Marital quality over the life course and child well-being from childhood to early adolescence (original) (raw)

Development and Psychopathology

Abstract

Research on marital quality and child well-being is currently limited by its common use of geographically constrained, homogenous, and often cross-sectional (or at least temporally limited) samples. We build upon previous work showing multiple trajectories of marital quality and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 (NLSY79) regarding mothers and their children (inclusive of ages 5–14). We examine how indicators of child well-being are linked to parental trajectories of marital quality (happiness, communication, and conflict). Results showed children whose parents had consistently poor marital quality over the life course exhibited more internalizing and externalizing problems, poorer health, lower quality home environments, and lower math and vocabulary scores than children of parents in consistently higher-quality marriages. Group differences remained stable over time for child health, home environment, and vocabulary scores. Group differences for internalizing ...

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