Parental Post Conflict Explanations: Implications for Children's Adjustment Outcomes

The factor structure the Post Conflict Explanations (PCE) scale, a compilation of behaviors commonly seen in parent-child post-conflict communications, was explored and resulted in a four-factor model: Constructive, Emotional Dysfunction, Blaming, and Dismissive. Longitudinal mediation analyses were conducted for these subscales’ effect on adolescent internalizing and externalizing outcomes and indirect effect as mediated by emotional security. The Blaming subscale, in particular, was found to be a significant predictor for internalizing (β = 0.27, SE = 0.11, p = .02) and externalizing (β = 0.42, SE = 0.12, p < .001) problems in adolescents. The data, however, did not suggest that PCE subscales would predict adolescent outcomes above and beyond the effect of overt interparental conflict (p > .05). The identification of these post-conflict explanations represents a step forward in detecting destructive communication behaviors in hope of incorporating novel interventions in projects designed to improve communication and security within the family.