Do mothers' responses to disputes mediate or moderate marital conflict and children's reactions to disputes

Witnessing interadult conflict has both immediate and long term effects on children's responses. Research explaining the processes that link interparental conflict and children's responses, however, is limited. Elucidating these processes will help researchers understand more fully how children's responses to conflict are formed and how childhood adjustment problems develop. In the current study, mothers' verbal-emotional responses to conflict were examined as possible mediators or moderators between marital conflict and children's verbal-emotional responses to conflict and children's behavioral problems. One hundred and twenty-three 4-11 year-olds and their mothers were interviewed after viewing videotaped interactions between an adult male and an adult female.;Preliminary results indicated that both mothers and children perceived the actors as feeling more angry in unresolved than resolved disputes. Children and mothers also reported feeling more angry, sad, and scared during unresolved arguments. Further, mothers and children perceived the actors as feeling more angry during physical conflict than in either verbal or covert disputes. Lastly, older children perceived the actors as feeling more angry than younger children and reported feeling more sad than younger children.;Primary analyses consisted of path analyses to examine mothers' responses as mediators and hierarchical regression to examine mothers' responses as moderators. Results of the path analyses indicated that mothers' responses were not functioning as mediators between marital conflict and children's responses. Tests of moderation revealed that mothers' responses to conflict more strongly moderated the relationship between marital conflict and children's behavioral problems than between marital conflict and children's emotional responses. Specifically, while mothers' responses in unresolved conflict appear to exacerbate children's behavioral problems, mothers' responses in resolved conflict appear to reduce the likelihood of children displaying behavioral problems. For emotional responses, mothers' feelings of anger as both bystanders and participants in resolved conflict moderated the relationship between marital conflict and children's perceptions of anger. The more intense that mothers' emotional responding was, the more intense were children's emotional responses.;Thus, the current investigation corroborates previous findings regarding children's verbal-emotional responses to conflict and extends the findings to mothers' responses as well. More importantly, findings indicate that significant relationships exist among marital conflict, mothers' responses to conflict, children's responses to conflict, and children's behavioral problems, and suggest that mothers' responses to conflict moderate the relationship between marital conflict and children's responses and behavioral problems.