ABSTRACT
During the past decade, research on the links between parents’ marital conflict and children’s outcomes has moved from demonstrating that marital conflict is a general risk factor for both internalizing behaviors (Johnston, Gonzalez, & Campbell, 1987; Peterson & Zill, 1986) and externalizing behaviors (Jenkins & Smith, 1991; Miller et al, 1993) to investigating specific aspects of marital conflict that may prove problematic for children (Cummings & Davies, 1994; Grych & Fincham, 1993; Jenkins & Smith, 1991; McHale, Freitag, Crouter, & Bartko, 1991). Two defining themes have emerged from these studies: (a) Not all parents express conflict in the same way, and (b) not all children react to marital distress in the same way.
