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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Dec 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Fam Psychol. 2021 Mar 18:10.1037/fam0000844. doi: 10.1037/fam0000844

Links Between Marital and Parent-Child Relationship in African American Families: A Dyadic Approach

Olivenne D Skinner 1, Xiaoran Sun 2, Susan M McHale 3
PMCID: PMC8448780  NIHMSID: NIHMS1725595  PMID: 33734763

Abstract

Grounded in a family systems perspective, we used a dyadic approach to examine longitudinal associations between parents’ marital relationship qualities (marital conflict and marital satisfaction) and parent-child warmth and conflict in a sample of 180 African American families with adolescent-age children. We also tested whether these associations varied as a function of family economic strain, parents’ depressive symptoms, and parent and youth gender. Results from longitudinal, Actor-Partner Interdependence Models (APIM) showed significant actor and partner effects for associations between marital satisfaction and parent-child relationships reflecting both spillover and compensation processes. With respect to compensation, on occasions when fathers experienced lower marital satisfaction than usual (i.e., compared to their own cross time average), youth reported more relationship warmth with mothers than usual. Spillover effects were moderated, such that, on occasions when parents experienced more marital satisfaction than usual, adolescents reported more warmth, but only on occasions when parents also experienced lower economic strain than usual. Neither parents’ depressive symptoms nor youth gender moderated associations between marriage and parent-child relationships. Results highlight interconnections between marital and parent-child relationships within African American families, the importance of assessing experiences of multiple family members, and the role of family contextual factors for family systems processes in this sociocultural group.

Keywords: African American families, marital quality, parent-child relationships, economic strain, depressive symptoms

Consistent with a family systems perspective, scholars have long theorized about interconnections between the marital and parent-child subsystems (Cox & Paley, 1997; Erel & Burman, 1995). These interconnections are particularly important to understand during adolescence because of the role of parent-child experiences in shaping youth’s well-being. Competing hypotheses about interconnections between these family sub-systems have been tested, with mixed results. For example, some studies have found spillover, such that marital harmony is linked to more positive parent-child relationships. A compensation pattern has emerged in other studies such that marital problems are linked to more positive parent-child relationships (Gao & Cummings, 2019; Sutton et al., 2017).

Different patterns of association between marriage and parenting may emerge, in part, as a function of the domains of marital and parent-child relationships that are examined, the time scales used to measure such associations, whether parent or child reports are used to assess parenting, and/or whether parents’ or their spouses’ (i.e., partner) relationship with offspring are assessed (Mastrotheodoros et al., 2019; Ponnet, et al., 2013). In addition to these methodological considerations, heterogeneity in findings linking marital relationships and parent-child relationships also may be due to the larger ecology in which these family relationship experiences are embedded. The current research literature, however, has primarily focused on majority White families, thus limiting understanding of family system processes in diverse sociocultural contexts.

In this study, we extended the current literature to examine associations between parents’ marital relationships and parent-child relationships among African American families, an understudied sociocultural group. Currently, 33% of African American children under the age of 18 reside in two parent-households (U.S Census, 2018), however, the scholarship on African American families has focused primarily on youth in single parent families, and we know little about these youth’s relationships with residential fathers. Some scholars have argued that the extended family orientation among African Americans may result in parents making sharper distinctions between marriage and parenting (McLoyd et al., 2001), thus limiting potential spillover between interparental relationship dynamics and parenting. Few studies, however, have examined how experiences in marriage may be associated with parent-child relationships within this sociocultural group, particularly during adolescence, a period when interparental relationships may be salient for youth and close parent-child relationships are central to positive youth development. Using an ethnic homogeneous design allows for identifying factors that explain the considerable variability that exists among African American families (McLoyd, 1998). And, illuminating factors that moderate the linkages between marital dynamics and parent-child relationships may provide targets for evidence-based interventions within this underserved group.

Links between Marital and Parent-Child Relationships

As noted, both the spillover and compensatory hypotheses have been posited to explain associations between marital and parent-child relationships. First, according to the spillover hypothesis (Repetti, 1987), the quality of parents’ marital relationship will be mirrored in the parent-child relationship such that positive marital qualities will be associated with higher quality parent-youth relationships, and marital problems will be associated with difficulties with offspring. In contrast, the compensation hypothesis holds that individuals make-up for poor relationships in one area of their lives by developing better relationships in another relationship context, resulting in negative correlations between, for example parents’ marital conflict and parent-child conflict (Erel & Burman, 1995). Supporting the spillover hypothesis, results from an early meta-analysis with a sample of majority White families showed a medium effect size for the positive association between marital and parent-child relationship qualities (Erel & Burman, 1995). This pattern was further documented in a number of studies that used a range (observational, longitudinal, and daily diary) of methodologies. For example, in an observational study with cohabitating and married African American and White American parents residing in low-income, rural communities, using propensity score matching, Zvara and colleagues (2015) found that, particularly for African American families, fathers’ withdrawal from the relationship was associated with their less sensitive caregiving, and that their spouses’ withdrawal was associated with their harsh, intrusive parenting. In a longitudinal study, Sutton and colleagues (2017) found that African American mothers’ and fathers’ negative couple behaviors significantly predicted their own ineffective parenting practices two to three years later. Further, in a daily diary study (90% White, < 5% African American families), mothers and fathers reported better relationships with their children on days when they reported better emotional quality in their spousal relationships (Gao & Cummings, 2019). In line with the emotion transmission hypothesis (Almeida & Kessler, 1998), such associations emerge when emotions and behaviors in one relational context spill over to a different relational context. This may be because negative couple interactions reduce parents’ emotional resources and ability to parent effectively—and conversely, because positive marital experiences increase parents’ positive emotions and strengthen their confidence in their parenting skills. Associations between marriage and parenting also may emerge because individuals’ characteristics lead to similar interpersonal relationships with spouses and children (Krishnakumar & Buehler, 2000). As noted, for example, positive associations between marital satisfaction and parent-child relationships may reflect personality characteristics such that individuals who are able to engender marital satisfaction in their spouses also have qualities that support positive parent-child relationships (Mastrotheodoros et al., 2019).

