Conflict management strategies in two-child families

Twenty-six intact, upper-class families with only two children ages seven through fourteen, responded to questionnaires designed to compare conflict management strategies within and across families. All family members participated. The purpose of this research was to determine if children modeled conflict management strategies that parents used either with each other or with them. While the results suggested that children do model strategies that their parents used with them particularly, as opposed to those that spouses used with each other, children used Direct Physical Aggression with siblings, and their parents did not report using it at all. Couples primarily used Reasoning, Withdrawal, and Denial of Privileges to manage spouse conflict. They used these same strategies to manage parent-child conflict, but in addition parents used Verbal Aggression with their children. In resolving sibling-sibling conflict, children also used these strategies as well as Direct Physical Aggression which they neither observed in the family, nor experienced directly. Although some modeling was evident, and children were more similar to their fathers than to their mothers, conflict management strategies used by adults and children depended on the individuals involved and the context.