Negative Co-Parenting and Children's Adjustment: The Role of Children's Appraisals and Triangulation

Existing literature has outlined how negative co-parenting could affect children's adjustment through children's subjective appraisals and triangulation. However, no studies have investigated whether children's cognitive appraisals and two distinct forms of children's triangulation (feelings and involvement) could be serial mediators of the associations between negative co-parenting and children's adjustment. Mediation analyses were performed using a sample of 125 Italian families of children aged 8-14. Results showed that negative co-parenting was linked to children's threat and self-blame appraisals. Data also suggested how both children's subjective appraisals (threat and self-blame) were associated with the two forms of children's triangulation (direct involvement and subjective triangulation). Finally, the results indicated two specific pathways for the serial mediation of children's cognitive appraisals and triangulation in the association between negative coparenting and children's adjustment. On the one hand, subjective triangulation predicts children's internalizing behaviors. On the other hand, triangulation involvement promotes children's externalizing behaviors.