Interparental Conflict on Italian Adolescent Adjustment: The Role of Insecurity within the Family

Abstract

Despite its importance, limited research has examined mechanisms underpinning how interparental conflict affects adolescents in Europe. Using a sample of 141 Italian families (mothers, fathers, and adolescents, Mage = 17.25 years, SD = 0.64), this study explores whether three types of adolescents’ emotional insecurity, which describes adolescents’ vulnerability to conflict, play a role in the association between interparental conflict and adolescents’ adjustment. Participants completed questionnaires related to adolescents’ conflict exposure, adjustment, and emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent, interparental, and family relationships. As hypothesized, indirect associations were observed involving adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent and interparental relationships. Surprisingly, the indirect association involving emotional insecurity within the interparental relationship rather than within the family emerged the strongest indirect association of the three types of emotional insecurity. These effects, however, were indistinguishable from the indirect effects of insecurity about the parent-adolescent relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords

Adolescents Culture Emotional security Family Processes Interparental Conflict

Children exposed to high levels of destructive forms of interparental conflict are at an increased risk for developing psychopathology (Kinsfogel & Grych, 2004). The established association between exposure to interparental conflict and children’s maladjustment has prompted researchers (e.g., Cummings & Davies, 2002) to call for a second generation of research investigating the processes underlying this association. Adolescents’ emotional insecurity has been identified as a mechanism that may help explain these relations (Davies & Cummings, 1994). Emotional insecurity describes adolescents’ feelings of vulnerability within the family subsystem and has been shown to be a cogent predictor of adolescents’ maladjustment outcomes (Cummings et al., 2015). Multiple forms of emotional insecurity, including emotional insecurity about the parent-child relationship, about the interparental relationship, and about the wider family relationship, have all been identified as predictors of adolescents’ social, behavioral, emotional, and physiological problems (Cummings & Davies, 2010). Although the different types of emotional insecurity have received attention in the literature as mechanisms explaining the effects of interparental conflict, limited research has investigated these processes in non-US samples. This study will be the first to explore whether these three forms of emotional insecurity help explain the associations between exposure to interparental conflict and adolescents’ maladjustment in an international sample, with this study being conducted in Italy.

Understanding the process through which interparental conflict exposure affects adolescents has been a focus for US researchers, due to the negative effects that exposure to conflict has on adolescents (Cummings & Davies, 2010). Emotional insecurity describes the feelings of vulnerability that adolescents experience when exposed to interparental conflict (Cummings & Davies, 2010). Emotional insecurity has been shown to be a useful mechanism that helps explain why interparental conflict exposure is related to various maladjustment outcomes, including greater psychopathology (Kinsfogel & Grych, 2004). According to Emotional Security Theory (EST), when children and adolescents are exposed to interparental conflict, they become goal-oriented in preserving their emotional security within their familial relationships, that is, when children and adolescents are exposed to their parents engaging in discord, they feel vulnerable about the stability of their family relationships, which is manifested by various psychological, physiological, and behavioral reactions to conflict. Researchers have theorized that children’s increased anxiety, disruptive behaviors, and even attempts to intervene in the conflict are all reactions indicative of children having diminished emotional security about their familial relationships, since they fear that because of the conflict their family systems may be susceptible to collapse (Davies & Cummings, 1998).

Furthermore, children’s harmful reactions to conflict cascade over time, such that children who frequently witness destructive conflict between parents, and thus have heightened insecurity within their family relationships, are at risk of various psychopathological outcomes, including higher internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Witnessing interparental conflict has been found to affect adolescents’ feelings of insecurity about various familial relationships including their relationship with their parents, interparental relationship, and the wider family system, all of which have been found to be related to adolescents having greater psychopathological symptoms (Cummings & Davies, 2010; Cummings et al., 2015).

