Conflict between parents is inevitable—but it doesn’t have to hurt kids.

When I was a child, my parents’ fights could suck the oxygen out of a room. My mother verbally lashed my father, smashed jam jars, and made outlandish threats. Her outbursts froze me in my tracks. When my father fled to work, the garage, or the woods, I felt unprotected.

Kids pay close attention to their parents’ emotions for information about how safe they are in the family. When parents are destructive, the collateral damage to kids can last a lifetime.

Approach marriage and parenthood with more than a little caution. Marital quarrelling is inevitable. Just having children creates more conflicts, even for couples who were doing well before they became parents. “When kids show up, there’s less time to get more done”. “All of a sudden you’re not as patient, not as flexible, and it feels like there’s more at stake.”

“Conflict is a normal part of everyday experience, so it’s not whether parents fight that is important, it’s how the conflict is expressed and resolved, and especially how it makes children feel, that has important consequences for children.”

When children see their parents resolve difficult problems, they can grow up better off.

Destructive tactics that parents use with each other that harm children:

•       Verbal aggression like name-calling, insults, and threats of abandonment;

•       Physical aggression like hitting and pushing;

•       Silent tactics like avoidance, walking out, sulking, or withdrawing;

•       Capitulation—giving in that might look like a solution but isn’t a true one.

When parents repeatedly use hostile strategies with each other, some children can become distraught, worried, anxious, and hopeless. Others may react outwardly with anger, becoming aggressive and developing behavior problems at home and at school. Children can develop sleep disturbances and health problems like headaches and stomach aches, or they may get sick frequently. Their stress can interfere with their ability to pay attention, which creates learning and academic problems at school. Most children raised in environments of destructive conflict have problems forming healthy, balanced relationships with their peers. Even sibling relationships are adversely affected—they tend to go to extremes, becoming over-involved and overprotective of each other, or distant and disengaged.

Some research suggests that “Kids don’t get used to it,” and it can follow them into adulthood.

In 2002, researchers looked at 47 studies that linked children’s experiences in risky family environments to later issues in adulthood. They found that those who grew up in homes with high levels of conflict had more physical health problems, emotional problems, and social problems later in life compared to others. As adults, they were more likely to report vascular and immune problems, depression and emotional reactivity, substance dependency, loneliness, and problems with intimacy. 

“Some types of conflicts are not disturbing to kids, and kids actually benefit from it.” When parents have mild to moderate conflict that involves support and compromise and positive emotions, children develop better social skills and self-esteem, enjoy increased emotional security, develop better relationships with parents, do better in school and have fewer psychological problems.

Children feel more emotionally secure, their internal resources are freed up for positive developmental growth, and their own pro-social behavior toward others is enhanced. In fact, many child behavior problems can be solved not by focusing on the child, or even the parent-child relationship, but simply by improving the quality of the parents’ relationship alone, which strengthens children’s emotional security. Even if parents don’t completely resolve the problem but find a partial solution, kids will do fine.

In fact, their distress seems to go down in proportion to their parents’ ability to resolve things constructively.  “Compromise is best, but we have a whole lot of studies that show that kids benefit from any progress toward resolution,” says Cummings.

Children can actually benefit from conflict—if parents manage it well. “Parents should model real life…at its best. let them overhear how people work things out and negotiate and compromise.” 

However, some content is best kept private. Discussions about sex or other tender issues are more respectfully conducted without an audience. Parents shouldn’t be embaressed or afraid to find help  to learn to communicate better—from parenting programs, from books, or from a therapist or counsellor.

Courtesy Diana Divecha