Interparental conflict, toddler emotional security, parental emotion socialization, and toddler socio emotional outcomes: Testing dyadic dynamics using actor partner interdependence models

INTERPARENTAL CONFLICT, TODDLER EMOTIONAL SECURITY, PARENTAL EMOTION SOCIALIZATION, AND TODDLER SOCIO  While much literature has focused on interparental conflict, parenting, and children's socioemotional outcomes, less research has utilized a dyadic perspective emphasizing the interdependent nature of mother father relationship with regard to the impacts of interparental conflict on parenting and children's outcomes. This dissertation provides evidence from two related studies revealing the ways in which mothers' and fathers' experiences with interparental conflict affect their own and their partners' emotion socialization parenting behaviors, toddlers' emotional security in response to conflict and toddlers' behavioral outcomes. Utilizing a family systems approach highlighting the interdependence among family subsystems including the parental subsystem, the goal of the Study 1 was to examine the relations between mothers' and fathers' interparental conflict and their emotion socialization behaviors. Dyadic analyses were conducted using multilevel modeling specifically employing the Actor Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) Results showed that spillover pathways, in which destructive interparental conflict predicted their own negative emotion socialization and crossover pathways, in which constructive interparental conflict marginally predicted partners' negative emotion socialization. Further, the robustness of these pathways was similar for both mothers and fathers. The purpose of the Study 2 was to examine young children's emotional security as mediating associations between mothers' and fathers' interparental conflicts and young children's problem behaviors. Study 2 employed emotional security theory, which characterizes how young children respond to tension interparental conflict in the family system. Tests of actor partner interdependence mediation models (APIMeM) were conducted to examine whether actor or partner effects of interparental conflict on young children's problem behavior were mediated by the actor's (one's own) or the partner's perception of young children's emotional security. In Study 2, actor effects referred to the association of the parent's own predictor variables with his or her outcome variables, and partner effects referred to the association of a partner's predictor variables with one parent's outcome variables. Results showed that, for both mothers and fathers, actor and partner effects of destructive conflict on children's problem behaviors occurred through actor and partner mediators (children's emotional security) For only mothers, both actor and partner effects of constructive conflict on children's behavior problems were mediated by children's emotional security. To summarize, results of these studies have important implications for more fully understanding interdependent relations between mothers and fathers in the context of inteparental conflict and their effects on parental emotion socialization and children's socioemotional development. Findings of Study 1 suggest that intervention programs need to involve both parents because improving one parent's constructive resolution techniques and supportive emotion socialization may not allow for substantial change within another unsupportive parent. Findings of Study 2 suggest that interventions designed for both mothers' and fathers' awareness of damage to children's emotional insecurity during destructive conflict could enhance parents' more adaptive conflict management and children's security, thereby minimizing child behavior problems. Further, Study 2 findings also help understanding how perceptions of interparental conflict from either parent are associated with parental view of child emotional security and behavior problems.