While models involving adolescents’ emotional insecurity have been explored within the United States, much of the research has been conducted using middle-class, European-American samples (Cummings & Davies, 2010). There is some evidence that these processes also hold true for other groups as well, as suggested by the relatively few studies that have explored these processes in racially diverse samples. Some studies, for example, have shown that exposure to marital conflict was associated with similar patterns of emotional insecurity between African-Americans and European-Americans (El‐Sheikh et al., 2008).

A handful of studies have also compared the effects of interparental conflict exposure on emotional security processes in non-US samples. Several researchers found similar patterns between the US and non-US samples. Using a Chinese sample, Li et al. (2016) found that interparental conflict was associated with higher emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship, while Oh et al. (2011) found similar patterns involving adolescents’ emotional reactivity to conflict between the US and Korean samples. While some researchers have found similarities regarding emotional security processes involving interparental conflict between US and non-US samples, some cross-cultural differences between US and non-US samples have also emerged in the literature. Cummings et al. (2003) found that Chilean children were more emotionally reactive to conflict than US children, while Shamir et al. (2005) found evidence that Israeli children may be less emotionally reactive than US children to interparental conflict resolution.

Very little research has explored these associations in European samples. The limited research investigating the effects of emotional insecurity on the family in European contexts, though, have found similar patterns to those found in studies using US samples. Harold et al. (2004), using a sample of Welsh children, found that emotional security in the interparental and the parent-child relationships provided an indirect mechanism through which exposure to interparental conflict was related to children’s internalizing and externalizing problems. Researchers have also found similar patterns of association in European contexts with strong cultural factors that may also affect the associations between adolescents’ functioning and emotional well-being in the family. Cummings et al. (2016) found that within the context of the political violence in Northern Ireland, emotional insecurity about the family and the community increased adolescents’ risk for delinquency. Additionally, using their longitudinal study, they found that adolescents’ emotional insecurity about their community worsened the effect of family conflict on their emotional insecurity within the family. The authors argued that the cultural context of political violence in Northern Ireland sensitized adolescents to the effects of conflict within the home. Such studies emphasize the need for further exploration into the mechanisms underlying the effects of interparental conflict on adolescents’ functioning in diverse contexts.

Exploring whether these processes occur in Italy would add to our understanding of the generalizability of Emotional Security Theory across cultures. This study is therefore important, as it will be the first to investigate the indirect role of all three forms of emotional insecurity in play in the association between interparental conflict exposure and adolescent adjustment in a non-US context; these emotional insecurity associations are being explored in Italy. Comprehensively exploring whether adolescents’ emotional insecurity is involved in the associations between interparental conflict exposure and adolescents’ adjustment in non-US samples, like Italy, is important to help us understand both the nature and the universality or context-specificity of these relations.

Some researchers have argued that family dynamics and their underlying processes in Italy differ from those in the United States, as there may be a greater adherence to more traditional family and gender roles within a family in Italy than in the United States (e.g., Bardi & Borgognini-Tarli, 2001). The fathers as breadwinner model, specifically, has been promoted as being more prevalent in Italy than in United States, with arguments suggesting that the United States may have a faster rate of cultural change than Italy. Moreover, although several researchers argue that Italian couples are quite traditional, especially regarding their division of housework labor (e.g., Gershuny & Kan, 2012), fairness in such a division is highly valued by Italian partners (Carriero, 2011), thereby creating potential grounds for conflicts and tensions within the couple. Italian partners may be embedded in a culture that presents contrasting and strained forces (e.g., traditional gender role orientation and egalitarian expectations; individual and group needs). Today’s Italian culture presents aspects of individualism (e.g., the relevance of individual goals; the value of independence) together with features of collectivism (e.g., the centrality of Italian families of origin; the relatively stable social and community networks; Hofstede et al., 2010). Italian partners, for example, construe their couple identity in concert with their attachment to their families of origin (Manzi et al., 2015; Parise et al., 2017). This combination of individualist and collectivist features has the potential to create tension between individual, couple, and group needs that require continuous negotiation (e.g., tensions pertaining to each partner’s career development; nuclear and extended family demands).

