Department of Clinical Child and Family Studies.
Department of Youth and Family.
J Fam Psychol. 2022 Oct;36(7):1117-1131. doi: 10.1037/fam0001008. Epub 2022 Jun 30.
Parental triangulation is a particular risk to healthy child adjustment after divorce. However, detailed knowledge is lacking on how triangulation predicts child adjustment, and whether some children are more vulnerable to triangulation's effects. Therefore, the present study used a sample of 135 children ( = 11.76) and 130 parents from 77 recently divorced families to identify whether intrapersonal processes (loyalty conflicts, self-blame, and self-esteem) underlie the link between postdivorce triangulation and child adjustment over a period of 2 years. We also explored whether these direct and indirect effects were dependent on children's environmental sensitivity and empathy. By means of path analysis in , the mediation analyses indicated that more triangulation was only indirectly associated with a relative increase in children's internalizing problems, via experiencing more loyalty conflicts and lower self-esteem. Loyalty conflicts also explained the link between triangulation and children's externalizing problems. Yet, there were no indirect effects via children's self-blame attributions. Second, moderation analyses revealed that the effect of triangulation was dependent on children's level of empathy, but not sensitivity. Children scoring high on empathy showed a stronger association between triangulation and child-reported adjustment problems, both directly and indirectly via loyalty conflicts and self-esteem. There were hardly any significant effects for parent-reported child adjustment. Overall, the present study calls for more awareness on the adversity of postdivorce triangulation for children, its working mechanisms, and the factors that make children more vulnerable to its detrimental effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
父母三角化是离婚后儿童健康调整的一个特殊风险。然而，我们缺乏关于三角化如何预测儿童调整的详细知识，也不知道哪些儿童更容易受到三角化影响。因此，本研究使用了 77 个最近离婚家庭的 135 名儿童（=11.76）和 130 名父母作为样本，以确定个体内部过程（忠诚冲突、自责和自尊）是否在离婚后三角化与儿童调整之间的关系中起作用。我们还探讨了这些直接和间接效应是否取决于儿童的环境敏感性和同理心。通过 的路径分析，中介分析表明，更多的三角化仅通过经历更多的忠诚冲突和自尊心降低与儿童内化问题的相对增加间接相关。忠诚冲突也解释了三角化与儿童外化问题之间的联系。然而，通过儿童的自责归因没有间接影响。其次，调节分析表明，三角化的影响取决于儿童的同理心水平，但不取决于敏感性。同理心得分高的儿童在三角化与儿童报告的适应问题之间表现出更强的直接和间接关联，通过忠诚冲突和自尊心。对于父母报告的儿童适应几乎没有任何显著影响。总的来说，本研究呼吁更多地关注离婚后三角化对儿童的不利影响、其作用机制以及使儿童更容易受到其不利影响的因素。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2022 APA，保留所有权利）。
