Modeling the Effects of Interparental Violence on Youth

This study examined the link between interparental violence and children's functioning. The goal of the study was to examine an indirect pathway of the effect of interparental violence on children's internalizing and externalizing problems. The data for the study was drawn from The Women and Family Project and included 359 women and one of their children between the ages of 5 and 12-years-old. Sixty-four of these women resided in a battered women's shelter, 100 of these women resided in the community but had a history of interparental violence, and 195 of these women were recruited as a comparison sample. Interparental violence, maternal parenting practices, maternal depression, and children's internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed via interviews with mothers and their children. An indirect pathway hypothesis of the effects of interparental violence which posits that interparental violence leads to maternal depression, maternal depression leads to maternal use of maladaptive parenting practices, and maternal maladaptive parenting practices lead to children's internalizing and externalizing problems was tested using structural equation modeling. This new model of the indirect effects of interparental violence was supported by the results of the structural equation models when tested on the sample as a whole as well as separately for the battered and nonbattered sample. A second indirect pathway, though, was more strongly supported. This second model indicates that interparental violence affects children through maternal depression, which is directly related to children's internalizing and externalizing problems. The results of the present study support the importance of indirect pathways of the effects of interparental violence on children.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year

2004

Author dc:creator

• Dehon, Christopher

Contributors dc:contributor

• Weems, Carl
• Morris, Amanda
• Stamps, Leighton

• Interparental violence
• Internalizing problems
• Externalizing problems
• Indirect effects

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/172

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uno.edu:td-1176