Journal of Family Violence, Vol. 13, No.

4, 1998

Gender and Appraisals as Mediators of Adjustment in Children Exposed to Interparental Violence

Patricia K. Kerig1

The hypothesis that children's appraisals mediate the relationship between interparental violence and adjustment was tested in a sample of 106 maritally violent families. Multiple regressions showed that interparental violence was a predictor of total problems, externalizing, internalizing, and anxiety for boys, and total problems and internalizing for girls. Appraisals of conflict properties mediated the relationship between violence and boys' total problems and externalizing, and girls' total problems and internalizing. Interparental violence was related to appraisals in gender-differentiated ways, particularly to increased threat for boys, and self-blame for girls. Further, threat mediated the impact of violence on boys' anxiety, while self-blame mediated the relationship between violence and girls' internalizing.
KEY WORDS: gender; appraisals; children; interparental violence.

INTRODUCTION A large body of research has demonstrated that exposure to family violence contributes to the development of emotional and behavioral problems in children (Augustyn et al., 1995; B.C. Institute on Family Violence, 1992; Fantuzzo et al., 1991; Jaffe et al., 1990; Jouriles et al., 1989; Hughes et al., 1989; Kerig et al., in press; Margolin, 1995; McCloskey et al., 1995; Osofsky, 1995; Tbmkins et al., 1994; Wolfe and Jaffe, 1991; Wolfe et al., 1985). However, while there is clearly a link between interparental violence and child adjustment problems, less is known about the mechanisms that
1

James Madison University, School of Psychology, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807.

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0885-7482/98/1200-0345$15.00/0 1998 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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account for these effects (Depner et al., 1992; Grych and Fincham, 1990). To this end, investigators have been encouraged to move beyond documenting the negative effects of marital violence on children, in order to uncover the processes underlying children's responses to their mothers' abuse (Basic Behavior Science Task Force of the National Advisory Mental Health Council, 1996b; Cummings and El-Sheikh, 1991). Process-oriented models focus on the mechanisms that account for, or mediate, the effects of family violence on children, thus not only helping us to understand how these effects occur, but also pointing us toward ways in which intervention and amelioration might take place (Cummings and Cummings, 1988). One of the major contributors to our understanding of the processes underlying the effects of marital discord on children is Grych and Fincham's (1990) cognitive-contextual model. In particular, they stress that children are active in attempting to interpret the significance and meaning of their parents' arguments, and in discerning what role they might play in causing or solving their parents' marital problems. Therefore, children's appraisals of their parents' conflicts, such as their frequency, intensity, and resolution, as well as the child's perceptions of threat and self-blame, are hypothesized to mediate the impact of interparental conflict on their adjustment (Grych et al., 1992). In addition to the cognitions identified by Grych and colleagues, other researchers have identified additional appraisals that may underlie children's responses to interparental conflicts, such as perceived control (Rossman and Rosenberg, 1992). Children who believe that they can control their parents' conflicts may be at risk for greater maladjustment, particularly in violent families, as children's attempts to stop their mothers' abuse may involve them in the violence as well (Jenkins, Smith, and Graham, 1989; Johnston, Gonzalez, & Campbell, 1987; Rossman and Rosenberg, 1992). However, while Grych and Fincham's (1990) model has been examined in studies of children exposed to moderate levels of interparental conflict (Cummings et al., 1994; Grych and Fincham, 1993; Kerig, 1998), research has not yet confirmed the relationship between children's appraisals and adjustment in the context of more extreme marital discord, such as interparental violence. Further, most of the studies conducted to date have been limited to the examination of correlational relationships among interparental conflict, appraisals, and adjustment. As Baron and Kenny (1986) have described, a more rigorous test for mediation requires the use of a series of multiple regressions that demonstrate not only the existence of relationships amongst the independent variable, mediator, and dependent variable, but also reveal whether the mediator accounts for the relationship between the predictor and the outcome variable. Therefore, a purpose of this study was to examine whether children's appraisals mediated the relationship be-