In contrast to spillover processes the opposite, compensation pattern has also been observed in the linkage between parents’ marital and parent-child relationships when individuals members make up for relationship difficulties with one relationship partner by investing more in a different relationship. For example, in Zvara et al.’s (2015), which also found evidence of positive spillover, African American mothers’ marital withdrawal was associated with their own less harsh and intrusive parenting, at a trend level. Similarly, results from a daily diary study with majority White American sample showed that poorer marital quality than usual (i.e., compared to the individuals’ cross day average) predicted mothers’ reports of better than usual mother-child relationship quality the next day (Kouros et al., 2014). Likewise, in addition to detecting evidence of spillover, Gao and Cummings (2019) also found evidence for compensation hypothesis such that mothers who reported lower marital quality than usual (compared to their cross day average) on a given day, reported better relationship quality with their offspring the next day. In sum, current research also supports the compensation hypothesis—but it may be that parent gender conditions these findings.

Studies of spillover and compensation linking marriage and parenting have typically examined the effects of parents’ marital experiences on their own relationships with their offspring. However, in addition to such within-person, or “actor” effects, spouses’ emotions and behaviors in the marital relationship may also have implications for parents’ relationships with their children -- via either a spillover or compensatory process (Gao & Cummings, 2019). This cross-person transmission from the spouse’s marital experiences to a parent’s relationship with their child (i.e., a “partner” effect) may be particularly apparent in families with adolescent-age offspring because adolescents are more aware of marital dynamics, and parents may be more likely to communicate about their marital relationship with older children (Cox et al., 2001). Several studies show evidence of such partner effects (Gao & Cummings, 2019; Pedro et al., 2012), including in African American families (Sutton et al., 2017; Zvara et al., 2015). For example, beyond parents’ own marital experiences, their spouses’ positive marital experiences were associated with higher levels of their own responsive parenting styles in a predominately White American sample (Ponnet et al., 2013). And, African American mothers’ negative marital experiences were significantly related to their spouses’ hostile, ineffective parenting (Sutton et al., 2017).

In sum, the nature of the associations between marriage and parenting are diverse, ranging from congruent relationship qualities in their marriage and parent-child relationships for parents and their spouses, to opposite relationship characteristics across the two subsystems. Scholars have therefore called for research to explore factors that condition the associations between these relationships (Kouros et al., 2014; Krishnakumar & Buehler, 2000). Accordingly, in this study we examined individual and family contextual conditions that may moderate associations between marriage and parenting, focusing on a sample of African American families.

Moderators of Linkages Between Marital and Parent-Child Relationships

The contextual conditions in which families are embedded can shape family processes (Bronfenbrenner & Crouter, 1983) including links between marriage and parent-child relationships. Consistent with this idea, prior studies have focused on differences in associations between marriage and parenting as a function of family income. For example, results from an early meta-analysis showed that interparental conflict was more strongly associated with lower quality parenting among middle class families in comparison to low-income families and for more highly than less well-educated parents (Krishanakumar & Buehler, 2000). A more recent study, however, did not show differences in the association between couple relationships and parental engagement as a function of poverty level (Baker et al., 2018).

Beyond the effect of family income, economic strain may condition associations between marriage and parent-child relationships. In contrast to an objective measure of income, economic strain refers to individuals’ experiencing an inability to meet financial obligations or to provide for the needs of their families (Conger & Donnellan, 2007; McLoyd, 1990; Neppl et al., 2015; Smith et al., 2019). We built on prior research that has examined income as a potential moderator of marriage-parenting linkage to examine the potential role of economic strain. Economic strain is an important family contextual factor to examine when studying family processes among African Americans because, on average, African Americans have limited accumulated wealth given their history of systemic disenfranchisement in education, healthcare, and employment, as well as pervasive personal experiences of racism and discrimination (Hamilton & Darity, 2017; Murry et al., 2020). Family economic strain may serve as a stressor that weakens parents’ resilience in the face of marital problems and therefore either amplifies the spillover from lower marital quality to more negative parent-child relationships or attenuates the compensation pattern for more adaptive relationships with children in the face of lower marital quality.

