Marital psychological and physical aggression and children's mental and physical health: direct, mediated, and moderated effects

Abstract

Relations between marital aggression (psychological and physical) and children's health were examined. Children's emotional insecurity was assessed as a mediator of these relations, with distinctions made between marital aggression against mothers and fathers and ethnicity (African American or European American), socioeconomic status, and child gender examined as moderators of effects. Participants were 251 community-recruited families, with multiple reporters of each construct. Aggression against either parent yielded similar effects for children. Children's emotional insecurity mediated the relation between marital aggression and children's internalizing, externalizing, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. No differences were found in these pathways for African American and European American families or as a function of socioeconomic status or child gender.

Figure 1

Emotional insecurity as a mediator of the relationship between marital aggression against the father and mother and child report of internalizing problems. Standardized path coefficients are presented in the figure. Residual error variances were calculated but were omitted from the figure. A superscript f denotes a fixed path. CTS = Revised Conflict Tactics Scale; SVAM = Severity of Violence Against Men Scale; SVAW = Severity of Violence Against Women Scale; SOPAS = The Subtle and Overt Psychological Abuse Scale; SES = socioeconomic status. *p < .05. **p < .01.