What Children Learn When Adults Never Repair After Conflict

What Children Learn When Adults Never Repair After Conflict

What Children Learn When Adults Never Repair After Conflict

What Children Learn When Adults Never Repair After Conflict

Estimated Reading Time: 15–17 minutes


Children do not need to grow up in homes without disagreement. They need to grow up learning what happens after disagreement.

Adults sometimes assume that the most important way to protect children is to prevent them from witnessing conflict. Certainly, frightening, aggressive, humiliating, or chronically hostile conflict can be harmful. Yet disagreement itself is an ordinary part of close relationships. Parents become frustrated with each other. A caregiver loses patience with a child. Siblings argue. Someone raises their voice, misunderstands another person's intention, says something insensitive, or reacts more strongly than they intended. No healthy family can eliminate every moment of tension.

What matters enormously is what children see next.

Does someone return and say, “I was angry, but I should not have spoken to you that way”? Do two parents who argued later speak calmly and allow their children to see that the relationship is stable again? Does an adult remain curious about another person's feelings even when they disagree about what happened? Or does the family simply move on without acknowledging anything? Perhaps everyone eats dinner as though the morning's shouting never occurred. Perhaps a parent stops speaking to another parent for three days. Maybe someone buys the child a treat instead of apologizing, or affection quietly returns without anyone naming the injury that came before it.

When conflict repeatedly happens without repair, children are learning something about relationships even if no adult deliberately teaches the lesson. They may learn that anger threatens connection, that apologies are unnecessary, that difficult feelings should disappear without discussion, that whoever has more power decides when an issue is finished, or that love means returning to normal without acknowledging harm. Some children learn to become peacemakers who monitor everyone's emotions. Others learn to withdraw before conflict can become painful. Still others learn that the safest response to being hurt is to act as though they were never hurt at all.

Developmental research offers an important corrective to the idea that children are harmed simply by seeing adults disagree. Research on interparental conflict distinguishes constructive conflict from destructive conflict. Constructive conflict can involve problem solving, support, affection, compromise, and resolution, whereas destructive conflict can involve hostility, withdrawal, aggression, unresolved tension, or behaviors that threaten children's sense of family security (McCoy et al., 2009). Research also shows that children pay attention to how conflicts end. Different forms of resolution, including compromise, apology, agreement to disagree, and withdrawal, carry different meanings for children, and children's reactions to conflict resolution are related to their broader adjustment (Cummings et al., 2007).

The lesson is not that parents must perform perfect reconciliation after every disagreement. It is something more realistic and, perhaps, more hopeful: children do not need perfect adults. They benefit from seeing that relationships can survive imperfection, that harm can be acknowledged, and that connection can be restored without pretending nothing happened.


What You Will Learn

  • Why conflict itself is not the same as relational harm.

  • What children may learn when adults repeatedly return to normal without repairing what happened.

  • How unresolved adult conflict can affect children's sense of emotional security.

  • Why children often notice tension even when adults believe they have hidden it.

  • How children can become peacemakers, emotional monitors, withdrawers, or conflict avoiders.

  • Why apology is more than saying “sorry,” and what meaningful repair actually teaches.

  • How constructive disagreement can help children develop healthier ideas about conflict.

  • What parents and caregivers can do when they realize a conflict was handled badly.


Children Are Watching What Conflict Means, Not Simply Whether It Happens

One of the most important findings in research on family conflict is that the quality of conflict matters. A household in which adults occasionally disagree but resolve their differences constructively is psychologically different from one in which disagreements regularly involve contempt, threats, aggression, prolonged withdrawal, or unresolved hostility. Emotional security theory, developed by Patrick Davies and E. Mark Cummings, proposes that children are strongly motivated to preserve a sense of safety and security within the family system. Interparental conflict becomes particularly significant when it threatens that security and changes how children understand the stability and predictability of important relationships (Davies & Cummings, 1994).

This helps explain why counting arguments tells us relatively little by itself. Two parents might disagree several times in one month while remaining respectful, finding solutions, and reassuring one another afterward. Another couple might have only one visible argument but leave behind days of hostility, silence, and uncertainty. From a child's perspective, the second environment may feel far more threatening because the conflict never clearly ends. Research distinguishing constructive and destructive marital conflict has similarly emphasized that the way conflict is managed can be especially important for children's emotional security and social development (McCoy et al., 2009).