Other family stressors such as parents’ depressive symptoms also may have implications for associations between marriage and parenting. Prior research shows that parents’ depressive symptoms are directly related to both marital quality and parent-child relationships (Jenkins et al., 2019; Wilson & Durbin, 2010). Further, in a sample of African American families, parents’ psychological distress was indirectly related to parent-child relationships through parents’ negative couple interactions (Sutton et al., 2017). Like economic strain, parents’ depressive symptoms may reduce their capacities to cope with the everyday challenges of marriage and parenting thereby exacerbating potential spillover effects of negative relationship experiences and attenuating positive marital relationships processes. Consistent with this idea, in a predominately White American sample results showed that more marital discord was associated with lower maternal acceptance when mothers also experienced high depressive symptoms (Davies et al., 2004). Although less well-studied, spouses’ depressive symptoms may also moderate associations between parents’ marital and parent-child relationship qualities. Findings from Kouros et al.’s daily diary study showed, for instance that fathers’ reports of poor marital quality predicted lower levels of father-child relationship quality the next day only when mothers reported more depressive symptoms (Kouros et al., 2014). In sum, the limited available research suggests that both parents’ and their spouses’ depressive symptoms may condition the associations between marital experiences and parent-child relationships. We added to this literature, which has focused on majority White samples to examine whether and how mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms conditioned the associations between marital relationships and parent-child relationships in African American families.

Another factor that may condition linkages between marital and parent-child relationship is parent gender. Several studies have documented differences in the links between marital and parent-child relationships for mothers versus fathers. For example, consistent with the father vulnerability hypothesis (Cummings et al., 2004), spillover occurred among fathers but not mothers in a sample of Dutch families such that, on occasions when fathers experienced more interparental conflict than usual, they also reported more negative father-adolescent interactions (Mastrotheodoros et al., 2019). Results from several other studies, the majority of which have been conducted with White participants, also show that the father-child subsystem is more likely to be affected by mothers’ marital experiences than the reverse (Pedro et al., 2012; Zvara et al., 2015). Most relevant to the current study, in a sample of two-parent African American families, mothers’ negative couple interactions were associated with fathers’ higher hostile and ineffective parenting, but fathers’ couple interactions were unrelated to mothers’ parenting (Sutton et al., 2017). The role of parent gender is important to consider when examining family processes in African American as some scholars have suggested that spillover from mothers to fathers may be more influential than that from fathers to mothers given the centrality of mothers in this sociocultural group (Sutton et al., 2017).

In addition to parents’ gender, associations between marriage and parent-child relationships may also differ for sons and daughters. Adolescent girls may be more attuned to family experiences and thus more likely to be affected by interparental dynamics given that, on average, they are higher in relationally-oriented, expressive traits compared to boys (Skinner & McHale, 2017). Scholars also have highlighted the vulnerability of boys in the face of marital hostility (Cox et al., 2001), however, given that they may be more likely to intervene in the face of parental conflict (Sturge-Apple et al., 2004). Although most recent studies have not reported on such youth gender differences, results from one study of a majority White sample showed that kindergarten-aged boys were more vulnerable than girls to the effects of marital discord on parental responsiveness and psychological control (Sturge-Apple et al., 2004).

Current Study

To recap, we used a longitudinal dyadic approach, overtime Actor-Partner Interdependence Modeling (APIM), to examine associations between mothers’ and fathers’ experiences of marital conflict and satisfaction and adolescents’ experiences of warmth and conflict with each parent. Specifically, we tested whether and how parents’ (i.e., actor) and their spouses’ (i.e., partner) marital experiences were linked to parent-child conflict and warmth. We expanded on prior research by examining whether and how family economic strain, parents’ and their spouses’ depressive symptoms, and parent and youth gender enhanced or weakened the links between parents’ and spouses’ marital and parent-child relationship experiences. Given prior longitudinal research with African American families (Zvara et al., 2015; Sutton et al., 2017), we hypothesized that a spillover pattern would be more evident than a compensation pattern. In addition, we hypothesized that both family economic strain and parents’ and spouses’ depressive symptoms would operate as stressors that attenuated the positive effects of marital satisfaction on parent-child relationships and amplified the negative effects of marital conflict on those relationships. Further, we hypothesized that parent gender moderation would emerge such that mothers’ marital experiences would be more consistently associated with father-child relationships than the reverse. Given limited literature, we considered the role of youth gender exploratory.

Method

Data Source and Sample

Data came from 180 African American families that included mothers, fathers, and two siblings (50% girls) who participated in a three-year longitudinal study of gender socialization and development in African American families. To be eligible for the study families had to self-identify as Black/African American and include a mother and a father figure who lived together and were raising at least two adolescent-age children. In families with more than two children, the two consecutively born children who were closest to age 13 were selected to participate. About half of the families were recruited in communities in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. by African American recruiters who posted advertisements in local businesses, provided information to local churches, and distributed flyers at youth activities. Interested families were contacted by project staff. The remaining families were recruited from the same communities using contact information purchased from a marketing firm. A total of 202 families participated in the study but for the present analyses we did not include youth from families in which the parental figures were not romantically involved (e.g., a mother residing with her brother) and those in which parents had resided together for less than three years at the onset of the study because we were interested in understanding these processes in established families. In addition, we did not include data for youth who were over the age of twenty or no longer resided with their parents at any point during the study (e.g., went away to college).

