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Title: Does the Conflict Parents Hide Affect Their Children?
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Jekielek, Susan Marie
Does the Conflict Parents Hide Affect Their Children?
Presented: New York, NY, Population Association of America Annual Meetings, March 1999
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Children, Well-Being; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In this paper I address the question - Do children suffer when they aren't aware of their parents' poor marital relations? I ask this question in follow-up to my earlier research. In my past work I have learned that conflict is bad for children, and so researchers suggest that if parents contain their conflict, their children should be as well off as children in healthy intact families. But, at the same time, theory suggests indirect effects of parental conflict for child well-being. Evidence indicates that unsupportive and high conflict marriages are associated with lower quality parenting, and that poor parenting in turn impacts child well-being. This suggests to me that children can still be at the receiving end of conflict, even if they don't witness this conflict. Yet, there is almost no evaluation of this possibility. It would be difficult to observe the effects of conflict children 'don't' see. A close approximation might require both parental and child reports of parents' marital relationship. The NLSY data does contain such measures. Examining NLSY children aged 10-14, I propose that the conflict parents hide from their children can still have negative ramifications for their children.
Bibliography Citation
Jekielek, Susan Marie. "Does the Conflict Parents Hide Affect Their Children?" Presented: New York, NY, Population Association of America Annual Meetings, March 1999.