Finally, Italy is characterized by the persistence of a familistic cultural model, which describes the strong cultural pressures on individuals to form and maintain a close attachment and sense of loyalty to both, the nuclear and extended family (Caprara et al., 2011; Dalla Zuanna, 2001). According to the World Value Survey results, family is considered very important in Italy and expectations regarding emotional support and help from relatives are much higher than the mean level of expectations of the various countries surveyed (Mucchi-Faina et al., 2010). Exploring whether different forms of emotional insecurity play a role in the effect of interparental conflict on adolescents’ maladjustment, is important to investigate in Italy in order to further discern whether these processes occur in such a unique cultural context.

The Current Study

The main hypothesis for this study is that Italian adolescents who have greater exposure to interparental conflict would also have greater emotional insecurity about the parent-adolescent relationship, the interparental relationship, and the broader family relationship, which then would be associated with their having greater adjustment problems. Past studies using US samples and some non-US samples have suggested that all three types of emotional insecurity are an effect of interparental conflict and play a role in children’s and adolescents’ well-being (e.g., Harold et al., 2004; Cummings & Davies, 2010; Cummings et al., 2015). This is the first study to investigate the role of all three forms of emotional insecurity in play in the association between interparental conflict and child adjustment in an international context.

As a secondary hypothesis in this study, we hypothesize that of the three types of emotional insecurities, emotional insecurity in the family will have the strongest indirect effect on the association between conflict exposure and adolescent adjustment due to the holistic nature of the family system. Forman and Davies (2005) found that emotional insecurity in the family was a stronger predictor of adolescent outcomes than emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship or the parent-adolescent relationship, and they argued that this may be due to the sum of the effects of the family as a system being greater than the individual relationships in the family. We, therefore, hypothesized that Italian adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the family would be more strongly related to their adjustment than emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship or in the interparental relationship due to the holistic nature of the family system, and the unique cultural effects on family dynamics in Italy.

Method

Participants and Procedure

Participants included 141 families (mother, father, and adolescent child) who were recruited from Milan through two high schools and summer camps. Families were eligible to participate if they had resided together for at least three years at the time of conducting the study. All participants gave their informed consent in writing and parents were also asked to sign an informed consent statement for their adolescent child’s participation.

The adolescents in the 141 families comprised of 127 girls, 12 boys, and 2 persons of unreported gender. The majority of adolescents (137 adolescents, 97.2%) identified as having Italian citizenship. Adolescents were 17.25-years-old on average (SD = 0.64 years, range = 15-to 19-years-old). On average, mothers and fathers in the sample had completed some years in college. Half of the families (74 families, 52.5%) indicated that they were financially comfortable as they were able to save money every month, while 42 families (29.8%) indicated that their finances were balanced, and a minority (6 families, 4.3%) indicated that they were in debt. Nineteen families (13.5%) did not respond to the question about their family finances.

Participants completed the questionnaires during their visit to a laboratory associated with a university in Milan, which lasted about one hour. The research was approved by the three Institutional Review Boards from the two universities in Italy and the university in the United States whose researchers conducted the study.

Measures

All of the measures used in this study, besides the Strengths and Difficulties Scale (SDQ: Goodman, 1997), were measures originally validated in English that were translated for this study by external translators trained in providing translational services. After translation, the measures underwent the process of back-translation and were compared to the original version. The measures were also reviewed by the three Institutional Review Boards and the Italian researchers involved in this study to ensure cultural sensitivity and relevance. The Italian version of the SDQ was previously translated by De Giacomo, Dazzan, and Bernardi, (Youth In Mind, 2019) and validated by Li et al. (2017). Internal reliabilities for each scale were also calculated to ensure that the scales were reliable. Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) were conducted to support the reliability of using a single factor for each of the measures. All of the translated measures, except for the Security in the Marital Subsystem Scale-Parent Report (SIMS-PR; Davies et al., 2002), had a good fit with the majority of items loading onto a single factor.

