Marital Conflict, the Parent-Child Relationship and Child Self-Esteem

This study investigated the association between levels of marital conflict and the self-esteem of 132 children aged 8-9 years and 142 adolescents aged 15-16 years selected randomly through the public and private school systems in the state of Victoria, Australia. Marital conflict was negatively associated with self-esteem among primary school girls but not among primary schoolboys. Weak negative associations between conflict and self-esteem were found for male and female adolescents. Marital conflict was negatively associated with the quality of the child-father relationship in all groups except among primary schoolboys. The negative effects of conflict tended to be strongest when children's relationships were poor with both parents. However, for young females, conflict was also negatively related to self-esteem when relationships with both parents were good.