Children are also remarkably sensitive to relational atmosphere. Adults sometimes believe they have protected a child because the argument happened behind a closed bedroom door. Yet children can notice what comes afterward: the silence at breakfast, the absence of eye contact, the unusually sharp tone, one parent sleeping elsewhere, or the way everyone becomes careful around a particular subject. They may not understand the content of the disagreement, but they understand that something in the relational environment has changed.

When adults repair, the child receives information that helps complete the story. When adults do not, the child may be left to interpret the tension independently. Young minds do not necessarily arrive at accurate explanations. A child may wonder whether the parents will separate, whether someone will leave, whether the argument was somehow their fault, or whether they need to behave especially well so that everyone stays calm. The absence of explanation can become a space into which anxiety enters.


What Does “Repair” Actually Mean?

Repair does not mean proving who was right. It does not require a long emotional discussion after every disagreement, nor does it mean forcing affection before people are ready. At its simplest, relational repair involves acknowledging that something happened between people and taking steps to restore enough safety, understanding, or connection for the relationship to continue honestly.

Sometimes repair is brief. A parent snaps at a child while rushing to school and later says, “You were taking a long time, and I was stressed, but shouting at you was not okay. I should have handled that differently.” Nothing dramatic is required. The adult has named the behavior, accepted responsibility, and separated the child's behavior from the adult's responsibility for managing their own response.

Between adults, repair might look different. Two parents may disagree strongly about money, take time to calm down, and later tell their child, “You heard us arguing earlier. We were frustrated with each other, but we talked about it and we're okay. The disagreement was between us, and you don't need to fix it.” The child does not need the financial details. What they need is enough information to understand that the conflict has been contained by the adults.

Research on children's responses to marital conflict resolution shows why endings matter. Cummings and colleagues (2007) examined children's responses to different forms of conflict resolution, including compromise, apology, submission, agreement to disagree, and withdrawal. Their findings supported the importance of conflict endings and showed that children are sensitive to the implications of different resolutions for the relationship and family. In other words, children are not merely observing whether adults stop arguing. They are interpreting how the disagreement ended and what that ending suggests about what comes next.

Repair communicates that relationships can bend without necessarily breaking.


When Nobody Repairs, Children May Learn That Conflict Is Dangerous

Imagine a child who repeatedly experiences the same sequence. Their parents argue. Voices become tense. One person leaves the room. For several hours, or perhaps several days, the adults communicate only when necessary. Eventually, they begin speaking normally again. Nobody explains what happened. Nobody apologizes in a way the child can observe. Nobody makes it clear whether the problem was resolved.

The household has returned to normal, but the child has not necessarily experienced resolution.

Over time, this can teach the child that conflict is something unpredictable that enters relationships and disappears mysteriously. They may never learn that disagreement can be discussed, negotiated, repaired, and integrated. Instead, peace becomes associated with the absence of visible conflict, not with the successful resolution of it.

This distinction can influence later behavior. A child who experiences conflict as threatening may become highly uncomfortable whenever people disagree. They may interpret a partner's frustration as evidence that the relationship is in danger. They may avoid raising legitimate concerns because speaking up feels risky. They may apologize excessively simply to end tension, even when they have done nothing wrong. Alternatively, they may withdraw completely because withdrawal was the conflict-management strategy they repeatedly observed.

Emotional security theory helps explain why these patterns can emerge. Davies and Cummings (1994) proposed that children's responses to interparental conflict are organized partly around preserving emotional security. When conflict repeatedly signals possible instability or threat, children may become more vigilant to signs that relationships are in danger. Over time, these responses can shape how they regulate emotion and interpret interpersonal situations.

The important qualification is that childhood experiences do not mechanically determine adult personality. Children are influenced by many relationships and experiences, and people can learn new relational patterns throughout life. What repeated family experiences provide are templates, expectations, and strategies. They teach children what relationships seem to require.


Some Children Become Experts at Reading the Room

In families where conflict remains unresolved, children sometimes become unusually attentive to adult emotions. They notice the sound of footsteps, the force with which a cupboard closes, changes in someone's breathing, the length of a silence, or whether one parent used the other's name in a particular tone. They may know an argument is coming before anyone has raised their voice.

This sensitivity can look like maturity. A child may appear thoughtful, responsible, emotionally intelligent, or unusually considerate. They may know exactly when to leave adults alone or how to make everyone laugh when the atmosphere becomes tense. Yet underneath that apparent competence can be a more burdensome lesson: My safety depends on accurately predicting other people's emotions.

The child begins scanning rather than simply participating.

