Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jesse L. Telephone: Terms of use and reuse: academic research for non-commercial purposes, see here for full terms. We hypothesized that high levels of household chaos would amplify links between domestic violence and parenting difficulties, and that parenting difficulties would in turn predict child behavior problems.
Hypotheses were tested using path analysis with manifest variables within a structural equation modeling framework. All models provided excellent fit to the data. DV was associated with punitive discipline practices only when household chaos was high.
Punitive discipline practices in turn predicted greater child externalizing symptoms 6 months later. Follow-up analyses revealed that the moderating role of chaos was specific to DV, rather than general to other forms of adversity child maltreatment, lifetime contextual stressors, traumatic events. This interaction between DV and chaos was salient even when controlling for exposure to other adversities and demographic covariates. Results point to multiple potential targets of intervention that may ultimately buffer children from the risk posed by experiencing DV in the home.
Keywords: domestic violence, household chaos, parenting practices, externalizing symptoms, internalizing symptoms, preschool children, path analysis. These findings are especially troubling given the high prevalence of domestic violence in households with children. Largely guided by conceptual models of family spillover e.
Thus, our primary goal was to examine how the interplay between DV and a significant characteristic of the family context i. Models of family spillover posit that negative affect and negative behavior directly transfer from one relationship into another e.
