Poster #149 - Parental Involvement of Children in Interparental Conflict and Children’s Attachment Security

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

While interparental conflict has been found to predict children’s socio-emotional outcomes, such as attachment security as well as internalizing and externalizing problems (e.g., Carbonell, 2009; Kerig, 1998; McDonald et al., 2012), recent research has begun to explore mechanisms that help explain these relations. One characteristic of conflict that has been linked to children’s developmental outcomes is the extent to which parents’ conflict involves them, either by pertaining to child-related themes, or by direct involvement in the conflict (e.g., Kerig; McDonald et al.). Further, parents vary in their approaches to handling conflict, with some using constructive (e.g., cooperation), and others destructive (e.g., aggression), approaches when approaching interparental conflict, yet this is rarely accounted for in the attachment literature. Further, previous conflict research has focused on the effects of conflict on school-age children, despite research suggesting interparental relationships seem to be especially strained in the early years (Christopher et al., 2015). This study examines the relations between parental conflict strategies, involvement of children in interparental conflict, and child-parent attachment security in mother-child and father-child dyads during toddlerhood.
Sixty-six middle-class, nonclinical mother-father-child triads participated. Children (50% female) were on average 29.21 months of age. Mothers were on average 31.59 years, while fathers were 33.22 years. Parents reported on their use of conflict strategies using the Conflicts and Problem-Solving Scales (CPS; Kerig, 1996). A composite variable for child involvement in conflict was created by summing together each parent’s scores on the following subscales from the Family Behavior Survey Part 3 (Posada & Waters, 1990) and the CPS: childrearing disagreements, child exposure to conflict, and involvement of children in conflict. Children's attachment security was observed by independent observers across four visits: one home visit and one park visit each with mother and father. Security was assessed using the Attachment Q-Set (Waters, 1995), and composite scores were computed by averaging park and home visit descriptions for each individual and correlating the description to a criterion sort for the ideally secure child. Descriptives and correlations among key variables are presented in Table 1.
Main analyses included two separate simultaneous equation models to examine associations between conflict, involvement of children in conflict, and child security, for mothers and fathers. Figure 1 presents results. Notably, there was a significant indirect relation between maternal destructive strategies and children’s attachment security with mother, through maternal involvement of children in conflict (ß = -.19, SE = .00, p < .05). However, while there were significant associations between fathers’ constructive and destructive strategies and paternal involvement of children in conflict, paternal involvement of children in conflict was not associated with attachment security. Findings suggest that involvement of children in interparental conflict in the toddler years serves as a mechanism that helps explain how conflict strategies influence attachment security with mothers, but not with fathers. The need to consider both mothers and fathers in the links between conflict and attachment, and attachment research more generally will be discussed, as differential findings were revealed.

Authors

• Laura Anaya, Gonzaga University
  Presenting Author

• Jill M Trumbell, University of New Hampshire
  Non-Presenting Author

• German Posada, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author