Intergenerational Continuities in Economic Pressure and Couple Conflict in Romantic Relationships

Enhancing Parenting Effectiveness, Fathers' Involvement, Couple Relationship Quality, and Children's Development: Breaking Down Silos in Family Policy Making and Service Delivery

“…During the 1990s and continuing to the present day, researchers influenced by family systems principles began to examine the correlations among parenting effectiveness, distress between the parents, and children's outcomes (Cummings & Davies, 1994; Grych, Fincham, Jouriles, & McDonald, ). More recent studies replicate and extend the early conclusions: In both middle‐class (P. Cowan & Cowan, ; Harold, Elam, Lewis, Rice, & Thapar, ) and low‐income (Adler‐Baeder et al, ; Conger, Cui, & Lorenz, ) families, when parents are more collaborative and able to resolve their differences, mothers and fathers are observed to have warmer, more sensitive, and appropriate limit‐setting interactions with their children or adolescents; in turn, the children score higher on academic achievement tests and are described by research staff and teachers as having fewer behavior problems than children of parents with more combative relationships.…”

“…In both middle-class (P. Harold, Elam, Lewis, Rice, & Thapar, 2012) and low-income (Adler-Baeder et al, 2013;Conger, Cui, & Lorenz, 2011) families, when parents are more collaborative and able to resolve their differences, mothers and fathers are observed to have warmer, more sensitive, and appropriate limit-setting interactions with their children or adolescents; in turn, the children score higher on academic achievement tests and are described by research staff and teachers as having fewer behavior problems than children of parents with more combative relationships.…”

“…What is in question here is whether alleviating poverty through income supplementation or employment preparation will increase the quality of couple and family relationships. Studies in both the United States and the United Kingdom have found that family‐income supplement programs under various names have had either a negative effect (Conger et al, ; Knox & Redcross, ) or a neutral effect on maintaining marital stability. It may be that job training and other interventions to reduce poverty may have beneficial effects on the family, but there is no evidence (yet) that they improve the quality of relationships between parents or between parents and children.…”

Controversies in couple relationship education (CRE): Overlooked evidence and implications for research and policy.

“…The most frequent view (e.g., P. Cohen, 2014;Williams, 2014) is that poor families would be better served by programs that elevate their economic circumstances than by relationship-enhancement interventions. There is no question that poverty affects couple relationships and family functioning (Conger, Cui, & Lorenz, 2011). There is also no question that the normative decline in marital satisfaction over time also affects family relationships, with negative outcomes for children.…”