Parental Conflict Resolution Styles and Children's Adjustment: Children's Appraisals and Emotion Regulation as Mediators

Guided by the emotional security hypothesis and the cognitive-contextual framework, the present study investigated whether the associations between negative parental conflict resolution styles and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems were mediated by children’s appraisals of threat and self-blame and their emotion regulation. Participants were 192 Swiss two-parent families with children aged 9 to 12 years (M = 10.62, SD = 0.41). Structural equation modeling was used to test the empirical validity of the theoretical model. Results indicated that children’s maladaptive emotion regulation mediated the association between negative parental conflict resolution styles and children’s internalizing as well as externalizing problems. Whereas perceived threat was related only to children’s internalizing problems, self-blame did not mediate the links between negative parental conflict resolution styles and children’s adjustment. Implications for understanding the mechanisms by which exposure to interparental conflict could lead to children’s maladjustment and limitations of the study are discussed.