The Role of Interparental Communication for Parenting and Adolescent Mental Well-Being in Conflict Situations. A Mediator Analysis

Theoretical background: Parental conflicts are related to children's mental health. So far, it is unknown whether this relationship is direct or mediated by parenting behavior. Most studies have focused only on destructive parental conflict and did not include constructive parental conflict. A distinction between destructive and constructive parental conflicts is important as they affect children differently. Few studies have included both positive and negative parenting behavior and distinguished between maternal and paternal parenting. Objective: The study examines whether maternal and paternal positive and negative parenting behavior mediates the relationship of parental communication in conflict situations and affect child mental health (internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behavior). The study distinguished between destructive and constructive parental communication in conflict situations. Methods: The sample consists of 179 two-parent families who were part of the longitudinally designed project Future Family (Zukunft Familie), which started when the children were on average 4.5 years old. At the 10-year follow-up, the children were on average 14.3 years old. Questionnaires were used to measure parental communication in conflict situations, parenting and youth internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behavior. We calculated several structural equation models. Mediation models were constructed separately for constructive and destructive communication and separately for mothers and fathers. Results: Maternal and paternal destructive communication predicted more negative parenting behavior of both parents. Maternal constructive communication predicted less maternal negative parenting behavior. In comparison to that, paternal constructive communication did not predict less paternal negative parenting. Positive maternal and parental parenting was neither predictive of destructive communication nor of constructive communication. Maternal negative parenting was associated with less youth prosocial behavior, which was not the case for paternal negative parenting. Maternal and paternal positive parenting practice was related to more youth prosocial behavior. Positive paternal parenting behavior predicted lower levels of youth internalizing problems. Youth mental problems were not predicted by maternal parenting. There were significant direct effects of maternal constructive communication on youth internalizing problems and of destructive maternal communication on youth externalizing problems in the models without parenting. Discussion and Conclusion: The present results do not suggest that the relationship between parental communication in conflict situations and children's mental health is mediated by parenting. Separate analyses for mothers and fathers are important. More prevention and intervention programs should be offered which thematically refer not only to parenting behavior, but also to family interaction processes.