(PS10-69) Exploring the Association of Marital Verbal Aggression and Control with Dimensions of Child Outcomes

Military life poses many unique challenges to a marriage, including extended separation due to deployments and trainings, irregular hours, and frequent relocations. These challenges may lead to increased difficulties within marriage, such as increased marital conflict and psychological aggression towards one’s spouse. Previous research has found positive associations between marital psychological aggression and emotional and behavioral problems in children (Erath et al., 2006; El-Sheikh et al., 2008). Within military families, associations have been found between service member marital distress and child outcomes (Foran et al., 2017). Thus, markers of couple conflict have been found to be linked to child outcomes in both civilian and military families. Ongoing research in this area is critical due to the importance of child outcomes, and marital issues such as psychological aggression may be more covert, yet important, predictors. Using data from the Army Marriage Project (Stanley et al., 2010), we selected 319 married parents who had children between the ages of 4 and 10 years old to examine the association between marital verbal aggression/control and five dimensions of child outcomes: emotional problems, conduct problems, hyperactivity problems, peer problems, and prosocial behaviors. To measure marital verbal aggression/control, we used two items from the Verbal Abuse and Coercion factor from the Control Tactics Scale (Leone, Johnson, Cohan, & Lloyd, 2004) as well as one additional item suggested by an original developer of the scale to assess overall controlling behavior experienced from the spouse. To explore child outcomes, we used the 25 items from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, Goodman, 1997). Results from six separate regression analyses (one for each child outcome variable) indicated that higher levels of marital verbal aggression/control were correlated with higher levels of child emotional problems (β = .19, F(1,318) = 12.29, p < .001), conduct problems (β = .13, F(1,318) = 5.44, p = .020), hyperactivity (β = .12, F(1,318) = 4.74, p =.030), and overall child functioning (β = .18, F(1,318) = 11.15, p < .001). However, in the current study, higher levels of marital verbal aggression/control were not significantly associated with children’s peer relationships or prosocial behavior (p > 0.05). Future research could more closely evaluate the conditions in which these associations are exacerbated or attenuated.