Study: Marital conflict affects kids; not all conflict has negative effects

It's a warm Southern California evening. Lori Garcia and her husband are fighting about laundry — again.

Volumes escalate, expressions get animated, eye rolls are exchanged and in a huff, they walk away from each other. The kids exchange quiet glances and stay out of their way. Moments later dad returns and performs his best hysterical mom impression for the kids that leaves even mom laughing as she folds her umpteenth load of laundry.

Not all marital conflict is bad, experts say. While destructive conflict between parents has long-lasting, negative effects on children, if handled constructively, children cultivate a sense of security and view conflict in a positive light, according to a new study published in the Journal of Child Development. As disagreement arises between parents, conflict can be grounds for vital teaching moments that give children the confidence to resolve conflict positively.

"No one has shown that these effects can be long-lasting. No one has ever shown anything over this span of time before," Mark Cummings, psychology professor at the University of Notre Dame and an author of the study, told the Deseret News. "Children are looking at the broader family picture. It matters to them how well the parents relate to each other."

Always watching

Cummings and his colleague, Andrew Adesman, examined 235 middle-class families living in the Midwest and Northeast U.S., assessing the level of marital conflict between the spouses of various children in kindergarten.

The researchers rated the degree of marital conflict as parents discussed a potentially contentious topic while being videotaped. Seven years later, the researchers followed up on the children, then seventh-graders.

Cummings and Adesman found that destructive marital conflict in the home was linked to emotional insecurity in later years, including depression, anxiety and even hostility in adolescence.

Kids know when there are disagreements and there are problems in families, even — especially — when parents withdraw or give the silent treatment, rather than yelling, Cummings told the Deseret News. "They know."

Judith P. Siegel, Ph.D., author of "What Children Learn From Their Parents' Marriage," agrees. Children are keen observers of their parents, Siegel wrote in her book. "They pay attention to when and how you disagree, notice how you and your partner react to each other and in countless ways form impressions about the rules of married life."

This may explain why constructive conflict, on the flip side, predicted sociability of children in domains outside the home, Cummings said. Kids who felt more secure about parents' marital relationship better related to other kids outside the home. They were more pro-social in school, more altruistic, helpful and kind to others.

What's important?

Nearly 22 percent of couples, however, said they fight and argue with each other a lot. Sixty percent reported to have only moderate levels of conflict, while 16 percent of couples reported to have little conflict, according to a study conducted at Florida State University and published in the Journal of Family Issues in 2011.

Back in California, Garcia, the mother of those two boys — ages 4 and 9 — and a blogger at mommyfriend.com, said she and her husband are continually finding ways to resolve conflict positively.

Respect for one another has been key, Garcia told the Deseret News. She and her husband have found that working things out in a way that both can express opposing views without disrespecting the other person allows them to devise solutions that resolve the problem smoothly and quickly.