Risico- en Beschermende Factoren als Voorspellers van Internaliserend Probleemgedrag

Abstract

Background: Each year an average of 70 thousand resident children in the Netherlands are involved in formal and informal parental separations. A parental divorce often results in disrupted family functioning, affecting the adjustment of the child (e.g. internalizing problems). Research shows that risk and protective factors play an important role in the extent to which divorce related problems occur. This study evaluated several of the most important risk and protective factors in childrens internalizing problem behavior after divorce: quality of parent-child relationship, degree of conflict between parents and child gender. Method: Analyses are performed on a cross-sequential dataset consisting of 7809 pupils aged 8 tot 16 (M = 13.2) from randomly selected schools in the Netherlands. Data were collected in 2006 to 2009, 2011, and 2013 by means of questionnaires. For the present study, we used questions about possible risk- and protective factors. The results are processed in several regression analyses. Results: The effect of parental conflict on internalizing problem behavior is significant stronger by family’s with divorced parents (β = .17). The interaction-effect of quality of mother-child relationship in combination with family structure is significant in predicting internalizing problem behavior (β = -.03). There is also a significant negative interaction-effect between father-child relationship in combination with gender (β = -.07). Conclusion: The most important conclusion is that severity and intensity of parental conflict is the most important as predictor of internalizing problem behavior (β = .26). Familystructure, gender and the quality of the relationship between parent-child are also significant predictor, but they do not explain that much variety as parental conflict does.