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tween interparental violence and adjustment using the strategy recommended by Baron and Kenny (1986). Another issue that requires consideration is whether there are gender differences in the effects of interparental violence on children's adjustment. A number of researchers have found that boys respond aggressively to interadult anger, while girls are likely to become distressed or depressed (Crockenberg and Covey, 1991; Cummings et al., 1985; Cummings et al., 1989; Jaffe et al., 1986; Jouriles and LeCompte, 1991; Jouriles and Norwood, 1995; Reid and Crisafulli, 1990; Steinberg et al., 1993; Wolfe et al., 1988). However, other investigations of children exposed to interparental conflict and violence have not found this pattern of gender differences in internalizing and externalizing symptoms (Christopoulos et al., 1987; Fantuzzo et al. 1991; Holden and Ritchie, 1991; Katz and Gottman, 1993; Kerig, 1996,1998; Moore and Pepler, 1996; O'Keefe, 1994). Therefore, further research is required in order to determine whether there are different outcomes associated with exposure to marital violence for boys and girls. In addition, Cummings et al. (1994) have argued that while most of the attention in the literature has focused on whether girls or boys are more affected by interparental conflict, process-oriented models direct our attention to the question of whether the mechanisms underlying these effects differ by gender. For example, whereas boys have been found to react to interparental quarreling with appraisals of perceived threat, girls are more likely than boys to blame themselves as levels of interparental conflict and violence increase. Further, perceptions of threat are associated with adjustment problems in boys, whereas self-blame is related to maladjustment in girls, particularly to internalizing problems (Cummings et al., 1994; Cummings et al., 1989; Kerig, 1997, 1998). Attention to the pattern of relationships among appraisals and child symptoms might help to clarify the gender differences in children's responses to interparental violence. Perhaps what places boys at risk for the development of externalizing problems are perceptions of threat which motivate them to act out when distressed, while girls may be more vulnerable to the development of self-blaming attributions that result in the internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression. Therefore, the present study sought to test a process-oriented model of the mediational impact of appraisals of interparental violence on internalizing and externalizing problems in boys and girls. Another factor that complicates the question of whether gender differences exist in children's responses to interparental conflict is that studies demonstrating such differences have tended to come from clinical samples, which may not be representative of children in the general community. Children from clinical populations may be over-representative of boys, as well as displaying a preponderance of externalizing problems (Emery, 1988;

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Grych and Fincham 1990). Similarly, much of the research on children exposed to interparental violence has been based on children in battered women's shelters, who may differ from other samples on a number of dimensions, such as social class and the situational stress of leaving their homes to enter a shelter (Fantuzzo and Lindquist, 1989). Therefore, the present study assessed children exposed to interparental violence in a community sample of intact families. In summary, the purposes of this study were to examine whether appraisals mediated the effects of interparental violence on the adjustment of children from a community sample, and to determine whether there were gender differences in the pattern of relationships found. Further, developmental differences have been also been observed in children's reactions to interparental violence (e.g., Cummings et al., 1991), which would require an extremely large number of subjects to investigate systematically. Therefore, the present study focused on one developmental period, that of school-age. This age range was chosen because it is one in which previous research has established methods for reliably obtaining children's own reports of their parents' conflicts (Grych et al., 1992; Jouriles and Norwood, 1995).

METHOD Participants Participants included 106 maritally violent couples and their eldest child aged 8 to 11 recruited for a study of family stress and coping through fliers distributed at schools, daycare centers, parenting classes, family service agencies and community centers, and announcements in local newspapers. Families were included in the present study if both husband and wife reported on the Conflicts and Problem-solving Scales (Kerig, 1996; see below) that some physical aggression had occurred between them in the past year. There were 48 girls (mean age = 9.17, SD = 1.72) and 58 boys (mean age 9.18, SD = 1.90) in the sample. Parents were largely middle-class (median income approximately $45,000 Canadian), with some college education. Of the fathers, 83.9% were Caucasian, 10.3% Asian-Canadian, 2.3% Indo-Canadian, 1.1% African-Canadian, 1.1% First Nations, and 1.1% Hispanic. Of the mothers, 82.1% were Caucasian, 11.6% Asian-Canadian, 2.1% Indo-Canadian, 2.1% Hispanic, 1.1% African-Canadian, and 1.1% First Nations. The average parent age was 35.92 (SD - 4.66) for mothers and 38.22 (SD = 5.95) for fathers, and the average length of their relationship was 12.76 years (SD = 3.70).

