Relación entre conflicto interparental, bienestar del niño y clima familiaruna comparación entre padres/madres oyentes con hijos sordos y con hijos oyentes

Abstract

The emotional security theory (EST) (Cummings & Davies, 2010; Davies & Cummings, 1994) explains that children need to perceive their family context and the parental relationship as a secure base. Otherwise, it has been shown that they can manifest both internalizing and externalizing problems. Until now, this theory has focused on families whose children do not have specific needs, without studying families in which the child has, for example, a hearing difficulty. Therefore, this study focuses on finding out if, in families in which children have a hearing impairment, their emotional security, the family members‟ wellbeing, the family climate, and the parental conflict are different compared to families with hearing children. Participants were 40 families composed by the father, the mother and one child who was between 11 and 17 years old (M = 14.03; SD = 1.96). Twenty of the children were deaf and twenty were hearing. The instruments used were SIFS (Security in the Family System Scale, Forman & Davies, 2005), SDQ (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, Goodman, 1997), CPIC (The Children's perception of interparental scale conflict, Grych, Seid, & Fincham, 1992, Martínez-Pampliega, 2008), FES (Family Environment Scale, Moos, 1981), HADS (The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Zigmond & Snaith, 1983), CPS (Conflict and problem-solving, Kerig, 1996), and CIS (Conflict in the interparental system - observational coding, Cummings, Cummings, Goeke-Morey, Du Rocher, & Cummings, 2006a; Cummings & Davies, 2010). The first one evaluates children‟s security in the family system, and their preoccupation and disengagement. The second one measures their overall stress and the strengths/difficulties they may have in different areas of their development. The third one assesses their perception of parental conflict through variables such as conflict intensity, frequency, stability, efficacy or threat, between others. FES assesses parents' perception of the family climate. HADS measures parents‟ anxiety and depression. CPS measures parents‟ perceived conflict. The latter evaluates observed behaviors and feelings in conflict situations that have all been regarded as significant when studying the impact that marital conflict has on children (Cummings, Goeke-Morey, & Papp, 2003; Cummings, Goeke-Morey, Papp, & Dukewich, 2002). Overall, the results point out at an adaptive conceptualization of disability in family functioning, while confirming the impact of interparental conflict on children, even if they do not have disabilities. No differences were found in the general family climate, the parents' mental health, the children's perception of the interparental conflict, and the conflict constructiveness/destructiveness between families with hearing children and deaf children. However, families with deaf children did turn out to get lower scores in achievement orientation while deaf adolescents did also turn out to have worse overall well-being, and greater disengagement than hearing children. These results far-reach the applicability of EST to community samples with and/or without hearing impairments, highlighting the relationship between adolescents‟ wellbeing and marital conflict.