Interparental relationship conflict predict preschool children’s adjustment on the basis of child parent percetions

Abstract

Interparental relationship conflict has been associated with a variety of child adjustment problems (for reviews, see Cummings & Davies, 2010; Grych & Fincham, 2001). For instance, exposure to interparental conflict has been shown to predict children’s heightened emotional reactivity and maladaptive behavior in response to interadult conflict (Cummings & Davies, 1994), as well as children’s negative self-perceptions (Grych, Wachsmuth-Schlaefer, & Klockow, 2002), poor behavioral adjustment (Jenkins, Simpson, Dunn, Rasbash, & O’Connor, 2005), academic difficulties (Harold, Aitken, & Shelton, 2007), problematic peer relations (Katz & Woodin, 2002), and sleep disturbance (Keller & El-Shiekh, 2011). Moreover, there has been much interest in understanding the mechanisms by which interparental discord may be linked to poor child adjustment, with appreciation for children as active processors of interparental conflict (Cummings & Davies, 2010; McDonald & Grych, 2006). Children’s perceptions and cognitive-affective processing of their parents’ relationship conflict are critical to their experience of such conflict, and subsequently, their adjustment both within and beyond their families. Clearly, parent perceptions contribute in important ways to understanding the relation between interparental conflict and children’s adjustment; however, consideration of the child’s perspective in relation to the parents’ perspectives is necessary to understand the link.