Talking to children about interparental disagreements: A longitudinal examination of the multiple determinants of maternal post-conflict communication

Despite the ubiquitous stress of interparental conflict in children's lives, little is known about the resources parents may or may not allocate toward the socialization goal of allaying their children's concerns in the aftermath of interparental disputes. Accordingly, the goal of this investigation was to examine the relative importance of multiple determinants in the prediction of maternal communications to children about interparental conflict utilizing Belsky's (1984) social-contextual model as an organizing heuristic. The influence of individual characteristics within the maternal (i.e., emotional availability, depressive symptomatology), child (i.e., patterns of reactivity to interparental conflict, gender) and interparental (i.e., marital hostility, coparental alliance) domains as well as socioeconomic context on the quality of maternal post-conflict communication assessed one-year later was examined in a sample of 230 mothers and their school-age children. Contrary to hypotheses, structural equation model findings indicated that most determinants had negligible influence on subsequent mother-child communication in the post-conflict environment. Within domains, greater maternal emotional availability predicted marginally higher quality maternal post-conflict communication. Although mothers also reported engaging in marginally higher quality communications about interparental conflict with boys versus girls, this effect was no longer significant when examined simultaneously with maternal emotional availability, thereby providing minimal evidence for the contention that the parent's contribution is the most influential determinant of parental functioning. The results are discussed in relation to various alternative explanations for the general lack of significant findings (e.g., post-hoc interaction analyses, timing of effects) and to implications of this line of research for interventions to enhance socialization practices in the post-conflict environment and ultimately to promote children's healthy psychosocial functioning.