Fighting parents hurt kids' ability to recognise emotions

Parents who quarrel in front of their children may be harming their kids' ability to identify and control emotions, according to a new study.
Exposure to verbal and physical aggression between parents may hurt children's ability to regulate their emotions, the study found.
The study led by New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development also suggests that household chaos and prolonged periods of poverty during early childhood may take a substantial toll on the emotional adjustment of young children.
"Our study points to ways in which aggression between parents may powerfully shape children's emotional adjustment," said C Cybele Raver, professor of applied psychology at NYU Steinhardt and the study's lead author.

Raver and her colleagues set out to explore how children may be adversely affected by prolonged exposure to aggression between parents.
In the study, the researchers measured children's exposure to several forms of adversity, and how they predicted their ability to recognise and regulate negative emotions, such as fear and sadness.

The researchers followed 1,025 children and their families living in eastern North Carolina and central Pennsylvania, two geographical areas with high poverty rates.
They evaluated the families in a series of home visits from the time a child was two months old through 58 months of age.
They gathered data through parent questionnaires, administering tasks to the parents and children, and measuring the level of household chaos - including the number of times children moved, changes in caregiver, noise levels, cleanliness, and the number of people compared to the number of rooms - versus stability.

At approximately 58 months of age, the researchers assessed the children's ability to correctly recognise and identify emotions.
Verbal and physical aggression between parents from infancy through early childhood significantly predicted children's ability to accurately identify emotions at 58 months of age.
Higher exposure to physical aggression between parents was associated with children's lower performance on a simple emotions labelling task.
Surprisingly, higher exposure to verbal aggression was associated with greater emotion knowledge among the children.
Prolonged exposure to aggression between parents was also linked to children's ability to regulate their own feelings of sadness, withdrawal, and fear, placing them at greater risk for symptoms of anxiety and depression later on.

The findings appear in the journal Development and Psychopathology.