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Measures Parent Reports of Marital Conflict Parents' ratings of marital adjustment were obtained on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS; Spanier, 1976), one of the most widely used measures of the quality of the marital relationship in the research literature. This is a 32-item scale on which partners rate their marital relationship. The validity of the DAS has been evidenced by its high correlations with similar marital scales. Acceptable levels of internal consistency have been established for the subscales. Only the Overall Adjustment scale (a = .94) was used for the present study. Parents rated the frequency of child exposure to interparental conflict on the O'Leary-Porter Scale (OPS; Porter and O'Leary, 1980), which consists of 10 items regarding how often children are present when their parents argue on a variety of topics, and how much children are exposed to physical or verbal aggression between their parents. Items are rated from never (0) to very often (4), and summed to create one score for interparental conflict. The authors report reliability over a two week period, and good internal consistency was demonstrated in the present sample (a = .82). Interparental violence was assessed through parents' ratings on the Conflicts and Problem-solving Scales (CPS; Kerig, 1996), which assess a number of dimensions of exposure to violence that have been shown to affect children, including frequency, verbal aggression, physical aggression, and child involvement. Frequency is a rating of the number of times parents engage in major conflicts ("big blow ups") and minor conflicts ("spats, getting on each other's nerves") in a year. Ratings are made on a 6-point ordinal scale, ranging from "once a year or less" (scored 1 for minor conflicts and 2 for major conflicts) to "just about every day" (scored 6 for minor conflicts and 12 for major conflicts). Scores for major and minor conflicts are summed, resulting in possible total scores ranging from 3 to 18. The CPS also rates a variety of conflict strategies, using a list of 44 tactics derived from the literature on marital and interpersonal conflict. Participants rate the frequency with which each strategy was used in the past year by themselves and their partners, rated "never" (0), "rarely" (1), "sometimes" (2), or "often" (3). Physical Aggression consists of 7 items measuring physically violent tactics (e.g., "slap" or "hit"), with possible total scores ranging from 0 to 42. Verbal-Aggression consists of 8 items (e.g., "yell" or "insult"), with possible total scores ranging from 0 to 48. Child Involvement consists of 6 items regarding ways in which parents might involve their children in interparental conflicts (e.g., "argue about the children" or "confide in children about marital problems"), with possible total

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scores ranging from 0 to 36. These scales were derived through factor analysis on a sample of 273 normative and distressed couples (Kerig, 1996), with good internal consistencies (alphas ranging from .75 to .98), and test-retest reliability over a 3-month period for a subsample of 48 couples (r's = .53 to .87, all p < .01). Convergent and divergent validity were also demonstrated, including high correlations between partners' reports (r's = .26 to .69, all p < .001), and correspondence between the subscales of the CPS and overlapping subscales of other marital measures, including the DAS (Spanier, 1976) and the OPS (Porter and O'Leary, 1980). Although the CPS asks participants to rate their use of conflict tactics on a Likert scale, as opposed to the frequency counts rated on the Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus, 1979), correlations between similar scales on the two measures were high (r's = .36 to .80, all p < .01). In addition, correlations were found between parents' and children's ratings of interparental conflicts, and the subscales of the CPS predicted parents' and children's ratings of child adjustment problems in samples derived from normative (Kerig, 1996) and maritally violent populations (Kerig et al., in press). In the present sample, alphas on the CPS subscales ranged from .76 to .94. Children's Appraisals of Interparental Conflict. Children's reports of their parents' conflicts were obtained on the Children's Perceptions of Interparental Conflict questionnaire (CPIC; Grych et al., 1992). Children are presented with 51 statements regarding feelings they might have when their parents argue (e.g., "I feel caught in the middle when my parents have arguments;" "When my parents argue I'm afraid that something bad will happen"), and are asked to rate whether each statement is "true" (2), "sort of true" (1), or "false" (0). Grych et al.'s (1992) factor analyses confirmed that the items fell into three scales: Conflict Properties (the frequency, intensity, and resolution of interparental conflicts), Threat (the degree of fear and helplessness the child feels during parental fighting), and Self-Blame (whether the child feels to blame for parents' conflicts, and whether parents are believed to argue about the child). The factors were confirmed in a cross-validation study, and demonstrated good test-retest reliability and internal consistency. Children's CPIC scores also correlated with their parents' reports of interparental conflict, and predicted parents' reports of children's aggression and depression on the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1991). Although the CPIC was validated on children aged 9-11, it is written in clear and child-oriented language, there were no comprehension difficulties observed for the younger children in the present sample. Coefficient alphas for the three scales in the current sample were .80, .77, and .61, respectively. Children's appraisals of perceived control over interparental conflict were assessed by the Discord Control and Coping Questionnaire (DCCQ;

