Making sense of family conflict: intimate partner violence and preschoolers' externalizing problems.

This research examines relations among parental intimate partner violence (IPV), preschoolers' narrative coherence about family conflict situations, and preschoolers' externalizing problems. Participants were 57 mothers and their 4- to 5-year-old children. Mothers provided data on IPV and children's externalizing problems. Narrative coherence was coded from children's play narratives in response to story stems from the MacArthur Story Stem Battery. Results are consistent with theory suggesting that exposure to IPV may adversely affect preschoolers' ability to understand family conflict situations in an organized manner, which in turn may contribute to their externalizing problems.