Marital Conflict and Mothers' Responsive Parenting Practices as Mediators of the Relation between Maternal Emotional Distress and Adolescent Adjustment

The present study examined relations among maternal emotional distress, marital conflict, parenting, and adolescent adjustment over time. Specifically, the present study considered whether both marital conflict and responsive parenting practices mediated the relation between maternal emotional distress and adolescent externalizing and internalizing behaviors. In addition, a number of alternative models were examined that involved switching the order of effects. Three years of self-report data were collected from 136 married mothers and their adolescents, beginning when the adolescents were in fifth grade. Results of structural equations modeling procedures using latent variables suggested that marital conflict and responsive parenting practices mediated the relation between maternal emotional distress and adolescent externalizing behaviors. In contrast, only marital conflict mediated the relation between maternal emotional distress and adolescent internalizing behaviors. Thus, the present study identified possible time-ordered processes through which maternal emotional distress may affect adolescent adjustment.