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Rossman and Rosenberg, 1992), a 23-item forced-choice measure that asks children to rate the extent to which one of two options is "a little" or "a lot" like themselves (for example, "Some kids think they can keep their parents from fighting, but other kids don't think they can do this. Which kid is like you?") The factor-analytically derived scale of Direct Intervention was defined as representing the degree to which children believe that they can control their parents' quarrels. The alpha for the current sample was .85. Child Adjustment Parents' ratings of their children's symptoms were obtained on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991), a well-validated, reliable, and widely used measure of children's behavior problems. Coefficient alphas for the present sample were .80 for Total Problems, .75 for Internalizing, and .76 for Externalizing. Children's reports of distress were obtained on the Children's Manifest Anxiety ScaleRevised (CMAS; Reynolds and Richmond, 1978) which contains 28 items assessing trait anxiety, as well as a Lie scale. A summary score for total anxiety is calculated (including the subscales of physiological anxiety, general worry, and interpersonal concerns). This measure has demonstrated good internal consistency, and concurrent and construct validity are reported by the authors. The coefficient alpha for the total anxiety score in the present sample was .83. Procedure The present data were derived from a larger study of parent and child coping with stress. In order to reduce fatigue, parents and children completed the measures during two sessions. The first took place in the participants' homes, where parents filled out their questionnaires while a trained graduate student or advanced undergraduate research assistant interviewed the child in a separate room. The second session took place in the laboratory, where parents and children again completed questionnaires in separate rooms, and the child measures were administered by the research assistant. Parents and children also completed other questionnaires and tasks that were not of interest for the current study. Signed informed consent was obtained from parents, and assent from children. Children and parents were both informed that they could refuse to answer questions or decline to continue participating at any time during the study, and children's motivation and comfort was maintained throughout the procedure.

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Table I. Means and Standard Deviations Boys Girls

Kerig

M
DASa

SD

SD

Parent reports of interparental conflict

OPS
CPS CPS CPS CPS frequency verbal aggression physical aggression child involvement

98.51 23.85 12.57 7.15 3.24 6.03 28.06 8.18 3.77 5.20 14.09 5.84 Child reports of interparental

99.35 12.65 6.02 25.91 4.36 12.27 conflict

17.59 5.42 3.44 8.12 2.56 6.34

CPIC conflict properties CPIC threat CPIC self-blame DCCQ perceived control CBCL externalizing CBCL internalizing CBCL total problems CMAS anxiety
a

7.64 14.65 7.52 4.00 1.90 2.75 21.41 7.25 Child adjustment
53.49 58.24 57.26 9.72

11.89 7.61 1.91 21.46 50.31 54.66 53.10 8.90

7.85 3.49 2.08 5.87 8.11 10.61 9.56 5.60

9.16 9.73 9.62 6.08

DAS = Dyadic Adjustment Scale. OPS= O'Leary Porter Scale. CPS = Conflicts and Problem-solving Scale. CPIC= Children's Perceptions of Interparental Conflict. DCCQ = Discord Control and Coping Questionnaire. CBCL = Child Behavior Checklist. CMAS = Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale. *p < .05.

Children received a certificate for completing the study, and parents received an honorarium of $40 and a handbook on helping children cope with stress.

RESULTS Gender Differences in Children's Appraisals of Interparentai Violence Mean ratings and standard deviations for all variables are reported in Table I. Results show that average marital satisfaction scores on the DAS fell in the distressed range (<100) for this sample. A MANOVA was performed to assess whether there were gender differences in parents' and children's reports of interparental conflicts. While the multivariate test was significant, Wilks's Lambda = 2.22,p < .05, examination of the univariate tests revealed only one significant gender difference. Parents of boys reported higher levels of verbal aggression on the CPS, F(1, 102) = 4.43, p < .05.