Consider a ten-year-old whose parents frequently argue and then refuse to speak to each other. When tension appears, she becomes especially helpful. She cleans the kitchen without being asked, entertains her younger brother, and tries to make her father laugh. Nobody explicitly told her to repair the family, but she has discovered that reducing adult tension makes the environment feel safer.

The problem is not kindness or sensitivity. Those can be valuable strengths. The difficulty arises when a child begins experiencing other people's emotional states as their responsibility. Instead of learning, Adults sometimes become upset and know how to manage their relationships, the child may learn, When adults are upset, I need to do something.

This can later appear in friendships and romantic relationships as excessive monitoring, difficulty tolerating another person's disappointment, or a strong impulse to restore harmony immediately. Someone may become the person who always sends the first apologetic message, explains everyone to everyone else, or abandons their own needs whenever another person becomes uncomfortable.

Repair by adults teaches a very different lesson: the people involved in the conflict are responsible for resolving it. The child can remain a child.


Silence Can Teach as Much as Shouting

When we think about harmful conflict, we often imagine screaming, insults, or aggressive behavior. Yet unresolved conflict can also be remarkably quiet.

Two adults can live in the same house while barely acknowledging each other. A parent can respond with clipped answers for days. Someone can use emotional withdrawal as punishment, refusing affection or communication until the other person gives in. Families can become skilled at maintaining daily routines while everyone senses that something remains wrong.

From the child's perspective, prolonged silence may be difficult precisely because its meaning is unclear. The argument has stopped, but connection has not visibly returned. Is everyone safe? Are the parents still angry? Will someone leave? Is the problem finished? The child may continue monitoring because there has been no recognizable ending.

Research on conflict resolution has included withdrawal among the endings children evaluate, and findings suggest that children are sensitive to differences in how adult conflict concludes (Cummings et al., 2007). Constructive conflict, by contrast, includes behaviors such as problem solving, support, affection, and forms of resolution that communicate greater relational security (McCoy et al., 2009).

This does not mean adults should force themselves to resolve every issue immediately. Sometimes taking space is exactly what prevents a disagreement from becoming destructive. The difference is between regulated space and punitive uncertainty. “I am too upset to talk constructively right now. I need an hour, and then we can continue” communicates something very different from disappearing emotionally for three days and expecting everyone else to guess what is happening.

Children can learn that taking space is healthy when they also see people return.


Children May Learn That Apologies Are About Ending Discomfort Rather Than Taking Responsibility

In some families, apologies rarely happen. In others, the word sorry appears frequently but has little connection to meaningful repair. Children may be ordered to apologize immediately after conflict before they have understood what happened: “Tell your brother you're sorry.” The goal becomes restoring surface harmony as quickly as possible.

A meaningful apology teaches something richer. It connects behavior with impact and responsibility. A parent might say, “I was frustrated when you spilled the juice, but I embarrassed you in front of everyone. I am sorry. Next time I need to speak more calmly.” This does not require the parent to deny the frustration or pretend the child's behavior was irrelevant. It shows that having a legitimate feeling does not justify every behavior that follows from it.

This distinction is enormously important because children are developing an understanding of accountability. If adults never acknowledge mistakes, children may conclude that authority protects people from responsibility. The parent can shout, insult, threaten, or make an unfair accusation, and once the parent has calmed down, the event simply disappears. The child's feelings are expected to disappear with it.

The implicit lesson can become: the more powerful person decides when the conflict is over.

By contrast, an adult apology demonstrates that authority and accountability can coexist. A parent does not lose credibility by saying, “I was wrong.” They model the idea that people can make mistakes without becoming bad people and take responsibility without collapsing into shame.

This is one of the most valuable lessons repair can offer: responsibility does not destroy relationships. Often, it makes relationships safer.


Children Need to See Adults Repair With Each Other Too

Parents may be willing to apologize to children while still believing that adult disagreements should remain completely private. Certainly, children should not be burdened with adult details, recruited into marital conflicts, asked to choose sides, or turned into confidants. But when children witness the rupture, it can be helpful for them to witness enough of the repair to know that the relational threat has passed.

If a child hears two parents shouting on Monday night and sees them behaving normally on Tuesday morning, the adults may assume the child understands that everything is fine. The child may not. They saw the conflict but missed whatever reconciliation happened after bedtime.

This is why a small amount of age-appropriate information can matter. “You heard us arguing yesterday. We were both upset, but we talked afterward and worked through it. Adults can disagree and still love each other.” No details about money, intimacy, relatives, or other adult matters are necessary. The goal is not disclosure. It is completion.

