Fathers' Marital Conflict and Children's Socioemotional Skills: A Moderated-Mediation Model of Conflict Resolution and Parenting

Marital conflict is common in many families. The effects of marital conflict may often spill over to parent-child dyads and affect children's development via their parenting practices. However, couples handle their marital conflict in different ways, and conflict resolution strategies may play a role in children's outcomes. Although mother-reported marital conflict has been a primary focus in most prior studies, little is known about fathers' perspectives. To that end, we examined the mediating effect of fathers' parenting in the association between the frequency of marital conflict and mother-reported children's socioemotional skills in preschool, as well as the moderating role of father constructive conflict resolution frequency in the association between father reports of the frequency of the marital conflict and parenting. Results indicate that father parenting warmth and parenting stress mediated the association between the frequency of marital conflict and children's socioemotional skills. We also found that father reports of the frequency of the marital conflict was positively associated with involvement and negatively associated with warmth at higher levels of constructive conflict resolution frequency. Fathers who reported higher constructive conflict resolution frequency showed higher father involvement and warmth. Finally, the moderated-mediation analysis revealed that, after accounting for mothers' parenting variables, father warmth was the moderated mediator, such that there was a negative indirect effect between the frequency of marital conflict and children's socioemotional skills through father warmth at average and higher levels of constructive conflict resolution frequency.