A longitudinal examination of parental PTSD symptoms, interparental conflict, and child adjustment in military families following parental deployment

Guided by family systems theory, this longitudinal study examined whether parental posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, interparental conflict, and children's adjustment are linked in National Guard families. Participants were 159 families from a larger study of one state's National Guard. We examined whether parents' PTSD symptoms reported following return from deployment, and patterns of interparental conflict during the succeeding 12 months were related to children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors at the end of the year. Mixed-effects models estimated intercepts and slopes of interparental conflict, which were incorporated into structural equation models predicting child outcomes while controlling for baseline child behavior and control variables. Service members' PTSD symptoms predicted higher initial levels and increases in self-reported interparental conflict, whereas significant others' PTSD symptoms predicted higher initial levels only. Greater increases in significant others' interparental conflict predicted higher child externalizing behaviors at Time 3 after accounting for baseline externalizing behaviors. Together, these findings provide partial support for a family systems perspective linking parental distress, interparental functioning, and child adjustment. This study underscores the importance of examining trajectories of couple conflict during reintegration and suggests that programming to target interparental conflict in National Guard families may mitigate risk for children's externalizing problems.