Interparental conflict and child adjustment: Testing the mediational role of appraisals in the cognitive-contextual framework

Children's appraisals of interparental conflict consistently have been asso ciated with adjustment problems, but the processes that give rise to this a ssociation are not well understood. This paper proposes that appraisals of threat and self-blame mediate the association between children's reports of interparental conflict and internalizing problems, and tests this mediatio nal hypothesis in two samples of children, one drawn from the community (31 7 ten- to fourteen-year-olds) and the other from battered women's shelters (145 ten- to twelve-year-olds). Results indicate that perceived threat medi ates the association between interparental conflict and internalizing probl ems for boys and girls in both samples, and self-blame mediates this associ ation for boys in both samples and girls in the shelter sample. Perceived t hreat and self-blame do not mediate links with externalizing problems, and there is no evidence of a moderating effect of appraisals on the associatio n between conflict and child adjustment. Implications for understanding the mechanism by which exposure to interparental conflict could lead to child maladjustment are discussed.