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Coparenting Conflict and Parenting Behavior in Economically Disadvantaged Single Parent African American Families: The Role of Maternal Psychological Distress

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Abstract

Substantial research has focused on the negative associations between coparenting conflict, parental psychological functioning, and parenting behavior in European American, middle-income, families. However, less attention has been given to ethnic minority families and to families that are nontraditionally structured. In an effort to address this gap, the current longitudinal study examines the relation between conflict with the mother-identified primary co-caregiver and parenting practices in single parent, economically disadvantaged African American families. Participants included 234 mother–child dyads. It was hypothesized that conflict would relate to less utilization of positive parenting practices and that this association would be mediated, at least in part, by maternal psychological distress. Hypotheses were examined using structural equation modeling (Lisrel 8.3): Conflict with a co-caregiver was significantly related to parenting both directly and indirectly through maternal psychological distress. Implications of the findings are discussed.

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Notes

  1. According to the 1991 US Bureau of Census, births to single parents constituted 67% of all births to African American women.

  2. According to Vandenberg (personal communication), models demonstrating a close fit to the data, with a small chi-square value, can sometimes return goodness of fit indices that appear ‘perfect’ due to the fact that the fit induces used in the current study employ some form of the chi-square to degree-of-freedom ratio minus 1 in the numerator (the denominator is typically the null model minus 1). As such, as long as the chi-square to degree-of-freedom ratio is less than 1, as is the case in the current study (i.e., 13.67/23 = 0.59), the indices can be relied upon to indicate excellent, but not perfect, fit.

  3. The CFA model is available from the first author, upon request.

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Acknowledgment

This research was supported by the William T. Grant Foundation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of Georgia’s Institute for Behavioral Research, and Grant No: T32 MH19117 from the National Institutes of Health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Universty of Washington School of Medicine, 146 N. Canal Street, Suite 100, Seattle,, WA 98103, USA

    Shannon Dorsey

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

    Rex Forehand

  3. Child and Family Development, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Gene Brody

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  1. Shannon Dorsey
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  2. Rex Forehand
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Correspondence to Shannon Dorsey.

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Dorsey, S., Forehand, R. & Brody, G. Coparenting Conflict and Parenting Behavior in Economically Disadvantaged Single Parent African American Families: The Role of Maternal Psychological Distress. J Fam Viol 22, 621–630 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-007-9114-y

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