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353

A MANOVA was also performed to assess whether there were gender differences in parents' and children's ratings of child adjustment. The multivariate test was significant, Wilks's Lambda = 2.27, p < .05. Examination of the univariate tests revealed that boys were rated higher than girls in total problems on the CBCL, F(1, 102) = 4.81, p < .05. A trend toward a gender effect for externalizing did not reach significance, F(l, 102) = 2.69, p = .08 Correlations Between Parents' and Children's Reports of Interparental Conflict Correlations between children's reports of interparental conflict on the CPIC, and parents' reports on the DAS, CPS, and OPS are reported in Table II. The pattern of results indicates that parents' and children's perceptions of interparental conflict were fairly consistent on similar scales of the measures taken from these two perspectives. For example, parental reports of marital adjustment, and the frequency, severity, aggressiveness and exposure of the child to interparental conflict, were correlated with child ratings of conflict properties on the CPIC. Similarly, parents' reports of marital adjustment, frequency, aggressiveness, and child involvement in interparental conflict were associated with children's ratings of perceived threat. However, there were also some patterns of correlations that differed for boys and girls. For example, only for boys was perceived threat related to parents' ratings of child exposure to interparental conflict. On the other hand, only for girls were appraisals of self-blame related to parents' reports of frequency, child exposure, and involvement in interparental conflicts. In addition, only for girls was marital adjustment predictive of perceived control over interparental violence. Tests for Mediational Effects Tests for mediational effects were conducted in order to assess whether children's appraisals of conflict properties, threat, self-blame, and perceived control mediated the effects of interparental violence on symptoms of externalizing, internalizing, and total problems. As Baron and Kenny (1986) explain, to establish mediation, the independent variable must be shown to predict both the mediator and the dependent variable. In addition, the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable must be shown to be smaller when the mediator is controlled. Therefore, a series of simple regressions were performed. First, the hypothesized mediator was

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Mediators of Interparenta) Violence Table III. Tests for Mediation: Multiple Regressions for Boys Equation Dependent variable Predictor entered

355

R2
.41*** .15** .19** .22*** .25**

P
.65*** .39**

Mediator: Conflict properties

1. 2. 3. 2. 3, 2. 3.

CPS physical aggression CPS physical aggression CPS physical aggression Conflict properties CBCL total problems CPS physical aggression CBCL total problems CPS physical aggression Conflict properties CMAS anxiety CPS physical aggression CMAS anxiety CPS physical aggression Conflict properties Mediator: CPIC threat Threat CMAS anxiety CMAS anxiety CPS physical aggression CPS physical aggression CPS physical aggression Threat

Conflict properties CBCL externalizing CBCL externalizing

.15
.35* .47***

.21
.32* .36**

.13** .20**

.15
.33*

1. 2. 3.

.15** .13** .23***

.38** .36**

.19
.33*

*p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001

regressed on the independent variable; second, the dependent variable was regressed on the independent variable; and third, the dependent variable was regressed on both the independent variable and the mediator in order to examine the change in the proportion of variance accounted for by the independent variable with the mediator included in the equation. Tests were conducted separately for boys and girls. Results for boys demonstrated that interparental violence was a significant predictor of internalizing, R2 = .18, F(1, 45) = 11.66, p < .001, (3 = .43, in addition to externalizing, total problems, and child-reported anxiety (results for which are reported in Table III). The subsequent regression analyses reported in Table III showed that interparental violence predicted boys' appraisals of conflict properties and threat. Results for the third set of regression equations indicated that the proportion of variance in boys' externalizing and total problems explained by interparental violence was no longer significant when their appraisals of conflict properties were added to the equation, therefore demonstrating a mediational effect. In addition, the results showed that both conflict properties and threat mediated the relationship between violence and boys' reports of anxiety. Self-blame and perceived control exhibited no mediational effects on the relationship between interparental violence and boys' adjustment, nor were any significant relationships found for parents' reports of boys' internalizing. Results for girls are displayed in Table IV Interparental violence was a significant predictor of girls' total problems and internalizing. Interparental violence also predicted girls' appraisals of conflict properties and self-

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Table IV. Tests for Mediation: Multiple Regressions for Girls Equation Dependent variable Predictor entered

Kerig

K2

P
.41** .23*

Mediator: Conflict properties

1. 2. 3. 2. 3.