During the first year of the study, youth averaged 12.3 years old (SD = 2.2) (range = 9.1 – 19.1 years). Mothers averaged 40.3 (SD = 5.7) and fathers, 43.4 (SD = 7.2) years of age. Mothers had completed on average 14.7 years (SD = 1.8; range = 9–19) and fathers, 14.3 years of education (SD = 2.4; range = 5–19, on a scale where 12 = high school graduate, 16 = 4-year college graduate, and 19 = professional degree (e.g., law, medicine). Mothers and fathers had lived together for 15.1 years, on average (SD = 6.3; range 3 – 44), and 90% percent of couples were married. The mean family income for this primarily dual-earner sample was $91, 861 (SD = $63,913), but family income ranged from less than $10,000 to greater than $200,000. Data from the U.S. census (US census, 2007) show that the median income of the sample (Mdn = $84, 000) was similar to that of two-earner families residing in the two states from which the sample was drawn ($98,163 and $74, 884). Over the course of the three years of the study, attrition was less than 5%. Compared to families who remained in the study, families who attrited did not differ on family income, length of parents’ cohabitation, or parents’ education.

Procedure

Data were collected by a team of two researchers during three annual in-home interviews with fathers, mothers, and target youth. In this study, we used parents’ reports of their marital relationships, economic strain, and depressive symptoms and youth’s reports of their relationship with each parent collected during each study year. Family members completed the surveys independently. Families received a $200 honorarium for their participation, and all study procedures were approved by the university’s Institutional Review Board.

Measures

Martial satisfaction was assessed using the couple relationship domain questionnaire (Huston, et al., 1986). Using a 9-point scale (1 = extremely dissatisfied; 9 = extremely satisfied), each spouse rated his or her satisfaction in 8 domains (e.g., division of labor, communication about important issues). Items were averaged to create an overall score, with higher values reflecting higher marital satisfaction. Cronbach’s alpha ranged from .88 to .92 across spouses and time points.

Marital conflict was assessed using Braiker and Kelly’s (1979) 5-item couple negativity/conflict scale. Using a 9-point scale (1 = not at all; 9 = very much) scale, spouses rated their relationship (e.g., How often do you feel angry or resentful toward your partner?). Items were averaged to create an overall score with higher values reflecting higher marital conflict. Cronbach’s alpha ranged from .75 to .80 across spouses and time points.

Parent-child warmth was assessed using the Child Report of Parental Behavior Inventory (Schwarz et al.,1985). Youth rated 8 items about their relationship with each parent (e.g., “My mother/father makes me feel better after talking to him/her,”) on a 4-point Likert type (1= really unlike; 4 = really like). Items were averaged, with higher values indicating higher warmth. Cronbach’s alphas ranged from .80 to .94 across siblings, reports of relationship warmth with mother and father, and time points.

Parent-child conflict was measured using an instrument adapted from Smetana (1988) who identified common topics of conflict in adolescent-parent relationships. We dropped two items (romantic relationships and money) and added one item (parent-child conflicts about youth’s relationships with their siblings). The overall measure assessed 9 conflicts (e.g., appearance, homework) with youth rating the frequency of conflict using a 6-point scale (1 = not at all; 6 = several times a day). Cronbach’s alphas ranged from .77 to .91 across siblings, reports of conflict with mother and father and time points.

Family economic strain was assessed during each study year via mothers’ and fathers’ ratings on 12 items (e.g., difficulties paying bills, amount of money that left over at the end of the month, financial satisfaction) using a measure adapted from Conger and Elder (1994). Because items were rated on different scales, ratings were standardized and summed to create an overall measure of mothers’ and of fathers’ reports of economic strain. Cronbach’s alpha ranged from to .92 to .93 across spouses and time points. Mothers’ and fathers’ reports were moderately correlated (rs ranged from .56 to .65) and thus averaged to capture a family context level stressor, consistent with prior studies focused on family economic strain (Mistry et al., 2009; Solmeyer & McHale, 2015). The family economic strain index was positively correlated with family income in each study year (rs range from −0.31 to −0.39), but at a level suggesting that they are distinct constructs.

Depressive symptoms were assessed using the 12-item Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CESD; Radloff, 1977). Using a 4-point scale (1 = rarely or none of the time; 4 = most or all of the time), mothers and fathers rated the frequency of symptoms such as, “I felt that everything was an effort,” during the past week. Cronbach’s alphas ranged from .75 to .86 across mothers’ and fathers’ reports and time points.

Control variables for each model included family income, whether parents experienced divorce during the course of the study, parent education (mean of mothers’ and fathers’ education), and length of parents’ cohabitation. We used youth age as the metric of time and included linear and quadratic age terms (when appropriate) to account for changes in parent-child conflict and parent-child warmth. We initially included children’s biological relationship with each parent (i.e., biological, stepparent) but this factor was not significant and did not change the patterns of associations, so we omitted it from the final models.