Research has repeatedly distinguished constructive from destructive interparental conflict, with constructive behaviors associated with greater emotional security in children. McCoy et al. (2009), studying families with young children across multiple waves, found that children's emotional security helped explain links between constructive and destructive marital conflict and children's prosocial behavior. Later intervention research also found that increasing constructive conflict behaviors could support adolescent emotional security and adjustment (Miller-Graff et al., 2016).

More recent longitudinal work continues to explore the potential benefits of witnessing constructive interparental conflict. Davies and colleagues (2025), studying preschool-aged children, examined how constructive interparental conflict may contribute to children's emotion knowledge and social problem-solving abilities, further highlighting that children can learn from how adults navigate disagreement rather than merely being harmed by the existence of disagreement.

Children do not need to believe that good relationships contain no conflict. They need evidence that good relationships know what to do with conflict.


Without Repair, Children May Learn to Doubt Their Own Emotional Experience

There is another consequence of repeatedly returning to normal without acknowledging what happened: children can begin questioning whether their emotional reactions were legitimate.

Imagine that a father becomes extremely angry one evening, shouts, slams a door, and frightens his child. The next morning he is cheerful and asks what the child wants for breakfast. Nobody mentions the previous evening. The child may feel confused. Part of their body remembers fear, but the social environment is communicating that nothing important happened.

If this pattern repeats, the child may learn to override their own emotional signals. Maybe I am too sensitive. Maybe it wasn't that bad. If Dad is acting normally, perhaps I should be normal too.

This is different from helping a child regulate an emotion. Regulation means recognizing the emotion and helping it become manageable. Emotional invalidation occurs when the experience itself is treated as though it should not exist.

Repair allows adults to restore coherence. “I know I scared you when I shouted yesterday. You didn't deserve to feel frightened. I was angry, but it was my job to handle my anger differently.” The child no longer has to choose between their own memory and the parent's current friendliness. Both realities can exist: the parent loves them, and the parent behaved badly.

That ability to hold complexity is essential in mature relationships. People can care about us and hurt us. We can love someone and remain angry about something they did. An apology can be accepted without pretending the injury never occurred.

Children begin learning this emotional complexity at home.


Unrepaired Conflict Can Teach That Love Requires Pretending

Families often develop unspoken rules about which emotions are acceptable. Perhaps anger is tolerated but sadness is mocked. Maybe disappointment is treated as disrespect. Perhaps everyone can argue loudly, but nobody is allowed to discuss the argument afterward. In such families, closeness may depend on participating in collective forgetting.

The child learns that returning to connection requires pretending.

A teenager may be deeply hurt by something a parent said, but when the parent becomes friendly later, the teenager knows that mentioning the comment will “start everything again.” So they laugh, eat dinner, and participate in family life while keeping the hurt private. The relationship appears repaired from the outside, but the emotional rupture has simply been moved inside the child.

Repeated often enough, this can become a relational habit. As an adult, the person may struggle to tell a partner, “I'm still hurt about yesterday,” because raising an unresolved issue feels like threatening the relationship. They may believe that accepting affection means giving up the right to discuss what happened.

Healthy repair teaches the opposite. Reconnection and accountability do not have to compete. You can love someone and still need a conversation. You can enjoy dinner together and later return to an issue that deserves attention. You can forgive while maintaining a boundary.

The goal is not endless processing. Relationships also need the ability to let small things go. The skill lies in distinguishing between a minor irritation that genuinely no longer matters and an injury that has merely been silenced.


What Children Learn When Adults Repair Well

If unrepaired conflict teaches lessons, repair does too. A child who repeatedly sees adults disagree and reconnect can develop a much more flexible understanding of relationships. Conflict becomes uncomfortable without automatically becoming catastrophic. Anger becomes an emotion that can be expressed and regulated rather than evidence that love has disappeared. Apologies become ordinary tools of responsibility rather than humiliating admissions of weakness.

Constructive conflict can include problem solving, support, compromise, affection, and resolution, all of which can help preserve children's sense of family security (McCoy et al., 2009). Children can also learn practical social skills by watching adults negotiate differences. They see that two people can want different things without one person needing to be defeated. They learn that compromise does not always mean perfect satisfaction. They learn that someone can say, “I disagree with you” without saying, “I reject you.”

Perhaps most importantly, they learn that relationships are repairable.

This lesson becomes a form of resilience. When the child later argues with a friend, disappoints a partner, or makes a mistake with someone they love, the rupture does not necessarily feel like the end. They have a relational memory that says, People can return. We can talk. I can take responsibility. The other person can still be angry with me while we work toward connection.

