudinal associations between interparental conflict and children’s prosocial and aggressive behaviors in a low-income, ethnically diverse sample.

Authors

• Cara Streit, University of New Mexico
  Presenting Author

• Gustavo Carlo, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jean Ispa, University of Missouri-Columbia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Francisco Palermo, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author