Poster #90 - Children’s Emotional Security and Adjustment: The Role of Emotionality in Marital Conflict

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Research examining the link between marital conflict and child maladjustment has provided robust evidence establishing emotional security as an explanatory mechanism accounting for how and why, and for whom and when marital conflict is associated with poorer child outcomes. To our knowledge, no study has explored the role that mothers’ and fathers’ capacity to identify, manage, and comfortably express emotions during conflict plays in this process. Emotional expressiveness within the marriage has been explored to better understand individual differences across children; specifically, research suggests that certain parental characteristics—including parental psychopathology, and parental negative emotional expressiveness—influence children’s regulatory processes and overall adjustment (Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers, & Robinson, 2007; Cummings, Cheung & Davies, 2013; Carrère & Bowie, 2012). This work has provided empirical support for the influence of emotional qualities of the marital relationship on children’s emotional reactivity, as well as their security within the parent-child relationship (Koss et al., 2011; Morris et al., 2007). The current study extends past work by longitudinally examining the moderating role of observational data of parental emotion skills during conflict—utilizing the conceptual framework of emotional security theory—in order to predict children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms.
Data were drawn from a longitudinal study which includes 296 heterosexual couples that had been cohabiting for a minimum of two years with a child (155 boys, 141 girls) between 8-16 years of age (M = 11.12) at Time 1. Mothers and fathers completed several questionnaires about themselves (Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale), their marriage (O’Leary-Porter Scale), and their child (Security in the Interparental Subsystem Scale, Child Behavior Checklist). Mothers and fathers then engaged in a videotaped dyadic conflict resolution tasks. The Emotion Skills Coding System (ESCS; Cordova & Mirgain, 2007) was used to code the videotaped dyadic conflict resolution task. The ESCS is composed of 12 codes that reflect skills in emotional control, empathy, comfort with expressiveness, and identification and communication of emotions.
Structural equation modeling was used to test moderated mediation models. After controlling for parental depression and child gender, children’s emotional security mediated the relationship between marital conflict and children’s adjustment. Moreover, both maternal and paternal emotion skills significantly moderated the relationship between marital conflict and children’s emotional security, such that marital conflict was found to be a weaker predictor of emotional insecurity in the context of a more emotionally skillful parent. See Figures 1 and 2 for paternal moderated mediation models; maternal models show similar patterns and will be included on the poster.
Our findings contribute to the scope of child development literature by extending the influence of parental emotion skills to children’s emotion security and wellbeing. The current study also provides evidence to target interventions toward emotional communication in the marriage in order to optimize children’s development.

Authors

• Laura Kurzius, The Catholic University of America
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marcie Goeke-Morey, The Catholic University of America
  Non-Presenting Author

• Haley Meagher, The Catholic University of America
  Presenting Author

• Kelly Lavin, The Catholic University of America
  Non-Presenting Author

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