NCJ Number
175164
Journal
Journal of Family Violence Volume: 13 Issue: 4 Dated: December 1998 Pages: 345-363
Date Published
1998
Length
19 pages
Annotation
The hypothesis that children's appraisals mediate the relationship between interparental violence and adjustment was tested in a sample of 106 maritally violent families.
Abstract
Parents' ratings of marital adjustment were obtained on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, and parents rated the frequency of child exposure to interparental conflict on the O'Leary-Porter Scale. Interparental violence was assessed through parents' ratings on the Conflict and Problem-solving Scales. Children's reports of their parents' conflicts were obtained on the Children's Perceptions of Interparental Conflict questionnaire. Parents' ratings of their children's symptoms were obtained on the Child Behavior Checklist, and Children's reports of distress were obtained on the Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale-Revised. The current data were derived from a larger study of parent and child coping with stress. Multiple regressions showed that interparental violence was a predictor of total problems, externalizing, internalizing, and anxiety for boys and total problems and internalizing for girls. Appraisals of conflict properties mediated the relationship between violence and boys' total problems and externalizing and girls' total problems and internalizing. Interparental violence was related to appraisals in gender-differentiated ways, particularly to increased threat for boys and self-blame for girls. Further, threat mediated the impact of violence on boys' anxiety, and self-blame mediated the relationship between violence and girls' internalizing. 4 tables and 65 references