Data Analyses

We applied the overtime APIM in a multilevel modeling framework (Kenny et al., 2006; Ledermann & Kenny, 2017) to account for the interdependence of the family data (i.e., parents clustered within couples and children clustered within families) and relationships assessed over time. APIM also allowed us to test both actor (e.g., parents’ marital experiences in relation to their own relationships with children) and partner (e.g., spouses’ marital experiences in relation to parents’ relationship with children) effects in the same models. We adjusted the models by adding an additional level to account for two siblings clustered within each family. Models were tested separately for parent-child conflict and parent-child warmth, and each model included parent reported marital conflict and marital satisfaction. An example equation for parent-child warmth is available in the supplemental material.

Youth age was centered at age 13 (the average age across youth across time points). We separated the effects of parent marital dynamics, depressive symptoms, and economic strain that were specific to each occasion of measurement from the overall, cross-time mean effects into time-varying and person-mean effects (Sun et al., 2017). The time-varying version of the covariates captures how individuals deviated from their own cross-time average on each measurement occasion, and the person means captured how individuals’ cross-time averages differed from the sample as a whole. Scholars have argued that using time varying effects to capture family experiences is a more rigorous test of spillover and compensation hypotheses because this approach controls for stable between individual and family differences, whether measured or not (Knopp et al., 2017; Mastrotheodoros et al., 2019). Youth gender and birth order were entered as time invariant covariates. Family-level variables (e.g., family income, parent education) were grand mean centered and included in all models as control variables. Because parents constituted distinguishable dyads, we used two-intercept models that allowed us to estimate separate intercepts for youth’s reports of their relationships with mothers and with their fathers (Kenny et al., 2006; Ledermann & Kenny, 2017). Heterogeneous compound symmetry was used to model the residuals in order to account for dyadic interdependence in errors (Kenny et al., 2006). All analyses were conducted using PROC MIXED in SAS Version 9.4.

For each model, we first tested time-varying and person-mean effects of actor and partner marital experiences. We then tested interactions between marital relationship experiences, time-varying and person-mean economic strain, time-varying and person-mean actor and partner depressive symptoms, and parent and youth gender on parent-child relationships. For continuous variables, we probed significant interactions by comparing families in which scores on the moderator variable were 1 SD above and 1 SD below the sample mean (Aiken & West, 1991). We omitted non-significant interactions from the final model.

Results

Preliminary Analysis

Means, standard deviations, and correlations between study variables are presented in Table 1. At all three annual interviews, youth reported low conflict and high warmth with parents, and parents reported high marital satisfaction, low marital conflict, and low levels of depressive symptoms, on average. Parents’ economic strain, however, was moderate: On average, for example, they reported some difficulties paying bills and having just about enough left over after their paying bills. In addition, parents made about two adjustments in the past year due to insufficient income and were “somewhat” (4 on a 9-point scale) satisfied with their family’s financial situation. With data stacked (i.e., data arranged in “long” format wherein each participant has one row of data for each study year) across the three years of the study (Table 1), fathers’ and mothers’ reports of marital conflict and satisfaction were positively correlated, and their marital satisfaction and conflict ratings were negatively correlated, as expected. Mothers’ marital satisfaction was also associated with higher father-child warmth and lower mother-child conflict but unrelated to mothers’ own warmth toward their children or to father-child conflict. In contrast, fathers’ marital satisfaction was associated with both higher youth reported father- and mother child warmth but not significantly associated with youth-reported father-child conflict, and fathers’ marital conflict was associated with lower father-child warmth but otherwise unrelated to parent-child relationships. Finally, mothers’ marital conflict was generally unrelated to either parent-child conflict or warmth. Cross-time (i.e., stability) correlations for all time-varying variables averaged between 0.36 (youth’s report of father-child warmth) to 0.69 (parents’ economic strain), suggesting moderate to high stability across the three years of the study.

Table 1.

Means, standard deviations (SD), ranges and correlations for study variables stacked across time points

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1. Mother-child warmth
2. Father-child warmth 49***
3. Mother-child conflict −.25 −.21**
4. Father-child conflict −.08* −.07* .41***
5. Mother marital satisfaction .01 .12*** −.10** −.06
6. Father marital satisfaction .10** .07* −.06 −.05 .41***
7. Mother marital conflict −.01 −.05 .01 .01 −.50*** −.31***
8. Father marital conflict −.03 −.07* .01 .01 −.33*** −.55*** .41***
9. Father dep symptoms −.08* .00 .05 .01 −.14*** −.22*** .14*** .35***
10. Mother dep symptoms −.04 −.01 .06 .02 −.29*** −.23*** .35*** .18*** .10**
11. Family Economic strain −.05 −.02 .01 .05 −.17*** −.19*** .17*** .17*** .27*** .10**
Mean (SD) 3.37 (0.61) 3.16 (0.72) 2.26 (0.81) 2.04 (0.80) 6.81 (1.60) 7.23 (1.41) 4.11 (1.55) 3.79 (1.52) 1.59 (0.44) 1.52 (0.41) 0.00 (0.71)
Range 1–4 1–4 1–6 1–6 1–9 1–9 1–9 1–9 1–4 1–4
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Note.

