Poster #150 - Parent Functioning and Deployed Parent-Child Communication as Predictors of Children’s Adjustment to Deployment

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Deployments can strain relationships within military families and undermine the functioning of both parents and children (e.g., Card et al., 2011; Gewirtz & Zamir, 2015). Research suggests that children’s adjustment hinges most on the mental health and emotional well-being of their at-home caregiver and the quality of the marital relationship (e.g., Chandra et al., 2010; Flake et al., 2009; Knobloch et al., 2017). The sparse literature on whether continued communication with the deployed parent makes an additional contribution to child adjustment suggests that the amount of communication may not be as important as its quality (Friedman et al., 2017), consistent with the broader literature on parent-child communication. The present study examined parent stress, marital satisfaction, and deployed parent/child communication as predictors of child adjustment during deployment, making a unique contribution to understanding of family process by incorporating not only the at-home parent’s perspective but also the deployed parent’s.The sample included 80 children and adolescents, ages 4 to 17, reported on by both their at-home caregiver (95% mothers) and their deployed parent (96.2% fathers). The parents, representing a variety of military branches and ranks, were volunteer respondents to an online survey about one designated child in the family. Predictors, completed by both parents, included the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al., 1983), Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (Schumm et al., 1986), estimated hours of deployed parent/child communication per week, and warmth and conflict in the deployed parent’s recent communications with the child, assessed with the Behavior Affect Rating Scale (Conger, 1989). Child adjustment measures completed by the at-home caregiver assessed internalizing and externalizing behavior problems (Guttmannova, Szanyi, & Cali, 2007) and overall well-being, or health-related quality of life, using Kidscreen-10 (The KIDSCREEN Group Europe, 2006). Except for perceived stress, parallel caregiver and deployed parent measures were significantly but only moderately correlated (rs .23 to .51). Tables 1 and 2 summarize the results of parallel multiple regressions using caregiver and deployed parent predictors, respectively. The five-predictor models accounted for significant proportions of the variance in child well-being and externalizing but not internalizing. Caregiver data indicated that caregiver stress was associated with more child internalizing and externalizing and that the caregiver’s perception that the deployed parent’s communications were warm predicted both child well-being and low externalizing. The deployed parent’s stress was unexpectedly associated with less child externalizing, while the deployed parent’s marital satisfaction proved more important than the caregiver’s, predicting, as expected, less child internalizing and externalizing. Finally, the deployed parent’s perception of his communications as low in conflict was associated with good child adjustment, suggesting that the relative significance of supportive and conflictual communication depended on the parent reporting. Collectively, the findings underscore the need to assess multiple perspectives within the family system in studying effects of military deployment on families; reinforce previous findings concerning the importance of parental stress/distress and marital satisfaction; and suggest that continued communication with a deployed parent that is high in warmth and low in conflict may also help children cope with potentially challenging separations.

Authors

• Carol K. Sigelman, George Washington University
  Presenting Author

• Sarah L. Friedman, George Washington University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Leah Cannon, George Washington University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jonah Kildon, Tufts University
  Non-Presenting Author