Exposure to interparental conflict. Parents completed seven items of the O’Leary Porter Scale (OPS; Porter & O’Leary, 1980), which measured children’s exposure to destructive interparental conflict. The OPS contained items such as “How often does your partner complain to you about your personal habits (drinking, nagging, sloppiness, etc.) in front of your child?” These items were endorsed using a 5-point scale (where, 0 = never, 4 = very often). Although the OPS is a 10-item measure, three of the items (e.g., “How often do you and/or your partner display verbal hostility [raised voices, criticism, etc.] in front of your child?”) were excluded due to cultural concerns surrounding conflict in the presence of minors. Mothers’ and fathers’ OPS scores from the 7-items had internal consistency coefficients of α = .67 and .70, respectively. The relatively low internal consistencies were not surprising though, as only seven items of the scale were used, and the 7-items asked about different types of conflict in the presence of children (e.g., financial disagreements, parenting disagreements). Since both mothers and fathers were involved in the interparental conflict, their scores were averaged in order to account for both parents’ perceptions of conflict in the household. The average of mothers’ and fathers’ OPS scores, therefore, indicated the average perceived level of interparental conflict exposure for each adolescent in the study. Mothers’ and fathers’ OPS scores were correlated (r = .58, p < .001).

Emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship. To assess adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship, parents completed the parent version of the Parental Attachment Security Scale (PASS-P; Davies et al., 2002). The items in the PASS-P were adapted from items in the Parent-Child Reunion Inventory (Marcus, 1997), and the Security Scale (Kerns et al., 1996). The PASS-P comprised of nine items that ask parents to rate how well items such as “Smiles and laughs with…” and “When my child is upset, he or she goes to…”, describe their adolescent’s behavior with each parent. The items were coded on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Not at all like my child, 5 = A whole lot like my child). CFA indicated that the one-factor model had a good fit. Parents’ reports of their adolescent’s relationships with each parent were averaged, which were then further averaged between mothers and fathers to create a composite score for each adolescent about their emotional insecurity in their relationships with both of their parents. Mothers’ and fathers’ scores for adolescents’ emotional insecurity with both parents were correlated (r = .58, p < .001). The Cronbach’s alphas for both, mothers’ and fathers’ scores were high, (α = .92 for fathers and .92 for mothers) indicating high internal consistency.

Emotional insecurity in the interparental system. Adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the interparental system was measured using the Security in the Marital Subsystem Scale-Parent Report (SIMS-PR; Davies et al., 2002). Parents rated how well the 33 items described their adolescent's reactions to witnessing interparental arguments within the past year. Items (e.g., “Becomes very quiet or withdrawn”, and “Tries to distract us by bringing up other things”) were coded on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all, 5 = a whole lot like him/her). Although the scale was comprised of six subscales (emotional reactivity, involvement, behavior dysregulation, avoidance, masking, and dismissing), an overall score including all six subscales were used. For parsimony, an average score between mothers’ and fathers’ reports was used as a measure of adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the interparental system. Mothers’ and fathers’ SIMS scores were correlated (r = .29, p < .001), and Cronbach’s alpha was high for SIMS (α = .85 for fathers and .84 for mothers) indicating high internal consistency.

Emotional insecurity in the family system. Adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the broader family system was assessed using the 24 items of the Security in the Family Scale (SIFS; Forman & Davies, 2005). Adolescents indicated how much they agreed, using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 5 = Strongly Agree), with statements such as “I don’t know why I put up with all the times my family makes me upset” and “I feel like something could go very wrong in my family at any time”. As indicated by Forman and Davies (2005), two of the items—“I can usually guess what my family members are going to do before they do it” and “I feel there are no solutions to the problems in my family”—had low factor loadings with the other items of the scale and were, therefore, not included in the analyses. Although the SIFS scale is comprised of three subscales (security, preoccupation, and disengagement), all of the scores were aggregated to form a single construct in this study for parsimony, as suggested by Forman and Davies (2005). Scores of the 22 items used were, therefore, summed so that scores ranged from 22 to 110, with higher scores indicating greater emotional insecurity in the family subsystem. Cronbach’s alpha for the adolescent report of the SIFS was .91.

