Marital Conflict Exposure and Emotional Security as Predictors of Adolescents' Dating Conflict

Marital conflict exposure is a common occurrence that affects adolescents’ socioemotional development. Additionally, emotional security, which describes adolescents’ feelings of vulnerability within their families, is a strong predictor of adolescents’ adjustment. Limited research, however, has investigated whether marital conflict exposure and emotional security predict adolescents’ destructive dating conflict behaviors. Using a sample of 279 families, including mothers, fathers and adolescent children (Mage = 13.10 years at Time 1), a hierarchical regression was conducted to determine whether marital conflict exposure and emotional security predicted the level of adolescents’ destructive dating conflict behaviors two years later. Results suggested that greater marital conflict exposure predicted higher levels of destructive dating conflict behaviors two years later. After controlling for marital conflict exposure, higher levels of emotional security predicted lower levels of destructive dating conflict behaviors. These findings are important due to the limited research investigating adolescents’ dating conflicts, and may help inform future interventions.