Spillover In The Home Summary

The article, “Spillover in the Home: The Effects of Family Conflict on Parents’ Behavior”, from the Journal, “Journal of Marriage and the Family” is exactly what the title depicts it to be. It follows research based on how a family can react and behave from the actions of the leaders of the family; parents. Parents control almost everything that goes on between each individual family. Where their going, what’s for dinner, if they will be a dog or cat family; all things controlled by the parents. So shouldn’t conflict and friction between the family fall on the parents as well? That’s what the research team of the University of California Los Angeles, try’s the prove in, “Spillover in the Home: The Effects of Family Conflict on Parents’ Behavior”.

In other words, the relationship between marital problems and parenting may be a direct connection to the relationship of problematic marriages and negative child emotional outcomes. A top research tactic for finding short term family issues is the dairy method. Where researchers conduct their research from what their subjects write down in their daily diaries. They use this tactic in this research to see if they can find spillover. Spillover is defined as such: “… a process in which a conflictual encounter in one dyad generates a short-term increase in the parents’ own “frictional” behavior in the other family dyad above his or her typical behavior” (p. 128). In simpler words spillover simply means some kind of irritable or unusual behavior from a family member that is not a typical trait of that singular person. This tactic of research was used on any specific family member. From Mother or Father, to Son or

Where each day a family member would write down his/her feelings, their spouses, and their children’s. The subjects consisted of families with children from ages of 8 to 13 to keep the data consistent between the different families. A total of 86 parents, 47 mothers with an average age of 43.3 and 39 fathers averaging in age at around 43.7. Also 47 children participated in the case study with 19 boys and 28 girls taking part at an average age of 11.2 combined both male and female. The following information regarding race and ethnicity follows:

…”45% non-Hispanic White, 22% Latino/Hispanic, 17.5% African American, 12.5% Asian, 1.5% Native American, and 1.5% “Other.” Parents reported target children’s ethnicities as 38% non-Hispanic White, 30% Latino/Hispanic, 15% African American, 8.5% Asian, and 8.5% “Other” (primarily of mixed ethnicity).”

The amount of income per family was roughly from, $32,000–$82,000, the lowest being just under $2,000 and the highest being just over