Adolescent Adjustment. Parents completed the 25 items of the Strengths and Difficulties Scale (SDQ; Goodman, 1997), 20 of which measured adolescents’ difficulties relating to internalizing and externalizing symptoms in the past year. The five items measuring adolescents’ strengths (i.e., prosocial behavior) were not included. Although some research has found evidence that destructive interparental conflict is related to positive social adjustment (e.g., McCoy et al., 2013) only adolescents’ difficulties were assessed as is consistent with past research investigating the effects of interparental conflict and emotional insecurity (e.g., Cummings et al., 2015). Parents indicated on a 3-point scale (0 = not true, 2 = absolutely true), how true items such as “Often loses temper” and “Often unhappy, depressed or tearful” were in describing their adolescents’ behaviors in the past year. Adolescents’ total difficulties were calculated as a sum of the four adjustment problem subscales (emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, and peer problems). Mothers’ and fathers’ scores were correlated (r = .42, p < .001) and averaged to obtain a parsimonious adolescent adjustment score. Cronbach’s alpha for the 20 items of the SDQ was .82 for fathers and .80 for mothers.

Results

Table 1 shows the Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations of the studied variables. Sex and age of the adolescents were not significantly correlated with any of the studied variables. The three different types of emotional insecurity (emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship, emotional insecurity in the interparental system, and emotional insecurity in the family system) were all correlated, rs = .18 to .47, ps < .001 to .01. The correlations between the three types of emotional insecurity suggest that they were associated and may have overlapped in tapping into the same construct. However, the modest nature of the correlations, suggests that the three variables were still conceptually distinct from each other.

Table 1.

Correlations and Descriptive Statistics

Variable	Descriptive Statistics		Correlations
Variable	Mean	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. Adolescent Gender (127 girls, 12 boys, 2 not reported)	***	***	–
2. Adolescent Age (range = 15 to 19 years)	17.3	0.77	−.02	–
3. Interparental Conflict Exposure	16.95	3.78	−0.15Ϯ	−.05	–
4. Adolescent Adjustment	7.72	4.47	−.10	−.04	.37***	–
5. Emotional Insecurity in the Parent-Adolescent Relationship	43.10	11.06	.08	−.04	.26***	.35**	–
6. Emotional Insecurity in the Interparental System	66.09	11.78	.06	−.01	.35***	.47***	.21*	–
7. Emotional Insecurity in the Family System	45.38	14.20	−.11	.01	.18*	.31***	.35***	.26***

Note. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05, Ϯp < .10.

In order to investigate whether different types of emotional insecurity can help explain the process through which exposure to interparental conflict affects adolescents’ adjustment, the three types of insecurity were entered into a mediational type model using the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2017) for SPSS (see Figure 1 for regression coefficients from the PROCESS analysis). The PROCESS macro was used because it produces confidence intervals through bootstrapping in order to robustly estimate indirect effects, as recommended by various statisticians (Cheung & Lau, 2008). PROCESS uses Ordinary Least Squares regression to estimate the effects; a 95 per cent bias-corrected bootstrapping confidence interval based on 10,000 samples was used in this study to determine the significance of the indirect effects.

Figure 1.

Model showing the three indirect associations between interparental conflict and adolescents’ adjustment involving the different types of emotional insecurity. Numbers without parentheses are standardized coefficients and numbers within parentheses are Standard Errors. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05, Ϯp < .10.

