Interparental conflict and children's social problems: Insecurity and friendship affiliation as cascading mediators

Area of Science:

• Child Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Family Studies

Background:

• Children experiencing interparental conflict often exhibit social difficulties.
• The specific mechanisms linking interparental conflict to social problems in children remain unclear.
• Emotional security theory provides a framework for understanding these links.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test if children's emotional insecurity mediates the relationship between interparental conflict and social difficulties.
• To examine if emotional insecurity undermines children's affiliative goals in friendships.
• To investigate a cascade model from interparental conflict to social competence.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal study with 235 families over 10 years.
• Data collected when children were in kindergarten and followed into adolescence.
• Lagged latent difference score analyses used to examine developmental trajectories.

Main Results:

• Increased interparental conflict in early school years predicted higher emotional insecurity in adolescence.
• Emotional insecurity predicted decreased friendship affiliation in adolescence.
• Decreased friendship affiliation was associated with lower social competence.

Conclusions:

• Emotional insecurity acts as a mediator between interparental conflict and social difficulties in children.
• This cascade involves undermined friendship affiliation and subsequent declines in social competence.
• Findings were robust even when controlling for parent-child relationship insecurity and internalizing symptoms.