Marital interaction prior to parenthood predicts parent-child interaction 9 years later

Abstract

The well-established association between marital interaction and child well-being is sometimes interpreted as evidence that couple behavior "spills over" to affect parenting and child well-being. Nearly all such studies begin after couples become parents, however, raising the possibility that preexisting effects of children on the marriage are creating or inflating this association. To address this possibility, we observed 84 newlywed couples prior to parenthood as they engaged in standardized laboratory-based, problem-solving and social support interactions. We then used actor-partner interdependence modeling to relate the resulting positive and negative behavior codes to parent-child interactions observed 9 years later. Results show that marital behavior early in marriage predicted observed parenting behavior for mothers and fathers over this span, even after controlling for observed child negativity. To the extent that wives were more positive and husbands were less negative when offering support to each other as newlyweds, they tended to display behaviors promoting security and support in parent-child interactions at the later assessment. Most associations were within-person effects, though wives were more supportive with their children to their extent their husbands were more constructive during newlywed problem-solving conversations, and wives' supportive marital behavior predicted more affectively secure father-child interactions. These results suggest that spillover effects are not an artifact of preexisting effects of children on marital behavior while also raising the possibility that spillover effects have their roots in long-standing characteristics of how spouses converse with each other.