Effects of marital discord on young children's peer interaction and health.

Abstract

Reports an investigation of the effects of marital discord on the peer interactions and physical health of preschool children. A sample of families that ranged widely in marital satisfaction and had a 4to 5-year-old child participated in several home and laboratory sessions involving marital, parentchild, and peer (with a best friend) interaction. Obtained observational, self-report, and physiological indices. Hypothesized that the ability to regulate emotion would be disrupted in children from maritally distressed homes and that this would result in poor child outcomes. Found support for a pathanalytic model correlating the child outcomes of the child's level of play, negative peer interaction, and physical health, using marital satisfaction, the parents' physiology during marital interaction, observations of parent-child interaction, the child's physiology during parent-child interaction, indices of emotion during the directed facial action task, and urinary assays of catecholamine endocrine variables. Research findings have converged recently to suggest that there are familial correlates of the adjustment of young children. Furthermore, the best familial predictor of childhood behavior problems has been found to be marital discord (see Emery, 1982). The precise nature of this effect is an area of active research. On the whole, studies of the consequences of marital discord for children's adjustment have focused on rather severe forms of child outcomes, and little attention has been paid to more subtle disruptions in the child's life, such as peer relationships. Yet there is ample evidence that one of the best lead indicators of children at psychiatric risk involves the nature of the child's social relationships with peers (Parker & Asher, 1987). There is also initial evidence that suggests family correlates of these social-skill deficits (Putallaz & Heflin, 1986). Nonetheless, the precise nature of the family precursors for the developing child's peer system are not known. What processes in the child might mediate between the marital and child-peer system? The most vulnerable aspect of social development with respect to marital discord may be the child's ability to regulate emotional states. This notion of the importance of emotional regulation is not new. In fact, the ability to regulate emotional experience and expression has often been