(Dis)harmony in the home: parental child-rearing disagreement and early-childhood adjustment in Turkey

Abstract

Sociocultural changes in Turkey have led to significant reconfigurations in marital and parental dynamics over the last decade (Kağıtçıbaşı & Ataca, 2005). Accordingly, general marital conflict and parental disagreement have become prevalent causes of family dissolution and children’s adjustment problems (Ulu & Fışıloğlu, 2002). The current study examined the effect of parental child-rearing disagreement (PCD) of married coparents in Turkey on preschool (N = 57, Mage = 4.33, 50.8% girls) and elementary school-aged (N = 41, Mage = 8.15, 51% boys) children’s internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. After controlling for marital satisfaction, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that PCD predicted more parent-reported adjustment problems. Moreover, the effect of PCD was moderated by school level such that the strongest association was for preschoolers’ externalizing behavior problems. Our findings highlight PCD`s unique influence on younger children’s externalizing behaviors above and beyond marital satisfaction. Further, our findings highlight the importance of focusing on child-related topics as the specific content of general marital conflict during the preschool years.