*

p ≤ .05

**

p ≤ .01

***

p ≤ .001

dep=depressive symptoms.

Marital Relationships and Parent-child Warmth

Coefficients and standard errors for the final models are shown in Table 2. Beginning with associations between parents’ marital relationships (satisfaction and conflict) and parent-child warmth, results from the first step of the analyses showed that partners’ marital satisfaction was positively related to parental warmth at the person-mean level, consistent with a spillover pattern but that all other actor and partner marital effects were nonsignificant. In the next step, two significant interactions emerged: a time-varying partner marital satisfaction × parent gender and a time-varying actor marital satisfaction × time-varying actor economic stress interaction. The follow-up simple slope test of the former interaction showed a significant negative effect for mothers but not fathers (Figure 2). Specifically, when fathers (i.e., mothers’ “partners”) reported lower marital satisfaction than usual, adolescents reported more relationship warmth from mothers than usual, γ = − 0.04, SE = 0.02, p = .024 —a compensatory pattern. In contrast, mothers’ marital satisfaction was unrelated to adolescents’ warmth with fathers, γ = 0.02, SE = 0.02, p = .223. Test of simple slopes for associations between marital satisfaction and economic strain showed that, on occasions when economic strain was lower than usual, more marital satisfaction than usual was linked to more parent-child warmth, γ = 0.04, SE = 0.02, p = .030 (Figure 3), a spillover pattern. In contrast, marital satisfaction was unrelated to parent-child warmth on occasions when economic strain was higher than usual, γ = −0.04, SE = 0.02, p = .082.

Table 2.

Unstandardized Coefficients (γ) and Standard Errors (SE) from models with marital conflict and marital satisfaction predicting parent-child warmth and conflict

Variable Parent-child warmth Parent-child conflict
γ (SE) p value γ (SE) p value
Mother-child relationship (Intercept) 3.46 (0.18)*** < 0.0001 2.07 (0.25)*** < 0.001
Father-child relationship (Intercept) 3.27 (0.18)*** < 0.0001 1.91 (0.25)*** < 0.001
Linear youth age −0.08 (0.01)*** < 0.0001 −0.02 (0.02) 0.118
Quadratic youth age 0.01 (0.00)* 0.043
Parent education −0.01 (0.02) 0.360 0.03 (0.02) 0.214
Family income −0.01 (0.01) 0.344 0.02 (0.02) 0.238
Child gender (0 = girls) −0.07 (0.04) 0.130 0.13 (0.06)*. 0.037
Divorce (0 = divorce) −0.03 (0.11) 0.596 0.08 (0.14) 0.568
Length of parents’ cohabitation 0.01 (0.00) 0.200 −0.01(0.00) 0.283
Birth (0 = older) −0.03 (0.06) 0.595 −0.16 (0.08)* 0.052
PM actor marital satisfaction −0.04 (0.02) 0.068 −0.05 (0.02)* 0.018
PM partner marital satisfaction 0.07 (0.02)*** 0.001 −0.02 (0.02) 0.265
TV actor marital satisfaction 0.00 (0.01) 0.714 −0.01 (0.02) 0.700
TV partner marital satisfaction −0.04 (0.02)* 0.021 0.01 (0.02) 0.700
PM actor marital conflict −0.03 (0.02) 0.172 0.01 (0.02) 0.356
PM partner marital conflict 0.01 (0.02) 0.471 −0.02 (0.02) 0.096
TV actor marital conflict 0.02 (0.01) 0.130 0.00 (0.02) 0.791
TV partner marital conflict 0.01 (0.01) 0.434 0.01 (0.02) 0.444
PM economic strain 0.02 (0.05) 0.739 0.03 (0.06) 0.608
TV economic strain −0.07 (0.04) 0.062 −0.03 (0.06) 0.641
PM actor depressive symptoms −0.05 (0.07) 0.535 −0.03 (0.09) 0.689
TV actor depressive symptoms 0.02 (0.05) 0.699 0.16 (0.06)* 0.013
PM partner depressive symptoms −0.12 (0.07) 0.113 0.07 (0.09) 0.439
TV partner depressive symptoms 0.01 (0.04) 0.637 0.11 (0.06) 0.072
TV actor marital satisfaction × TV economic strain −0.12 (0.04) ** 0.005**
TV partner marital satisfaction × parent gender 0.07 (0.02)** 0.002**
Pseudo R2 69% 56%
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Note. TV = Time-varying effect; PM = person mean effect.

*

p ≤ .05

**

p ≤ .01

***

p ≤ .001.

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

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Interaction effects of gender and time varying (TV) partners’ marital satisfaction on parent-child warmth. n.s. = nonsignificant

Figure 3.

Figure 3.