The main hypothesis in this study was that adolescents’ greater exposure to interparental conflict would be associated with their higher levels of all three types of emotional insecurity in the family, which in turn would be associated with greater adjustment problems. In order to test this hypothesis, all three types of emotional insecurity were entered into the same regression model with interparental conflict being associated with adolescents’ adjustment. Findings from this multiple emotional insecurity model (as seen in Figure 1) suggested that emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship may have had stronger indirect associations than emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship and in the family relationship, as it had the highest standardized regression coefficients (ß) in paths a and b. The indirect effect estimates (Path a*b) were also higher for emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship (ß = 0.12, Boot S.E. = .05, Boot Lower CI = .06, Boot Upper CI = .24), than for emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship (ß = 0.05, Boot S.E. = .03, Boot Lower CI = .01, Boot Upper CI = .13) and emotional insecurity in the family relationship (ß = 0.02, Boot S.E. = .02, Boot Lower CI = −.004, Boot Upper CI =.07). Path c, which was the total direct effect of exposure to interparental conflict on adolescents’ adjustment was significant (b = 0.41, S.E. = .10, t₍₁₂₅₎ = 4.24, p < .05). The overall model with all three indirect associations included, was also significant (R² = .32, F_{(4, 122)} = 14.06, p < .001).

The secondary hypothesis in this study was that emotional insecurity in the family would have the largest indirect effect of the three types of emotional insecurity. Further analysis in PROCESS involving contrasts between the total indirect effects, however, indicated that while the indirect effect involving emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship was significantly different from emotional insecurity in the family relationship (ß = .09, S.E. = .04, C.I. = .02 to .19), emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship was not significantly different from emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship (ß = −.07, S.E. = .04, C.I.= −.15 to .02). Interestingly, emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship was also not significantly different from emotional insecurity in the family relationship (ß = .03, S.E. = .03, C.I.= −.04 to .10).

Discussion

This study had two main hypotheses investigating the indirect effects of different forms of emotional insecurity (in the parent-adolescent, interparental, and familial relationships) on the association between interparental conflict and Italian adolescents’ adjustment, which were supported in this study. In support of the first hypothesis, both emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship and in the interparental relationship were found to play a role in the indirect association between interparental conflict exposure and adolescents’ adjustment. It was also hypothesized that emotional insecurity in the family would have the strongest indirect association out of the three types of emotional insecurity. Interestingly, analyses suggested that emotional insecurity in the family was not related to adolescents’ adjustment, and that emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship had stronger effects than emotional insecurity in the family. Subsequent analyses, however, indicated that the effect of emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship was not significantly different from that of emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship, highlighting the extent of the impact of interparental conflict on the parent-adolescent relationship (Warmuth et al., 2018). While we were unable to definitively show that emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship had the strongest indirect association, our findings did suggest, contrary to our hypothesis, that emotional insecurity in the family was not the strongest mediator. This suggests that specific relationships within the family may have a greater impact on adolescents’ adjustment than the impact of the larger, holistic family unit, although, more research is needed to explore this argument.

Exposure to interparental conflict has consistently been related to a host of negative outcomes for adolescents, including emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological outcomes (Emery, 1982; Grych & Finchman, 1990). Several researchers have explored mechanisms involving adolescents’ feelings of emotional insecurity to explain the process through which exposure to conflict affects adolescents’ well-being. Indeed, numerous studies using US samples have suggested that emotional insecurity, which describes adolescents’ feelings of vulnerability to conflict, is a cogent variable in this process (Cummings et al., 2014). Few studies, however, have explored these processes using diverse samples.

In support of our hypotheses, Italian adolescents’ emotional insecurity within the parent-adolescent relationship, the interparental relationship, and within the family, played a role in the association between greater exposure to destructive interparental conflict and adolescents’ adjustment. The findings supported the central tenets underpinning EST in that exposure to destructive interparental conflict takes a toll on how secure adolescents feel within their various relationships within the family system, which in turn adversely affects their development. Such findings, therefore, have important theoretical implications, as they highlight the cross-cultural application of EST, and are present in the distinct context of Italy.

