Poster #52 - Interplay between forms of children’s involvement in interparental conflict: Are two strategies riskier than one?

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Children’s involvement in interparental conflict has been linked to a wide array of socioemotional outcomes (e.g., O’Brien et al., 1995, 1997; Rhoades, 2008). Recent empirical work indicates that examining involvement as a multi-dimensional construct may yield greater precision in predicting unique configurations of children’s developmental sequelae (Masked Citation). However, links between forms of involvement (i.e., caregiving, cautious, coercive) and children’s psychological functioning were only modest in magnitude indicating considerable heterogeneity. Guided by family systems and broader role-confusion frameworks, examining the interplay between forms of involvement may alter the strength of the predictive path to children’s subsequent functioning (Nuttall & Valentino, 2017). Drawing on developmental psychopathology models, one possibility is that high levels of one form of involvement may potentiate the risk associated with high levels of a second form of involvement (i.e., stress amplification, see Figure 1; Rudolph & Flynn, 2006). Alternatively, high levels of one form of involvement may supersede the risk associated with a second form of involvement heightening children’s vulnerability regardless of the levels of the second form (i.e., risk saturation, see Figure 2; Davies & Sturge-Apple, 2007). However, research has yet to systematically examine the interplay between forms of involvement. To address this gap, the goal of this study was to examine the interactive effect between children’s forms of involvement on their socioemotional and school functioning two years later.
Participants included 243 preschool children (Mage=4.60 years, 56% female), their mothers, and their teachers from diverse demographic backgrounds who participated in two waves of data collection spaced two years apart. We assessed children’s involvement through coder ratings of maternal narratives from a semi-structured interview. Mothers and teachers reported on children’s adjustment (i.e., separation anxiety, depression, externalizing problems, peer relations, school engagement).
We centered and specified the three forms of involvement and their interaction terms as simultaneous predictors of change in children’s psychological functioning from Wave 1 to Wave 2. Three interactions were consistent with stress amplification models (Figure 1). The multiplicative effect of children’s cautious and coercive involvement was significantly associated with: a) change in their peer relations, β=.16, p=.04, and b) change in their separation anxiety, β=.12, p=.05. Additionally, the interplay between children’s cautious and caregiving involvement was significantly associated with change in their externalizing problems, β=.12, p=.03. Plots revealed that high levels of children’s cautious involvement may potentiate the risk associated with high levels of coercive and caregiving involvement in ways that increase children’s vulnerability to worse peer relations, higher levels of separation anxiety, and higher levels of externalizing problems. The final significant interaction to emerge was consistent with risk saturation models (Figure 2). The interactive effect between children’s caregiving and coercive involvement was significantly associated with change in their separation anxiety, β=-.14, p=.04. High levels of caregiving involvement were associated with separation anxiety regardless of coercive involvement levels suggesting the high degree of distress and preoccupation with the interparental relationship may increase vulnerability to a point of saturation. Findings are discussed in the context of interpersonal theories in developmental psychopathology (Rudolph et al., 2016).

Authors

• Morgan J Thompson, Auburn University
  Presenting Author

• Patrick Davies, University of Rochester

• Melissa L Sturge-Apple, University of Rochester