Conflict properties CBCL total problems CBCL total problems

CPS physical aggression CPS physical aggression CPS physical aggression Conflict properties CBCL internalizing CPS physical aggression CBCL internalizing CPS physical aggression Conflict properties Mediator: CPIC self-blame Self-blame CBCL internalizing CBCL internalizing CPS physical aggression CPS physical aggression CPS physical aggression Self-blame

.17*** .08* .12*

.14
.24* .24*

.12* .14*

.12
.29*

1. 2. 3.

.14* .12* .17*

.23* .23*

.15
.22*

*p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001

blame. The third set of equations indicated that conflict properties demonstrated a mediational impact on girls' total problems and internalizing, while self-blame also mediated the relationship between violence and internalizing.

DISCUSSION The findings from this study lend support to Grych and Fincham's (1990) hypothesis that children's appraisals mediate the effects of interparental quarreling on their adjustment. In addition, the present study extends this model to the investigation of children exposed to interparental violence. The correlational results showed fairly high agreement between parents' and children's ratings of interparental violence, suggesting that violent interparental conflicts are highly salient to all family members, and that parents and children perceive them similarly. In contrast to studies that have documented differences in the responses of boys and girls to interparental violence, few mean differences associated with gender emerged in the present study. Parents of boys reported engaging in more verbal aggression during arguments with one another than did parents of girls, a finding that is consistent with other reports that boys are shielded from their parents' quarreling less than girls (Hetherington et al., 1989). However, the results of the present study did not indicate that boys were more likely than girls to be exposed to, or involved in, their parents' conflicts. Thus, while parents in the present sample did

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not engage in conflict more often in front of sons, their exchanges were characterized by more harsh language than were the arguments of parents of daughters. In addition, while some researchers have found gender differences in the kinds of behavior problems shown by boys and girls exposed to violence, particularly in regard to externalizing and internalizing symptoms, the present data did not reveal such a pattern of effects. Boys were rated higher than girls only in parent reports of total problems. However, the multiple regressions showed that interparental violence was a risk factor for all areas of adjustment in boys, but only for total problems and internalizing in girls. Although the research literature is inconsistent on this score, the finding that boys are particularly affected by family violence has been reported by other investigators (Jaffe et al., 1985, 1986; Rutter, 1990). The present results are also consistent with Cummings et al.'s (1994) suggestion that important gender differences may emerge in the relationships among variables, rather than in simple mean differences between groups. For example, while boys and girls did not differ overall in the extent to which they reported perceived threat or self-blame regarding interparental violence, both the correlational analyses and the multiple regressions suggested a differential role that each of these appraisals play for boys and girls. Parental ratings of interparental violence were related to significant increases in perceived threat for boys, and self-blame for girls, replicating the findings reported by Cummings et al. (1994) in a nonviolent sample. Results of the multiple regressions also suggested that these appraisals are differential sources of vulnerability for boys and girls, with perceived threat acting as a mediator of anxiety for boys, and self-blame mediating the effects of interparental violence on internalizing for girls. Taken together, these results point to the importance of investigating the unique ways in which boys and girls construe their parents' conflicts, and their own role in them. Boys have been described as taking a more action-oriented approach to problem situations, whereas girls have been described as internalizing their distress (Zahn-Waxler, 1993). Exposure to a stressor such as interparental violence may activate these responses in children, leading boys to attempt to mobilize their resources to "attack" a problem external to themselves, while girls turn their attention inward, worrying about their responsibilities for maintaining the well-being of their family (Kerig, 1997). Finally, this study yields support for Grych and Fincham's (1990) model of the mediating role of children's appraisals on their adjustment. While some support has been found for this model in the literature on children exposed to interparental conflict (Cummings et al., 1994; Kerig, in press) and violence (Kerig et al., in press), previous research has relied on correlations rather than conducting the more rigorous tests for media-