That is a much more useful preparation for adult intimacy than the fantasy that healthy relationships never become difficult.


Repair Does Not Require Parents to Be Perfect

Once parents understand the importance of repair, there can be a temptation to turn the idea into another impossible parenting standard. Every conflict must be handled perfectly. Every raised voice becomes evidence of damage. Every mistake requires an elaborate conversation.

That is not the lesson.

Relationships naturally contain mis-attunement. People misunderstand one another, become distracted, respond impatiently, and sometimes handle emotions poorly. The important question is whether the relationship has enough flexibility and accountability to recover.

In fact, children may learn something valuable when an adult handles a situation badly and then repairs it honestly. The child sees that mistakes do not have to be hidden. They learn that people can notice their own behavior, tolerate the discomfort of admitting fault, and choose differently next time.

A parent might say, “I thought about how I spoke to you earlier, and I don't like how I handled it. I was right that we needed to leave on time, but I was wrong to call you irresponsible.” That sentence teaches several sophisticated lessons simultaneously: the original problem can still matter, the parent's emotion can still be legitimate, the harmful behavior can still be acknowledged, and love does not require anyone to pretend the incident never occurred.

Perfection would teach children very little about recovery because perfection is not what they will encounter in adult relationships.

Repair teaches them what to do when perfection inevitably fails.


Repair Should Not Turn the Child Into the Adult's Comforter

There is an important boundary within apology that adults can miss. Repair should restore safety for the child; it should not require the child to regulate the adult's guilt.

A parent who says, “I'm the worst mother in the world. I can't believe I did that. You must hate me. Please tell me you forgive me,” has shifted the emotional burden. The child may now feel responsible for reassuring the parent.

A healthier apology remains emotionally grounded. “I'm sorry I shouted. That wasn't okay. You didn't cause me to lose control, and I'm going to work on responding differently.” The adult takes responsibility without asking the child to rescue them from the discomfort of having made a mistake.

The same principle applies when children witness conflict between adults. They should not become judges, mediators, therapists, or witnesses called upon to confirm which parent was correct. Saying, “Your father knows he was wrong, doesn't he?” or “Tell your mother I didn't start it” pulls the child directly into a relationship they are not responsible for managing.

Repair protects generational boundaries. Adults handle adult relationships. Children are allowed to experience their feelings without becoming responsible for resolving everyone else's.


What If the Child Did Not See the Repair?

Parents often resolve disagreements privately, particularly when children are asleep or out of the house. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Children do not need to witness every stage of adult conflict resolution. But if they witnessed enough of the disagreement to become worried, it can help to close the loop.

This can be remarkably simple: “You heard us arguing earlier. We talked about it afterward. We still disagree about part of it, but we're okay and we're handling it.”

Notice that this does not require pretending everything has been completely resolved. Agreement to disagree can itself be a form of resolution, and research on children's perceptions of conflict endings has included this possibility (Cummings et al., 2007). Children can learn that adults do not need identical opinions in order for the family to remain secure.

This may be one of the most realistic lessons parents can offer. Some conflicts are solved. Some require compromise. Some take several conversations. Some differences remain. What matters is that the disagreement is handled without leaving everyone else trapped inside unexplained tension.


Breaking the Pattern When You Never Saw Repair Yourself

For some adults, the hardest part of repairing with children is that nobody repaired with them.

Perhaps your parents never apologized. Maybe arguments ended when everyone stopped speaking about them. Perhaps you learned that challenging an adult was disrespectful, that crying made things worse, or that family loyalty meant never naming harm. You may intellectually understand the importance of repair while finding the actual words deeply uncomfortable.

That discomfort makes sense. We often rely on relational skills we have seen modeled, and repair may feel unfamiliar if your family treated accountability as weakness.

The good news is that relational patterns can be learned later. Repair does not require perfect therapeutic language. It begins with a few capacities: noticing when connection has been damaged, tolerating the discomfort of acknowledging your contribution, listening to another person's experience without immediately defending yourself, and changing behavior where change is needed.

Sometimes the most powerful thing a parent can say is remarkably ordinary: “Nobody apologized much in my family, so I am still learning how to do this. But I know I hurt you, and I want to handle it better.”

That sentence does more than repair one conflict.

It teaches a child that inherited patterns can change.


When Conflict Is More Serious Than Ordinary Family Disagreement

The idea of repair should not be used to minimize severe or frightening behavior. Constructive disagreement is very different from violence, coercive control, threats, chronic humiliation, intimidation, or situations in which children or adults are unsafe. In those circumstances, an apology followed by repeated harmful behavior is not meaningful repair.