This study also had another important finding which showed that adolescents’ emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship may have been the strongest of the indirect associations between interparental conflict and adolescents’ adjustment. Further contrasts, however, suggested that while the association was stronger with emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship than emotional insecurity in the family, it was not significantly different from emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship. This suggests that an element that warrants further consideration involves the use of exposure to interparental conflict as the predictor variable, as with other predictors, such as family wide conflict, other types of emotional insecurity may emerge as the most influential form. Findings of this study also suggest other directions for future study, as associations between the various types of emotional insecurity may also occur. Emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship, for example, may mediate the association between interparental conflict and emotional insecurity in the family.

Although the three types of emotional insecurity are correlated and further study is needed to investigate how the three types of emotional insecurity are related, the modest nature of the correlations between the three different types of emotional insecurity highlight the distinct characteristics of each. In other words, all three types of insecurity were correlated indicating significant overlap between the variables and consistency with the likely, mutual influences within the overarching family system. The correlations, however correlations were modest, reflecting how theoretically and empirically distinct from each other they are, and suggesting that the various types assess distinct dimensions of emotional insecurity. Forman and Davies (2005) also argued that the three types of emotional insecurity, while being correlated with each other, were distinct in assessing emotional insecurity in the different familial relationships.

This study was the first to explore whether EST can play a role in explaining the association between interparental conflict and adolescents’ adjustment in Italy. Although several studies within the United States have found similar findings (e.g., Davies & Cummings, 1998), relatively few studies have explored such mechanisms in non-US samples. Furthermore, even among the few studies using diverse samples to explore processes involving adolescents’ emotional security, cross-cultural differences involving emotional security have been argued (e.g., Li et al., 2016). This study is important to add to the growing literature as its findings suggest that despite the distinct cultural dynamics involving family systems in Italy (e.g., Mucchi-Faina et al., 2010; Bardi & Borgognini-Tarli, 2001), destructive interparental conflicts may affect adolescents’ adjustment in both the United States and Italy due to similar mechanisms involving the effects on adolescents’ emotional insecurity about different relationships within the family.

Although we did not measure participants’ adherence to traditional gender roles in this study, it is still worth noting the cultural factors that may have affected the results. Several researchers have argued that families in Italy are generally considered to be traditional (e.g., Luciano et al., 2011), as Italian parents may have highly traditional gender roles. Although Luciano and colleagues (2011) argued that Italian families have been gradually shifting from being patriarchal to a more “nuclear family” structure, in which both spouses work and financially provide for the family, the shift has been slower in Italy than in other Western countries, including other European countries and the United States. They also argue that while other “modern” family structures such as single-parent families and families involving same-sex spouses are becoming more common, their incidence has been increasing slowly, possibly due to the strong Roman Catholic influence in the country. The authors also suggest that the strong religious influence in Italian culture also helps explain why Italy, consistently, has one of the lowest rates of divorce in Europe. Luciano and colleagues’ (2011) description of family dynamics in Italy provides an important context for the findings of this study.

The findings are also interesting due to the age of the adolescents. As the adolescents were 17-year-olds on average, the findings underscore the importance of the family system for adolescents amidst the major psychosocial changes that occur during the adolescent period of development. Adolescence is often seen in the United States as a period of dramatic change, as adolescents reorganize their social relationships with peers, and dating relationships gain greater importance over familial relationships (Gray & Steinberg, 1999). Due to the more collectivist nature of the family in Italy (Hofstede et al., 2010), adolescents in Italy may not seek independence from their families in the same way as their US counterparts. The cultural nuance in Italy, therefore, adds context to the findings from this study demonstrating that not only the dynamics of the interparental relationship but also adolescents’ feelings of vulnerability about their familial relationships, are associated with adjustment, even for individuals on the brink of adulthood.

While the study has important theoretical implications, limitations of the study merit consideration. The research design was limited in being cross-sectional and thus, the pathways in this study lacked the temporal support of a longitudinal design, despite theoretical support for these pathways. Past research conducted longitudinally have found similar pathways (e.g., Cummings et al., 2016), supporting the theoretical basis of this study. Due to the cross-sectional nature of this study though, it was impossible to conduct true mediation, and the analyses were only able to suggest possible indirect pathways. Future research should, therefore, include a longitudinal design. Although this study also benefitted from having multiple informants, as both parents and adolescents completed questionnaires relating to emotional insecurity, only parent ratings of adolescents’ functioning were measured. Future studies should, therefore, incorporate adolescent ratings of their functioning also.

