Factors protecting children living in disharmonious homes: maternal reports

Abstract

This study investigated factors which were protective to children living in disharmonious homes. The sample was drawn from a representative sample of children aged 9 to 12 who took part in a previous general population study. Semi-structured interviews with both parents were used to assess the quality of the parental marriage. Mothers provided information on children's emotional and behavioral problems and putative protective factors. Fifty-seven families were in the disharmonious marriage group and 62 were in the harmonious marriage group. Putative protective factors, hypothesized to be beneficial for children, were either an aspect of social support or related to children's activities. Data were analyzed using a two-way analysis of variance with parental marriage and the putative protective factor as main effects. A differentiation was made between protective factors which interacted with parental marriage and those that acted independently. Factors which interacted with the quality of parental marriage were children having a relationship with an adult outside the family, an activity for which they received much positive recognition, and good sibling relationships. The parent-child relationship was associated with children's disturbance in both harmonious and disharmonious homes.