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01-10-2007

Coparenting Conflict and Parenting Behavior in Economically Disadvantaged Single Parent African American Families: The Role of Maternal Psychological Distress

Authors: Shannon Dorsey, Rex Forehand, Gene Brody

Published in: Journal of Family Violence | Issue 7/2007

Abstract

Substantial research has focused on the negative associations between coparenting conflict, parental psychological functioning, and parenting behavior in European American, middle-income, families. However, less attention has been given to ethnic minority families and to families that are nontraditionally structured. In an effort to address this gap, the current longitudinal study examines the relation between conflict with the mother-identified primary co-caregiver and parenting practices in single parent, economically disadvantaged African American families. Participants included 234 mother–child dyads. It was hypothesized that conflict would relate to less utilization of positive parenting practices and that this association would be mediated, at least in part, by maternal psychological distress. Hypotheses were examined using structural equation modeling (Lisrel 8.3): Conflict with a co-caregiver was significantly related to parenting both directly and indirectly through maternal psychological distress. Implications of the findings are discussed.

According to the 1991 US Bureau of Census, births to single parents constituted 67% of all births to African American women.

According to Vandenberg (personal communication), models demonstrating a close fit to the data, with a small chi-square value, can sometimes return goodness of fit indices that appear ‘perfect’ due to the fact that the fit induces used in the current study employ some form of the chi-square to degree-of-freedom ratio minus 1 in the numerator (the denominator is typically the null model minus 1). As such, as long as the chi-square to degree-of-freedom ratio is less than 1, as is the case in the current study (i.e., 13.67/23 = 0.59), the indices can be relied upon to indicate excellent, but not perfect, fit.

The CFA model is available from the first author, upon request.

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Title: Coparenting Conflict and Parenting Behavior in Economically Disadvantaged Single Parent African American Families: The Role of Maternal Psychological Distress
Authors: Shannon Dorsey
Rex Forehand
Gene Brody
Publication date: 01-10-2007
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of Family Violence / Issue 7/2007
Print ISSN: 0885-7482
Electronic ISSN: 1573-2851
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-007-9114-y

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Coparenting Conflict and Parenting Behavior in Economically Disadvantaged Single Parent African American Families: The Role of Maternal Psychological Distress

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