The Relationship Between Parental Marriage Quality And Children’s Internalized And Externalized Problem Behaviors: A Moderated Mediation Model

At present,children’s problem behaviors have received increasing attention due to their widespread occurrence and serious consequences.Parental variables in the family environment are considered to be the key factors affecting children’s problem behaviors.The family begins with the establishment of marital relations,and the quality of parental marriage is closely related to the development and development of children’s problem behaviors.On the one hand,parental marital quality can directly and significantly predict children’s intemal/externalizing behavior.On the other hand,the emotional socialization that overflows from parental relationships can also have an impact on children’s internal/externalizing problem behaviors.Emotional expression is an important way for the socialization of parental emotions,and it is of great significance for children’s emotional and social adaptive behaviors.Based on this,from the perspective of family emotional socialization,this study intends to explore the mediating role of parental emotion expression between parental marital quality and children’s internal/externalizing problem behaviors.In addition,Porges’s multi-vagus nerve theory points out that vagal activity is an important neurophysiological basis for regulating individual emotions and social adaptive behaviors.It interacts with environmental variables to influence the generation and development of children’s problem behaviors.In summary,based on previous studies,this study used emotional physiology to collect baseline vagal tone(baseline RSA)of 162 children 6-7 years old.Using the method of questionnaire measurement,Children’s parents completed the Marriage Quality Questionnaires,Family emotional Expression Questionnaires,and Child behavioral Checklist(CBCL).Subsequently,parental marital quality was taken as the independent variable,children’s internal/externalizing problems were the dependent variables,parents’ emotional expression was the mediate variable,and children’s baseline RSA was the moderate variable.The effects of parental marital quality,parents’emotional expression,and children’s baseline RSA on behaviors of children’s internalization problems and externalization problems were discussed.Finally,the results showed that:(1)The quality of parental marriage significantly negatively predicts children’s internal/externalizing problems;Parents’ negative emotion expression significantly positively predict children’s internal/externalizing behavior problems;Parents’ positive emotion expression significantly negatively predicts children’s internal/externalizing problem behaviors.(2)Parental negative emotions play a role in the complete mediation between parental marital quality and children’s internal/external problem behaviors.(3)Children’s baseline RSA played a moderating role in parental negative emotion expression and behavior of children’s internal/externalizing problems.The results support the quality-stress model.Namely children with lower baseline RSA,the parental negative emotional expression significantly predicted the child’s behavioral problems,and the higher baseline RSA significantly buffer the predictive effect of parental negative emotion expression on children’s behavioral problems.(4)The second half of the mediating effect of parental marital quality through parental negative emotions on children’s internalization behaviors was mediated by children’s baseline RSA.Thus,the findings verified the combined effects of marriage quality,parental emotional expression and children’s physiological factors on problem behaviors,Individuals with lower baseline RSA as vulnerable factors are more likely to receive adverse environmental effects.