The Role of Constructiveness in Interparental Conflict for Mothers' Perception of Children's Health

• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Author: Martina Zemp,Marlene Jockers,Jutta Mata
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12449

M Z, M J,  J M University of Mannheim

The Role of Constructiveness in Interparental

Conict for Mothers’ Perception of

Children’s Health

Objective: To examine how constructiveness in

interparental conict affects mothers’ percep-

tion of children’s psychological and physical

health and whether coparenting and positive

parenting mediate these effects.

Background: Children exposed to high levels

of interparental conict are at elevated risk of

developing health problems. However, previous

research suggeststhat constructive and destruc-

tive interparental conict may affect children’s

health differently.

Method: Mothers (n=289) with at least one

child aged 3.5 to 8 years completed an online

survey about parenting, coparenting, inter-

parental conict, and different aspects of child

health.

Results: Results suggest that higher construc-

tiveness in interparental conict is related to

fewer emotional problems, less pain, and fewer

infectious diseases in children, independent of

gender.The effects were fully mediated by copar-

enting.

Department of Psychology, University of Mannheim,

Mannheim, Germany (martina.zemp@univie.ac.at).

© 2020 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley

Periodicals LLC. on behalf of National Council on Family

Relations.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative

Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu-

tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the original

work is properly cited.

Key Words: couple relationship, emotional problems, emo-

tional security, infectious diseases, marital conict, pain.

Conclusion: Constructive interparental conict

promotes children’s physical and psychological

health and coparenting emergedas an important

mechanism for this link.

Implications: Enhancement of constructive

interparental conict and coparenting are

promising avenues to foster children’s healthy

development.

In recent decades, a large body of evidence

has been accumulated supporting the strong

inuence of interparental conict on children’s

emotional, physiological, and social outcomes

(Cummings & Davies, 2010). Surprisingly, chil-

dren’s physical health has received consider-

ably less scientic attention in this eld (Carr

& Springer, 2010). Furthermore, previous stud-

ies mainly focused on the negative impact of

destructive interparental conict on children’s

developmental problems (Davies et al., 2016).

In this study, we examine the relation between

constructive interparental conict and children’s

psychological and physical health, as well as

the role of coparenting and positive parenting as

potential mediators.

T I  I C

 C’ H

In this study, we dened health in the narrow

sense of a child having more health when

fewer physical or psychological symptoms are

reported and vice versa. The three aspects of

physical and psychological health assessed in

Family Relations 69 (October 2020): 683–697 683

DOI:10.1111/fare.12449