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Interaction effects of actors’ time varying (TV) marital satisfaction and time varying economic strain on parent-child warmth. n.s. = nonsignificant

Marital Relationships and Parent-child Conflict

Turning to parent-child conflict, the first step in the analyses showed that, at the person-mean level, actors’ marital satisfaction was negatively related to parent-child conflict (a spillover pattern), but the partner effect was not significant. In addition, all time-varying effects of actors’ and partners’ marital satisfaction were nonsignificant. Further, neither actors’ nor partners’ marital conflict at the time-varying or person-mean levels were significantly related to parent-child conflict. In the next step, no significant interactions emerged, meaning that associations between marital relationships and parent-child conflict did not vary by actors’ or partners’ depressive symptoms, economic stress, parent or youth gender. There was a main effect of actors’ depressive symptoms at the time-varying level, however, showing that on occasions when parents experienced more depressive symptoms than usual, youth reported more parent-child conflict, an effect that did not differ by parent gender.

Discussion

Parent-child relationships have implications for adolescent well-being (Rote & Smetana, 2019), so it is important to understand factors that may enhance or undermine this important relationship. Grounded in family systems theory and using the actor-partner interdependence model to capture dyadic processes and relationships linkages, we examined associations between parents’ marital dynamics and two dimensions of parent-child relationships—conflict and warmth in African American families—an understudied sociocultural group. We hypothesized, consistent with some prior research (Erel & Burman, 1995; Sutton et al., 2017), that parents’ and their spouses’ marital relationship experiences would be mirrored in their relationships with their children in a spillover pattern. By examining both marital conflict and marital satisfaction and parent-child conflict and warmth, we were able to test if parents compensated for poorer marital relationships by cultivating closer relationships with their children. Finally, expanding upon prior research, we also tested the hypotheses that family economic strain and parents’ and spouses’ depressive symptoms would reduce the effect of marital satisfaction on higher parent-child warmth and lower conflict and amplify the effect of marital conflict on higher parent-child conflict and lower parent-child warmth. Further, we expected that parental gender differences would emerge such that mothers’ marital experiences would be more consistently associated with father-child relationships than the reverse and that youth gender would moderate marriage parent-child relationship linkages. Overall, despite moderate stability across time varying covariates, significant linkages were found between marital and parent-child relationships.

Results revealed that that parents’ marital experiences were associated with parent-child relationships and most often conformed to a spillover pattern as hypothesized, though there was some evidence of compensation. These associations, however, were evident for marital satisfaction, not marital conflict, and primarily for parent-child warmth. Further, findings revealed time-varying actor effects and both time-varying and person-mean partner effects for marital satisfaction. Importantly however, some patterns were conditioned by parents’ gender and family economic strain. Together the findings illuminate nuances in marital--parent-child relationship linkages that may help to account for inconsistencies in prior literature.

Associations between Marriage and Parent-Child Warmth

Primarily spillover but some compensation effects were evident in the associations between marital satisfaction and parent-child warmth. First, partners’ marital satisfaction was positively associated with parent-child warmth at the person-mean level. This finding is consistent with the idea that spouses’ positivity in the marriage spills over to support parents’ positive interactions with their children. In support of the compensation hypothesis, however, we also found that, on occasions when fathers reported lower marital satisfaction than usual, youth reported more warmth from mothers than usual. This pattern suggests that mothers may have provided more support to their children or turned to their children for relational closeness to make up for difficulties in their marriages. The reverse effect also is possible—that mothers’ focus on their children may come at the expense of attention to their husbands, giving rise to fathers’ dissatisfaction. In contrast to the person mean effects, this time-varying effect may mean that parents are going through a process of adjustment—such as may be needed in the face of the dramatic changes of their children across adolescence. An important step is to identify individual and family contextual factors that may explain time delimited increases and decreases in fathers’ marital satisfaction in this sociocultural group. Importantly, this result supports previous research (Gao & Cummings, 2019) showing that compensation and spillover between marriage and parenting may not mutually exclusive processes.

Also consistent with the spillover hypothesis, there was a significant positive association between time-varying actors’ marital satisfaction and parent-child warmth. This finding however, was only apparent when parents experienced lower economic strain than usual, a pattern in keeping with prior research showing stronger links between interparental conflict and parenting in middle class compared to low-income families (Krishanakumar & Buehler, 2000). Importantly, the moderating effect of economic strain emerged with family income and parent education controlled, illuminating its potentially unique implications in this sociocultural group. As other researchers have argued, some African American families may be particularly vulnerable to economic strain because of limited accumulated wealth (Hamilton & Darity, 2017). Our finding that year-to-year variation in economic strain can condition family processes draws attention to the importance of policies to address economic equity for this population.

Our findings were inconsistent with those from a prior study of African American families, which showed that mothers’ but not fathers’ marital experiences were associated with their own and their partners’ parent-child relationship quality (Sutton et al., 2017)—a pattern that, the authors argued, reflected the centrality of the mothers’ role in this sociocultural group. In contrast, our results revealed no significant gender differences in the links between mothers’ and fathers’ marital satisfaction and their own and their partners’ parent-child relationship quality at the person mean level. The only significant parent gender difference that emerged was at the time-varying level (i.e., on occasions when fathers reported lower marital satisfaction, youth reported higher maternal warmth). A number of differences between the two studies, including the relationship constructs measured (Sutton and colleagues measured couple negative interactions and hostile/ineffective parenting, the hypotheses tested and corresponding analytic strategies employed (Sutton et al. tested a cross time mediational model using structural equation modeling to determine if negative couple interactions accounted for the link between mother and father depression symptoms and hostile/ineffective parenting) may explain these inconsistent findings. Together these studies direct attention to questions about when and how parent gender differences emerge. Both studies also highlight the importance of including residential fathers in research on parent youth relationships in African American families and the need for additional research to understand family gender dynamics in this sociocultural group.