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tion recommended by Baron and Kenny (1986). The present results showed that appraisals of the properties of interparental conflicts (their frequency, intensity, and resolution) were strong predictors of adjustment for both boys and girls. In addition, conflict properties demonstrated a mediational effect on the relationship between interparental violence and children's total behavior problems. As Grych and Fincham (1990) have posited, children are affected by interparental quarrels to the extent that they perceive them as being recurrent, severe, and stable. In addition, however, some different patterns of effects emerged for boys and girls. Conflict properties mediated the relationship between interparental violence and both externalizing and anxiety in boys, while this effect held for internalizing problems only in girls. Therefore, these findings suggest that, while appraisals affect the relationship between interparental violence and both internalizing and externalizing symptoms in boys, these effects are particular to internalizing for girls. The propensity for girls to develop internalizing symptoms such as depression and anxiety in the face of developmental challenges has been noted by other researchers (Cohn, 1991; Gjerde et al., 1988; Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 1991). Girls have also been described as being more likely to take on responsibility for the emotional well-being of their mothers, particularly when there is marital distress (Jacobvitz and Bush, 1996; Kerig et al., 1993), and this tendency might be exacerbated in situations of interparental violence, in which mothers themselves are being traumatized by abuse (Augustyn et al., 1995; Osofsky, 1995; Wolfe et al., 1985). There are limitations of the present study that should be considered. Families were largely middle-class and Caucasian, and further research on larger and more diverse samples will be required before these findings can be generated to other populations. Because this was a community sample of intact families, levels of interparental violence were relatively mild in comparison to that experienced by children in battered women's shelters. Further research is necessary to directly compare children from community and shelter populations in order to better tease apart effects due to level of violence, general life stress, and the transitional stress of family separations and shelter residence (Fantuzzo et al., 1991). In addition, data were collected at one point in time, and therefore the direction of effects regarding the relationships among interparental violence, appraisals, and children's adjustment could not be demonstrated. Longitudinal research is needed in order to develop and test true process-oriented models of the mechanisms underlying the development of maladjustment in children exposed to spousal abuse. Also, the children included in the present study were all school-aged, and therefore the findings cannot be generalized to other developmental periods. Although the CPIC was developed specifi-

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cally for children in this age group, future research would benefit from the development of valid and reliable measures for obtaining self-reports from preschool children and adolescents so that age-related changes in appraisals might be assessed. A number of issues for future research are raised by this inquiry. One important question will be to assess whether children's appraisals of their parents' conflicts predict their actual behavior during interparental quarreling, for example, whether perceived threat leads boys to take action in order to protect their mothers from abuse, versus whether self-blame is associated with emotional caregiving behavior by girls (Kerig et al., in press). In addition, given that parents in the present sample exposed sons to more verbal aggression than they did daughters, an interesting question for further research is whether in fact parents believe boys to be more robust than girls when it comes to exposure to parental anger and hostility. This belief might be borne out of sex-role stereotypes regarding the "toughness" of boys (Block, 1983). In addition, however, boys' tendency to respond to stress through externalizing may interfere with their parents' recognition of the distress and anxiety underlying their behavior problems (Jouriles and Norwood, 1995; Kavanagh and Hops, 1994). If this is the case, the mismatch between parents' perception of boys' hardiness, and the reality of their high sensitivity and reactivity to interparental conflict, would suggest a valuable place to intervene in order to sensitize parents to their sons' distress. In addition, another direction for future research is to turn the focus from risk factors for children exposed to the trauma of interparental violence, to search for sources of resiliency in children from violent homes (Basic Behavioral Science Task Force of the National Advisory Mental Health Council, 1996a; Depner et al., 1992; Rutter, 1990). Given that children's appraisals mediate the impact of interparental conflict on their adjustment (Grych and Fincham, 1990), a productive area for future research would be the identification and measurement of appraisals that serve as protective mechanisms for children, such as those that contribute to perceptions of coping efficacy (Cummings et al., 1994; Grych and Fincham, 1993; Rutter, 1990), emotional security (Davies and Cummings, 1994), affect regulation (Katz and Gottman, 1997), or self-affirmation in the face of family violence.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was funded by a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#410-94-1547). Portions of these

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data were presented at the First National Conference on Children Exposed to Violence, Austin, June 1996. The author would like to thank the families who participated in this research, two anonymous reviewers, and the students who assisted in data collection and coding, particularly Corina Brown, Rebecca Cobb, Shawnda Dumka, Lin Lira, Laurel Scharfenberg, and Michelle Warren.

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