Marital conflict and child adjustment: relations, processes and consequences

The present review refers essentially to the last decade and to works which contributed to create the premises of a better understanding of the connections between the transition to parenthood and the marital conflict and of the relations between the marital conflict and the adjustment of the child. The attention is focused on theoretical and empirical contributions investigating the processes which subtend behaviors and symptoms of the various actors of the triad: the modalities of communication and relation, the role of emotions, the role of cognitive and social processes, the mediation of physiological processes and the characteristics of vulnerability/resilience of the child. The review takes into account the theoretic contributions of infant research and of attachment theory and covers topics such as the transition to parenthood, the changes and the conflicts in the marital relation, the connection between the parental conflict and the adjustment of the child, the role and the regulation of emotions. Additional topics covered in the review are the reactions of the children to interparental conflicts with a special attention to the risk factors and to the coping strategies of the children.