Interparental Conflict Management Strategies and Parent–Adolescent Relationships: Disentangling Between‐Person From Within‐Person Effects Across Adolescence

Abstract

Objective: This study investigates the longitudinal, cross‐lagged associations among interparental conflict management strategies and the parent– adolescent relationship. Background: The following three main hypotheses explain how interparental conflict affects parent–adolescent relationship: the spillover, the compensatory, and the compartmentalization hypotheses. A common key aspect of these hypotheses is the focus on changes within a family; they hypothesize what happens within a family when interparental conflict shakes the family's equilibrium. Although extant research supported the spillover hypothesis, this key aspect was often ignored, and conclusions were based on comparing families with each other. This study investigated how interparental conflict is longitudinally associated with the quality of the parent–child relationship, controlling for stable between‐family differences. Method: Data consisted of six waves of an ongoing study with 497 Dutch adolescents ( M = 13.03, 43.1% girls), their mothers, and their fathers. Parents reported on conflict strategies; parents and adolescents reported on parental support, parent–adolescent negative interaction, and parental behavioral control. Random‐intercept cross‐lagged panel models were applied. Results: Most associations were found at the between‐person level: Destructive conflict was related to poor parent–adolescent relationships. Few within‐person associations were found: Changes in destructive conflict only were associated positively with changes in father–adolescent negative interaction. Conclusions: Associations between interparental conflict and the parent–adolescent relationship are mostly due to stable between‐family differences. Intrafamilial fluctuations occur in conflict and the parent–adolescent relationship, but these changes do not predict each other.