Associations Between Marriage and Parent-Child Conflict

According to the spillover hypothesis, marital satisfaction should be associated with less parent-child conflict for both actor and partner. This hypothesis was partially supported: On average, parents’ marital satisfaction was negatively related to their own parent-child conflict as reported by children. Marital satisfaction encompasses partner supports that may help parents to remain patient and understanding when problematic issues with their children arise. Although some scholars argue that it is normative for conflict to spread across different relational contexts in the family (Sears et al., 2016), we did not find support for the hypothesized associations between marital conflict and either parent-child conflict or parent-child warmth (discussed above). These null results are consistent with suggestions that African American children are less vulnerable than majority White youth to the negative impacts of marital dysfunction (McLoyd et al., 2001). Notably however, marital conflict was generally low in this sample of families with established couple relationships. Significant associations may emerge in families with higher levels of marital discord. Importantly, to limit mono-reporter bias, we focused on youth reports of parent-youth relationships; although inter-parental conflict was unrelated to youth’s conflict reports, significant effects may have emerged if we had relied on parents’ reports.

Conclusions and Directions for Future Research

In sum, in this sample of African American families, we found evidence of associations between parents’ marital relationships and youth reported parent-child warmth and conflict. Notably however, when marital satisfaction and conflict were tested in the same models, marital satisfaction but not conflict emerged as a significant predictor. This pattern of results indicates that for parents in this sample, positive marital experiences played a more important role than negative ones in their relationships with their children. Moving away from the deficit model that characterizes much of the work on African American couple relationships, these findings suggest that enhancing marital satisfaction may be a key means of promoting strong parent-child relationships. Our descriptive data revealed significant negative bivariate correlations between mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms and family level economic strain and both mothers’ and fathers’ marital satisfaction suggesting that these may be targets for intervention.

The effects of marriage and parenting did not differ for boys and girls or by parents’ or spouses’ depressive symptoms. Beyond youth’s gender measured as a status variable, gender-typed characteristics may condition the effects of marriage on parent child relationships, a direction for future study. Some research shows, for example, that expressivity, a feminine-typed personality characteristic is linked to more positive close relationships (Skinner et al., 2020). In addition, the effects of parents’ marital quality on youth functioning may differ for boys and girls for outcomes other than parent-child relationships such as their internalizing symptoms and school functioning-- areas where gender differences have been documented for African American youth (Skinner et al., 2016). Although depressive symptomology did not moderate associations between marriage and parent-child relationships, its positive association with parent-conflict underscores the importance of addressing the mental health needs of African American parents to help foster positive family relationships.

In the face of this study’s contributions, several limitations provide additional directions for future research. First, our sample was limited to one geographic region and is not representative of African American families with residential mothers and fathers. Additional research is needed with larger and representative samples. Second, our study was correlational, and thus conclusions about direction of effect cannot be made: Our design was aimed at testing the (statistical) effects of marriage on parent-child relationships, but parent-child relationships also may have implications for marriage, and from a family systems perspective, reciprocal influences are likely. Future research should use longitudinal data to test whether marriage-parenting associations are bidirectional in their effects and use intervention studies to promote marriage and/or parent-child relationship quality and allow for causal conclusions about their linkages. Daily diary studies would also allow detection of more proximal linkages between marital and parent-child relationships at both the time-varying and person-mean levels and further illuminate spillover and compensation processes. Third, we focused on only two dimensions of parent-child relationships and thus additional research is needed to examine the implications of marital relationships for other key dimensions of African American parent-youth relationships, such as parental involvement and monitoring. Fourth, our study was limited in the moderators tested and only two significant effects emerged from twelve tests we conducted. Given the possibility of chance results, these findings should be replicated, and studies also are needed to examine additional moderators of marital-parent-child relationship linkages. African American families have important cultural strengths (e.g., connections to extended family, religiosity) and face stressors that also may condition the associations we studied and directly affect family relationships (Murry et al., 2018).

In conclusion, our study contributes to the literature on the role of marriage in parent-child relationships by documenting both spillover and compensation processes in an ethnic homogenous sample of African American families. Our research design allowed us to illuminate factors that accounts for heterogeneity within this sociocultural group, and these factors may serve as potential levers for interventions within this population. This study also underscores the significance of incorporating information from multiple family members and about different family relationships in efforts to understand linkages between family subsystems. The time is ripe to take advantage of advanced analytical techniques and theory that moves away from a deficit-oriented approach to understand the diversity and strengths of African American families.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental Material

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

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Conceptual model of actor and partner effects.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Grant R01 HD32336 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awarded to Susan M. McHale and Ann C. Crouter

Contributor Information

Olivenne D. Skinner, Wayne State University

Xiaoran Sun, Stanford University.

Susan M. McHale, The Pennsylvania State University

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