The Importance of Parents' Dyadic Coping for Children

The notion that the parents' relationship is essential to children's well-being has been a cornerstone of family psychology and family science. Parental divorce and discord are well-established risk factors for child maladjustment (Amato, Kane, & James, 2011; Cummings & Davies, 2010); however, little is known about the association between supportive interparental interactions, such as the way in which couples jointly cope with stress (dyadic coping), and children's development. In the present study we addressed this gap by examining dyadic coping in parents as a predictor of children's internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and prosocial behavior in three studies of healthy, typically developing children.Stress and coping have received increased attention in couples research throughout the past two decades (Revenson, Kayser, & Bodenmann, 2005). Daily stress plays a crucial role in understanding close relationships, in part because it is toxic to relationship quality and stability (Randall & Bodenmann, 2009). In the process model of parenting (Belsky, 1984), stress caused by work or social and intimate relationships undermines parenting behavior directly as well as indirectly by reducing parents' well-being. Cina and Bodenmann (2009) found that perceived parental stress was statistically associated with inadequate communication and inappropriate parenting, which in turn predicted the child's externalizing symptoms a year later.Given the impact of parental stress on children's well-being, parental coping skills might be an important protective factor. Dyadic coping (Bodenmann, 1997, 2000) refers to the way that partners support each other in times of stress and deal jointly with daily stressors. Dyadic coping represents a relational process in which one partner's coping is not independent of the other's. Dyadic coping has been shown to moderate the damaging consequences of stress in couples; it has been shown to be effective in mitigating the impact of stress on anger and verbal aggression between partners (Bodenmann, Meuwly, Bradbury, Gmelch, & Ledermann, 2010). Dyadic coping has emerged as an important predictor of relationship satisfaction and stability in numerous studies (Bodenmann, Pihet, & Kayser, 2006; Herzberg, 2012; Papp & Witt, 2010). Less is known, however, about the role of dyadic coping in children's well-being. Gabriel and Bodenmann (2006) examined positive parenting, individual coping with stress, and dyadic coping with stress as predictors of child-related conflicts. All three variables were negatively associated with child-related conflict, with dyadic coping emerging as the strongest predictor. In another study (Bodenmann, Cina, Ledermann, & Sanders, 2008), enhanced dyadic coping in parents through a preventive therapeutic intervention called the Couples Coping Enhancement Training (CCET; Bodenmann & Shantinath, 2004) not only improved relationship quality, but also reduced their children's behavioral problems, albeit to a lesser degree than an evidence-based parenting program (the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program [Triple P]; Sanders, 1999). Parents' participation in CCET led to statistically significant decreases in dysfunctional parenting and child maladjustment, and these effects were stable over 1 year; specifically, after the completion of the program, child misbehavior was reported by the mother to have been reduced by 50% (from 54% of children in the clinically elevated range at pretest to 27% at posttest) and by the fathers by 70% (from 46% at pretest to 14% at posttest). In a recent reanalysis of these data, we found that CCET reduced child behavioral problems primarily by enhancing the couple's relationship quality, whereas improved parenting mediated the benefits on child behavior in Triple P, although gender differences emerged (Zemp, Milek, Cummings, Cina, & Bodenmann, 2016). These findings provide preliminary evidence that parental dyadic coping may affect children's well-being. …