The next time you want to scream at your spouse for not keeping the shoes where they belong, think of the kids first. For, two studies published in the journal
Child Development have shown that children suffer from emotional difficulties and lack of sleep even if their parents are involved in a small fight.
The first study, by Auburn University researchers, found that children suffered from lack of sleep if their parents were constantly feuding. The same was true even if the level of conflict in the family was not higher than normal. “This is significant because even mild loss of sleep can disrupt attention, alter information processing, weaken motivation, increase irritability and diminish emotion control,” said Mona El-Sheikh, lead author of the study.
El-Sheikh and her team checked the sleep habits of 54 healthy children aged between eight and nine years, in relation to the levels of parental conflict that they faced in their homes. The children were made to wear an Actigraph, a wristwatch-like device that was strapped on their wrists to gauge their sleep, for a period of one week. Through the device the researchers studied sleep onset time, total sleep duration, and amount of deep sleep. The findings showed that 'increased marital conflict was associated with disruptions in the quantity and quality of children's sleep as well as subjective sleepiness', the researchers said.
Such children were found to be more restless during sleep and went through the day groggy. They lost an average of 30 minutes' sleep every night. Another finding was that the children didn't get used to their parents fighting over time and faced psychological problems. The study has “implications for how parents manage conflict and how they help their children understand and cope with it,” El-Sheikh said. Asked how much parental conflict was enough to bother the children, she said, “A lot of them (parents) engaged in putting each down verbally, making fun of each other sometimes. Most families have engaged in some level of that.”
The second study, by researchers from Rochester and Notre Dame universities, seconded El-Sheikh's contention that children don't get used to negativity in their parents' relationship. “When kids are exposed to high levels of conflict between their parents, they don't get used to it. They become more sensitive and reactive to it,” said Patrick T Davis, lead author of the study.
Davis and his team tracked 223 children, aged six years, and the relationship between their parents for a period of one year to study the children's emotional makeup. An analysis showed that children whose parents were hostile to each other were more likely to be emotionally reactive.
“Our results highlight the possibility that several different types of conflict between parents may negatively affect the well-being of children over time. Conflict between parents may have distinct meanings and implications for the child and family system even after considering the effects of parenting difficulties,” Davis said.
He added that the results were the same even if the fight didn't lead to negative behaviour towards the children, who were able to sense negative undercurrents between parents. “These kids are still able to pick up on the fact that their parents are unhappy with each other and it comes through when you ask them questions about how they feel: they report feeling more fearful, more angry, more sad,” Davis added, suggesting that parents try to restrict their fights to their bedroom where children can't see or hear them. El-Sheikh, however, suggested resolving the fights calmly in front of the kids so they knew the fight was over and done with.
