Interparental conflict and child adjustment: testing the mediational role of appraisals in the cognitive-contextual framework

Abstract

Children's appraisals of interparental conflict consistently have been associated with adjustment problems, but the processes that give rise to this association are not well understood. This paper proposes that appraisals of threat and self-blame mediate the association between children's reports of interparental conflict and internalizing problems, and tests this mediational hypothesis in two samples of children, one drawn from the community (317 ten- to fourteen-year-olds) and the other from battered women's shelters (145 ten- to twelve-year-olds). Results indicate that perceived threat mediates the association between interparental conflict and internalizing problems for boys and girls in both samples, and self-blame mediates this association for boys in both samples and girls in the shelter sample. Perceived threat and self-blame do not mediate links with externalizing problems, and there is no evidence of a moderating effect of appraisals on the association between conflict and child adjustment. Implications for understanding the mechanism by which exposure to interparental conflict could lead to child maladjustment are discussed.