Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Conflict in context
- 2 Understanding different types of conflict
- 3 The impact of inter-parental conflict on children
- 4 How does inter-parental conflict affect children?
- 5 Risk and resilience: why are some children affected more than others?
- 6 Review of conflict-based interventions for couples
- 7 Implications for practice: How to help families
- 8 Conclusions and recommendations
- References
- Index
4 - How does inter-parental conflict affect children?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Conflict in context
- 2 Understanding different types of conflict
- 3 The impact of inter-parental conflict on children
- 4 How does inter-parental conflict affect children?
- 5 Risk and resilience: why are some children affected more than others?
- 6 Review of conflict-based interventions for couples
- 7 Implications for practice: How to help families
- 8 Conclusions and recommendations
- References
- Index
Summary
The previous chapter sets out how the distress children experience when exposed to conflict between parents can translate into long-term difficulties, including emotional and behavioural problems, troubled relationships and failure to settle and achieve at school (e.g. see Rhoades, 2008; Cummings and Davies, 2010). As the body of research documenting an association between a high conflict home and poor outcomes for children has grown, over the last decade research attention has turned to examining the mechanisms that explain these poor outcomes, the focus of this current chapter. Explanations fall broadly into two categories. First, inter-parental conflict affects parenting and the quality of the relationship between parent and child (i.e. conflict between parents ‘spills over’ to the parent–child relationship). Secondly, children's negative cognitive and emotional responses to conflict, including how they represent or perceive family relationships, make them vulnerable to adjustment difficulties.
Inter-parental conflict and troubled family relationships
One of the ways that inter-parental conflict influences children's adjustment is through its impact on parenting and the parent–child relationship (Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2007; Cox et al., 2001; Erel and Burman, 1995). Distress in the couple relationship can be expressed through a range of unhelpful parenting behaviours, from highly intrusive and harsh parenting through to lax, inconsistent and emotionally unavailable parenting.
Harsh discipline and intrusive parenting
In keeping with a ‘spillover’ hypothesis, suggesting that negative emotions in the couple relationship spill over to the parent–child relationship(s), parenting in high conflict homes can be characterised by aggression, criticism, verbal and physical threat, yelling, hitting and shoving (Holden and Ritchie, 1991; Jenkins and Smith, 1991). A body of evidence links harsh parenting to children's externalising (Gonzales et al., 2000; Buehler and Gerard, 2002; Buehler et al., 2006; Benson et al., 2008; Harold et al., 2012) and internalising problems (Doyle and Markiewicz, 2005; Buehler et al., 2006) arising out of conflict between parents. Parents may also become psychologically controlling – attempting to influence children's thoughts, feelings and attitudes in line with their own expectations – again with deleterious outcomes for children (Krishnakumar et al., 2003; Doyle and Markiewicz, 2005; Buehler et al., 2006; Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2007).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Parental ConflictOutcomes and Interventions for Children and Families, pp. 33 - 50Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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