Another limitation of consideration is the lack of validation of most of the translated measures used in this study. The measures used were translated, back translated, and Confirmatory Factor Analyses were used to support the reliability of using a single factor for each of the translated measures. The single factor models had good fit indices for all of the measures except for the SIMS, but this was possibly due to the large number of items in the scale, many of which were highly correlated. Thorough validation of the measures and all of their subscales was not possible in this study due to the relatively small sample size, which prevented the models from converging. Future studies are, therefore, needed to fully validate the translations of these measures.

Additionally, future studies should aim to have a more representative sample in terms of adolescent sex. Most of the participants in the study were recruited from two main high schools with a high prevalence of female students, which may have been related to the high schools’ curricula being focused on humanities and social science. While sex was not significantly associated with any of the measures used in the study, differences due to sex may emerge in a more balanced sample. Although many studies do not find sex or gender differences, (Cummings & Davies, 2010), some older studies have suggested that boys exhibit more hostile behaviors when exposed to interparental conflict as compared to girls (e.g., Cummings et al., 1985; Cummings et al., 1989), while other studies have found that girls may be more affected (e.g., Luthra & Gidycz, 2006). Greater research is, therefore, needed to assess the extent to which sex affects how adolescents are impacted by conflict.

Future directions should also incorporate broader types of emotional insecurity that target other aspects of the macrosystem. This study did not include measures of adolescents’ feelings of vulnerability within their larger communities. According to Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) socio-ecological model, however, there are bidirectional pathways between individuals and their various systems, which suggest that conflict would not merely affect adolescents and how they relate to others within their families, but it would also affect how they relate to their larger macrosystem, including their communities. Investigating how conflict affects adolescents’ feelings of vulnerability within their communities would also be especially relevant to investigate presently, due to the rapid demographic changes Italy is currently undergoing due to the dramatic increase in refugees and economic migrants to the Mediterranean region within the last few years. Research in Northern Ireland has demonstrated that there is a clear association between how emotionally secure children feel within their communities (Cummings et al. 2011) and within their families (see Cummings et al., 2012; Cummings et al., 2016). Exposure to interparental conflict, therefore, may not only affect how adolescents feel within their families, but also how vulnerable they feel within their communities.

Emotional insecurity has repeatedly been demonstrated to be an important construct in explaining why interparental conflict affects adolescent functioning (Cummings & Davies, 2010). This study has shown that different types of emotional insecurity (emotional insecurity in the parent-adolescent relationship, and in the interparental relationship) may be indirect mechanisms through which exposure to interparental conflict impacts adolescent outcomes in Italy. These findings, therefore, add further support to the literature of the importance of testing EST in international settings.

Additionally, these findings indicate practical implications for family interventions in Italy. Promoting constructive conflict behaviors and assisting adolescents with coping strategies that target their feelings of emotional insecurity about their relationship to their parents and about the relationship between their parents may be beneficial. Similar interventions in the United States that involve brief psychoeducation, which teach families constructive methods of engaging in conflict, have been shown to increase children’s emotional security and have had positive effects on children’s functioning (Miller-Graff et al., 2016).

This study demonstrated that different types of emotional insecurity may assist in explaining the processes involved in the association between interparental conflict exposure and adolescents’ functioning in Italy. Findings from this study also suggest that emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship may have stronger indirect associations than emotional insecurity in the family, but further research is needed to analyse these pathways. Limited research has investigated the mechanisms involved in the effect of interparental conflict exposure on adolescents. This study, therefore, important in addressing a gap in the literature by investigating family processes using a sample from a country with a unique culture with distinct family dynamics, Italy.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Aryanne D. de Silva

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