Investigating moderators of daily marital to parent–child spillover: Individual and family systems approaches

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• Author: Patty X. Kuo,Kejin Lee,Victoria J. Johnson,Emily J. Starr
• Date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12777

RESEARCH

Investigating moderators of daily marital

to parent–child spillover: Individual and family

systems approaches

Patty X. Kuo

1

|Kejin Lee

2

|Victoria J. Johnson

1

|Emily J. Starr

1

1

Department of Child, Youth and Family

Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln,

Lincoln, NE

2

Department of Pediatrics, University of

Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL

Correspondence Patty X. Kuo, Department of

Child, Youth and Family Studies, 330 Carolyn

Pope Edwards Hall, 840 N. 14th St., Lincoln,

NE 68588, USA.

Email: pkuo2@unl.edu

Funding information

University of Notre Dame

Abstract

Objective: We tested whether cognitive reappraisal and

coparenting quality moderate marital to parent–child spill-

over in mothers and fathers.

Background: The influence of marital relationship quality

on parent–child relationships, referred to as the spillover

effect, is well documented. Factors that may attenuate the

occurrence of spillover, however, remain unclear. Cogni-

tive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy that pro-

motes the reframing of emotional situations as neutral or

positive, and coparenting—the intermediate subsystem

between the marital and parent–child relationships—may

buffer the effects of marital to parent–child spillover.

Method: Using daily diary data from mother–father cou-

ples (N=96) of young children (M

age

=3.22 years), we

investigated coparenting quality and cognitive reappraisal

as moderators of marital and parent–child spillover within

and between days.

Results: Dyadic multilevel models revealed within-day

spillover of marital emotional climate and parent–child

emotional climate for both mothers and fathers. Whereas

cognitive reappraisal moderated spillover for fathers, no

significant moderators emerged for mothers. Fathers also

experienced next-day associations between marital emo-

tional climate and parent–child emotional climate the fol-

lowing day, whereas mothers did not. Coparenting quality

accounted for next-day associations between fathers’mari-

tal emotional climate and parent–child climate.

Author note: We are grateful to the families for their participation, and to Cheryl Lee and Heidi Miller for their assistance in

recruitment.

Received: 14 January 2021Revised: 26 February 2022Accepted: 14 July 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12777

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2022 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

Family Relations. 2023;72:1675–1693. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare 1675

Conclusion: Overall, our results evince that although spill-

over can be attenuated by both cognitive reappraisal and

coparenting quality for fathers, the same is not true for

mothers.

Implications: These results signify the importance of con-

sidering mother and father differences in empirical investi-

gations of spillover effects and processes within the family

system, and the clinical implications recommended to mar-

riage and family therapists.

KEYWORDS

cognitive reappraisal, coparenting, fathers, mothers, spillover

The marital relationship serves as the basis of adaptive or maladaptive family functioning

(Bowen, 1978; Cox & Paley, 2003). According to family systems theory (Bowen, 1978; Cox &

Paley, 2003), all other relationships within the family (e.g., parent–child) are organized around

the marital relationship such that disturbances within the marriage often affect parent–child

relationships (Almeida et al., 1999; Erel & Burman, 1995; Lee et al., 2020; Sears et al., 2016).

This phenomenon, known as the spillover effect, is commonly observed among families with

young children (Almeida et al., 1999; Erel & Burman, 1995; Gao et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2020;

Sears et al., 2016) and plays a key role in overall family well-being (Cox & Paley, 2003). The

spillover effect has far-reaching impacts on families and child outcomes (Cummings &

Davies, 2002) and has been studied across differing timescales through cross-sectional associa-

tions, longitudinal associations across months or years, or within and between days

(e.g., Erel & Burman, 1995; Gao & Cummings, 2019; Katz & Gottman, 1996; Stroud

et al., 2015).

Although the spillover effect is a robust finding within the literature, research investigating

modifiable factors that would attenuate spillover lags behind (Coiro & Emery, 1998;

Cummings & Davies, 2002; Erel & Burman, 1995; Krishnakumar & Buehler, 2000), with some

exceptions (Merrifield & Gamble, 2013). In this paper, we investigated whether individual- and

couple-level factors could moderate spillover within and between days and specifically focused

on the spillover in emotional climate of the marital relationship to the parent–child relationship.

Emotional climate is intended to broadly capture the emotional quality of each relationship

(Brophy-Herb et al., 2013), rather than specific aspects of a relationship (e.g., conflict, coopera-

tion) or how the relationship functions within specific contexts (e.g., disciplinary situations,

routine household activities).

Spillover processes within the family system

A critical first step in mitigating potential spillover is to understand spillover as both an intra-

and interpersonal process (Stroud et al., 2015). Whereas the causes and effects of spillover are

interpersonal—relational behaviors with one partner (i.e., spouse) alter relational behaviors

with another partner (i.e., child)—the affective experience of spillover is intrapersonal

(Bradbury et al., 2000; Stroud et al., 2015). Given that spillover is both an affective and behav-

ioral process, potential moderators are likely to exist at both the individual and couple levels

(Belsky, 1984; Bowen, 1978; Cox & Paley, 2003; Feinberg, 2003). The individual-level factor

that likely mitigates the affective experience of spillover is emotion regulation (Gross &

John, 2003; Kuo & Johnson, 2021) or, more specifically, cognitive reappraisal—a tactic where

negative feelings arising from the marital relationship are reframed and not transferred to the

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