What connections between marital conflict and parenting quality? Evidence from parent's gender in spillover effects

The spillover hypothesis posits that negative emotions and behavioral patterns in marital conflicts influence parenting quality and children's adjustment, through increasing of harsh and incoherent discipline and diminished involvement and affection. Moreover conflicts focused on childrearing issues are particularly distressing for children with often show emotional and behavioral problems. The aim of the study was to explore gender differences in the links between marital conflicts (destructive and constructive tactics, childrearing disagreement) and parent-child relationships, in order to verify if there are different pathways for fathers and mothers in spillover effects. 110 parents (children aged 6-12 years) completed the Styles of Conflict Scale (marital conflict style), the Parent Problem Checklist (disagreements about childrearing), the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (parenting practices), and the Parenting Stress Index. The links between conflict tactics and parenting practices change in function of parent's gender. Mothers refer more frequent childrearing disagreements and increasing in punishment; furthermore - in line with the spillover hypothesis - attack and violence tactics are associated negatively with positive parenting (involvement and warmth). For fathers compromise, avoidance and attack correlate positively with effective parenting (more involvement, affection and consistency disciplinary). A spillover effect, that is, an extension of marital tensions in the relationship with their children with reduced quality of parenting, seems to manifest only for women. These findings, if confirmed by other studies, would be relevant from an clinical point of view to understand how paternal and maternal parenting mediate the effects of the marital disharmony on children's adjustment. Over the past decades the assumption of a systemic perspective (Belsky, 1981) has led developmental and clinical psychologists to investigate the effects of the quality of marriage on children adjustment (Holland & McElwain, 2013; Stroud, Durbin, Wilson & Mendelsohn, 2011). Studies describe that a harmonious marriage is generally associated with sensitive and warm parenting (Belsky, Crnic, & Gable, 1995), whereas disagreement between the spouses, when results in open conflicts, mutual accusations and hostility (both verbal and physical), is associated with a wide variety of problematic outcomes in children such as withdrawal or anxiety, low social competence and self-esteem, non-compliance or aggressive behaviors (Davies, Martin, Cicchetti, 2012). Troxel e Matthews (2004) proposed that marital conflict, often leading to divorce and family dissolution, influences children's adjustment though changes in the quality of parent-child relationships. This model assumes that the stresses associated with marital conflict compromise the family life both directly (as children observe inter-parental hostility and anger, fill insecure attachment and self-blame), or indirectly through the negative changes in parent-child relationships. Specifically, effects of marital conflicts are mediated by parenting, that is, the emotional quality and the concrete behaviors (or practices) parents show to children. These changes, named as "spillover effects", describe how the negative emotions and behavioral patterns that characterize marital system will bleed into parent-child dyad (Enger, 1988).