by Isobel J.

Created on: June 01, 2010

The quality of the mother-father relationship is vital to children’s well-being. If mom and dad are fighting all the time, the children are going to become upset, stressed out and angry. They will not feel like their home is a safe, secure place to be because the people in charge are unable to provide a loving, caring environment. Even if parents treat their children well, not treating each other well will affect the children negatively.

Mom and dad’s relationship is a child’s first model of what an intimate relationship looks like, how people who love each other relate and how people fulfill their roles in the family. If mom and dad are in constant conflict, the child is going to internalize those patterns of relating and carry them into future stages of his or her life. When mom and dad aren’t satisfied in their relationship, family roles can become skewed. The child may be pulled into the conflict in several ways. The child may blame him or herself for causing the conflict because he or she doesn’t yet have a good understanding of the complexities of interrelationship, and it is much safer for the child to blame him or herself than to blame the parents on whom the child’s emotional stability depends. Also, one of the parents may make the child an ally, setting him or her up to be against the other parent. The child is likely to feel torn because he or she loves both parents but may play the role of an ally to please the one parent. Children may become confidantes to the parents where the parents share information that is inappropriate, unnecessary or simply beyond their grasp. This may make the child feel powerful and pleasing to the parent, but it is pulling the child out of a “child” role and placing adult concerns and burdens upon him or her. A child may also become a parent’s emotional support since the parent isn’t getting the support he or she needs from his or her partner. This puts the child in a major predicament because the child finds him or herself having to serve the needs of the parent when the parent should be fulfilling the needs of the child.

These role shifts can happen almost imperceptibly, and they then become the pattern for the family’s relating to each other. Later in life, the child may find that he or she did not complete some very important developmental tasks because he or she was too focused on the parent’s problems. This may lead to difficulties with relationships

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