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20 - Interparental Conflict, Parental Relationship Dissolution, and the Development of Children’s Coping

from Part V - Social Contexts and the Development of Coping

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2023

By
Karey L. O’Hara ,
Irwin N. Sandler ,
Sharlene A. Wolchik  and
C. Aubrey Rhodes
Edited by
Ellen A. Skinner  and
Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck
Ellen A. Skinner
Affiliation:
Portland State University
Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck
Affiliation:
Griffith University, Queensland
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Summary

This chapter presents a new contextual coping model that integrates several major theoretical frameworks for studying children’s coping in the context of exposure to interparental conflict (IPC) after parental separation and divorce. We first provide a brief overview of the literature on postdivorce IPC and its risks to children’s development and well-being. We then consider how a new contextual coping model advances how we understand the complexity of children’s coping with IPC after parental separation/divorce. We discuss how this approach incorporates elements of other models that have been applied to children’s response to IPC more broadly. We review prior research and present new analyses that illustrate the utility of using a contextual coping model to understand children’s strategies for coping with post-separation/divorce IPC. We end the chapter with a discussion of implications of a contextual coping model for theory advancement and intervention strategies to promote children’s adaptive coping with post-separation/divorce IPC.

Keywords

children’s copingdevelopmentinterparental conflictdivorce/separationchild mental health

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The Cambridge Handbook of the Development of Coping , pp. 489 - 509
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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