Marital conflict and parental responses to infant negative emotions: Relations with toddler negative affectivity.

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Authors

FRANKEL Lesile UMEMURA Tomotaka JACOBVITZ Deborah HAZEN Nancy

Year of publication 2015
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Infant and Behavior Development
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Citation
Web http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638314200051#
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2015.03.004
Field Psychology
Keywords Emotion regulation; Emotional socialization; Marital conflict
Attached files
Description According to family systems theory, children’s emotional development is likely to be influenced by family interactions at multiple levels, including marital, mother–child, and father–child interactions, as well as by interrelations between these levels. The purpose of the present study was to examine parents’ marital conflict and mothers’ and fathers’ distressed responses to their infant’s negative emotions, assessed when their child was 8 and 24 months old, in addition to interactions between parents’ marital conflict and their distressed responses, as predictors of their toddler’s negative and flat/withdrawn affect at 24 months. Higher marital conflict during infancy and toddlerhood predicted both increased negative and increased flat/withdrawn affect during toddlerhood. In addition, toddlers’ negative (but not flat) affect was related to mothers’ distressed responses, but was only related to father’s distressed responses when martial conflict was high. Implications of this study for parent education and family intervention were discussed.
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