Associations between parent and child reports of interparental conflict/violence and child difficulties in a family mediation setting.

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We examined the association between parents’ (N = 52 mothers and 52 fathers) and children’s (N = 27) reports of interparental conflict and child difficulties in a family mediation setting. Parents’ reports of conflict were moderately associated with children’s reports of exposure to parental conflict, but only fathers’ reports of conflict were associated with children’s reports of negative responses to parent conflict. While mothers and fathers agreed on their child’s difficulties, only mothers’, not fathers’, report of child difficulties were moderately related to child reports of child difficulties. Mothers’ and fathers’ reports of conflict generally were not strongly associated with reports of child difficulties. In contrast to parent reports, children’s reports of exposure to parents’ conflict were moderately and significantly related to self-reported child difficulties and moderately related to parents’ reports of child academic difficulties. The magnitude of the association between the child’s report of interparental conflict and self-report of difficulties was stronger than the association between parent report of conflict and parent report of child difficulties, suggesting that parents may not fully understand their child’s exposure to parent conflict/violence or the problems their child is experiencing.