Effects of Interparental Conflict on Italian Adolescents’ Adjustment: Mediations Involving Emotional Insecurity Within the Family

• In Event: 2-012 - Interparental Conflict, Emotional Security and Child Adjustment: Cross-Cultural Studies Exploring Processes, Contexts and Methods

Integrative Statement

Although the effects of interparental conflict on adolescents have been thoroughly investigated in the literature, relatively little research has comprehensively explored the relations, as well as the mechanisms underpinning the relations, between conflict and adjustment in non-US samples. Greater cross-cultural research investigating these effects and processes is imperative for our understanding of the nature and universality or context-specificity of these relations. Such research is especially relevant in countries like Italy, where family dynamics may possibly be more influenced by relatively traditional gender roles within the family compared to in US samples (e.g. Bardi & Borgognini-Tarli, 2001). This paper will explore three mechanisms involving adolescents’ feelings of security, to increase our understanding of the pathways involved in the effect of interparental conflict on Italian adolescents’ adjustment; all have been associated with adolescent adjustment in US samples (Cummings & Davies, 2010). More specifically, attachment insecurity within the parent-adolescent relationship, adolescents’ emotional insecurity within the interparental relationship, and their emotional insecurity within the broader family system will all be investigated as distinct mediators of the effect of interparental conflict on adolescents’ adjustment.

Participants included 141 families (mothers, fathers, and adolescents) recruited in Milan and Rome with the collaboration of high-school and summer camps. Parents completed the O’Leary Porter Scale (OPS; Porter & O’Leary, 1980, see Table 1 for descriptive statistics), which measured adolescents’ exposure to destructive interparental conflict, and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman 1997), which measured adjustment. Parents also completed the Security in the Marital Subsystem Scale, (SIMS; Davies, Forman, Rasi, & Stevens, 2002), which measured adolescents’ emotional insecurity within the interparental relationship. In order to assess parent-adolescent attachment insecurity, parents completed the Parental Attachment Security Scale (PASS-P; Davies, Harold, Goeke-Morey, & Cummings, 2002Adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the broader family system was assessed using the Security in the Family Scale (SIFS; Forman & Davies, 2005), which was an adolescent report measure.

Findings from three mediation models (See Table 2 for model statistics) indicated that adolescents’ attachment insecurity (R2 = .21, F(2, 128) = 15.78, p < .001), emotional insecurity within the interparental system (R2 = .26, F(2, 128) = 28.74, p < .001), and emotional insecurity within the broader family system (R2 = .20, F(2, 128) = 14.64, p < .001) all mediated the effect of interparental conflict on adolescents’ adjustment. As expected, greater exposure to interparental conflict predicted greater levels of each distinct type of insecurity, which was then related to greater adjustment problems for Italian adolescents. Such findings are similar to findings using US samples, which explore adolescents’ feelings of security as pathways explaining the effect of interparental conflict on adolescent adjustment (e.g., Cummings, Schermerhorn, Davies, Goeke-Morey, & Cummings, 2006). Such similar findings to those found in US samples suggests there are cross-cultural similarities involved in the effects of conflict on multiple dimensions of adolescents’ emotional security, with implications in each instance for adolescents’ adjustment. These results have important clinical and theoretical implications for our understanding of the cross-cultural effects of conflict on adolescents.

Authors

• Aryanne D de Silva, University of Notre Dame
  Presenting Author

• Mengyu Gao, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daniela Barni, LUMSA University of Rome
  Non-Presenting Author

• Silvia Donato, Catholic University of Milan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Miller-Graff, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• E. Mark Cummings, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author