title: Marital conflict and parental responses to infant negative emotions: Relations with toddler emotional regulation.
abstract: According to family systems theory, children's emotional development is likely to be influenced by family interactions at multiple levels, including marital, mother-child, and father-child interactions, as well as by interrelations between these levels. The purpose of the present study was to examine parents' marital conflict and mothers' and fathers' distressed responses to their infant's negative emotions, assessed when their child was 8 and 24 months old, in addition to interactions between parents' marital conflict and their distressed responses, as predictors of their toddler's negative and flat/withdrawn affect at 24 months. Higher marital conflict during infancy and toddlerhood predicted both increased negative and increased flat/withdrawn affect during toddlerhood. In addition, toddlers' negative (but not flat) affect was related to mothers' distressed responses, but was only related to father's distressed responses when martial conflict was high. Implications of this study for parent education and family intervention were discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological, Health and Learning Sciences, University of Houston, 491 Farish Hall, Houston, TX 77204, USA. Electronic address: Lafrankel@uh.edu.
authors.forename: Leslie A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Frankel
authors.affiliation: Institute for Research on Children, Youth and Family, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Tomo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Umemura
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jacobvitz
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hazen
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004644:Emotions; D019260:Expressed Emotion; D054541:Family Conflict / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology
keywords: Emotion regulation; Emotional socialization; Marital conflict