Children need safety more than they need the appearance of family harmony.

When conflict involves abuse, serious aggression, or ongoing fear, professional and practical support may be necessary. The appropriate goal may involve safety planning, separation, specialized intervention, or other measures rather than simply improving communication.

Likewise, parents should not interpret the research on constructive conflict as permission to expose children to adult arguments indiscriminately. Children can benefit from observing manageable disagreement and resolution; they do not benefit from being repeatedly overwhelmed by conflicts beyond their developmental capacity.

The goal is not to make children spectators to adult relationships. It is to ensure that when conflict enters their world, they are not left alone to make sense of the emotional wreckage.


Conclusion: Children Need to Learn That Relationships Can Come Back Together

Every family experiences moments of disconnection. Someone becomes impatient. Two adults misunderstand each other. A child says something hurtful. A parent reacts too strongly. A disagreement begins at the worst possible time. The existence of these moments does not determine the health of a family.

What happens afterward matters enormously.

When adults repeatedly move on without acknowledging conflict, children can learn that difficult feelings should be buried, that silence counts as resolution, that anger threatens belonging, or that the safest way to preserve relationships is to avoid difficult conversations. Some become vigilant observers of everyone else's emotions. Some learn to apologize even when they are not responsible. Some withdraw at the first sign of tension. Others reproduce the same pattern they observed: conflict, distance, silence, and then a return to normal without ever addressing what happened.

Repair offers another education. It teaches that people can become angry without becoming enemies, that an apology does not make someone weak, that boundaries can survive affection, and that responsibility can coexist with dignity. It teaches that two people can remember an event differently and still care about each other's experience. It teaches that a relationship does not have to be perfect in order to be safe.

Perhaps most importantly, repair teaches children that connection is not as fragile as it sometimes feels. A difficult moment does not automatically mean abandonment. A mistake does not have to become a permanent identity. Someone can hurt you, recognize it, change their behavior, and return to connection. You can also be the person who caused hurt and discover that taking responsibility is not the end of belonging.

Children will eventually enter friendships, partnerships, workplaces, and families of their own. They will disappoint people and be disappointed. They will misunderstand and be misunderstood. They will sometimes speak too quickly, react defensively, or realize afterward that they were wrong. We cannot prepare them for those relationships by teaching them how never to have conflict.

We prepare them by showing them what to do when conflict happens.

A child who sees repair does not learn that love means never hurting one another. They learn something far more realistic: love includes the willingness to notice the hurt, return to the relationship, take responsibility where necessary, and try again with greater care.


References

Cummings, E. M., Goeke-Morey, M. C., & Papp, L. M. (2007). Children's responses to everyday marital conflict tactics in the home. Child Development, 78(6), 1918–1929.

Cummings, E. M., Goeke-Morey, M. C., Papp, L. M., & Dukewich, T. L. (2002). Children's responses to mothers' and fathers' emotionality and tactics in marital conflict in the home. Journal of Family Psychology, 16(4), 478–492.

Cummings, E. M., Goeke-Morey, M. C., & Papp, L. M. (2003). Children's responses to everyday marital conflict tactics in the home. Child Development.

Cummings, E. M., Goeke-Morey, M. C., & Papp, L. M. (2004). Everyday marital conflict and child aggression. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 32, 191–202.

Cummings, E. M., Goeke-Morey, M. C., Papp, L. M., & Dukewich, T. L. (2007). Children's responses to marital conflict resolution: Implications for emotional security and adjustment. Journal of Family Psychology, 21(4), 744–753.

Davies, P. T., Cao, V. T., Hendrickson, M. V., & Thompson, M. J. (2025). Lessons learned from witnessing constructive interparental conflict and the beneficial implications for children. Developmental Psychology, 61(11), 2172–2185. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001952

Davies, P. T., & Cummings, E. M. (1994). Marital conflict and child adjustment: An emotional security hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 387–411. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.116.3.387

McCoy, K., Cummings, E. M., & Davies, P. T. (2009). Constructive and destructive marital conflict, emotional security and children's prosocial behavior. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 50(3), 270–279. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.01945.x

Miller-Graff, L. E., Cummings, E. M., & Bergman, K. N. (2016). Effects of a brief psychoeducational intervention for family conflict: Constructive conflict, emotional insecurity and child adjustment. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 44(7), 1399–1410. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-0102-z

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