Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Purposes: Extensive literature indicates that children function best when their biological parents have a stable, marital relationship, and that poor interparental relations jeopardize family cohesion and child outcomes. The connection between interparental relationship quality and child well-being is well-established in White families but few studies investigate this relationship along with family context factors in Black nonmarital families. According to the risk and resilience perspective, childhood risk factors include poverty, parental depression, inadequate parenting, single parenting, and interparental strife whereas protective factors include healthy family relations, maternal mental health and cooperative coparenting. McLoyd's family stress model and Bronfenbrenner's person-process-context model suggest that environmental stressors, achievements, and family interactions predict child outcomes. Thus, we investigated the direct and indirect relationships between and among mother's educational attainment, family income, economic hardship, interparental relationship quality, maternal depressive symptoms, parenting, and child behavioral problems. Our focal hypothesis was that interparental relationship quality would be directly and indirectly associated with child behavioral problems through mother's psychological and parenting functioning. Methods: Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, factors related to a cohort of 2,114 Black, single mothers and their children born between 1998 and 2000 were analyzed. The data consisted of survey interviews with mothers and fathers at their children's birth (Wave 1), age one (Wave 2), and age three (Wave 3). Mother's educational attainment, family income, and economic hardship scale in Wave 1, scales for maternal depressive symptoms, parenting, and interparental relationship quality in Wave 2, and child behavior problems scale in Wave 3 were included in our model. For missing responses, we used Bayesian multiple imputation which enables the missing values to be substituted by values drawn at random from the predicted distribution. To test the hypotheses, structural equation modeling was used. Results: The model produced a root mean square error of approximation of .02 and a comparative fit index of .99. Results indicated that family socioeconomic circumstances at Wave 1 were associated directly and indirectly with child behavior problems at Wave 3 through their effects on mothers' depressive symptoms, parenting, and interparental relationship quality at Wave 2. The interparental relationship quality was positively associated with mother's parenting (direct effect=.15, p<.01) and parenting involvement (direct effect=.07, p<.01) and negatively associated with maternal depressive symptoms (direct effect=-.15, p<.01) and child's behavioral problems (direct effect=-.09, p<.01). The indirect effects of interparental relationship quality on child behavioral problems was transmitted through alleviating mother's depressive symptoms and enhancing her parenting and parenting involvement (indirect effect=.07, p<.05). Implications: In 2006, TANF reauthorization began providing $150 million per year for five years to fund parenting, communication, and conflict resolution skills programs. For example, the African American Healthy Marriage Initiative was developed to encourage Black parents to marry or coparent effectively. However, little research about Black nonmarital interparental relationships, related risk and protective factors, and the effect on child wellbeing is available to inform these efforts. Findings suggest interventions that enhance interparental relationship quality may be an effective investment to improve parenting and child behavioral outcomes.