Parent-Adolescent Conflict and Its Resolution in Monogamous and Polygamous Bedouin Arab Families in Southern Israel

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to compare whether children from polygamous family structures significantly differ from children from monogamous family structures with regard to the frequency of parent-child conflict, and (2) whether children from these two structures employ different patterns of family conflict resolution.To address these questions, a random sample of 212 high school students (60.8% monogamous) completed a self-administered survey. The results of MANOVA show no significant differences (p > 0.05) between these two structures with regard to the frequency of parent-child conflict. The results also show similar conflict management styles between these two family structures within each of the following five domains (privacy, school and career, money spending, going out and leisure, and physical appearance).This study is unique in that it is the first empirical research to be conducted in the field of conflict resolution among youth and adolescents in polygamous marital structures and therefore, further investigation is needed to replicate these results utilizing different cross-cultural populations practicing polygamy.


INTRODUCTION
The unfavorable effects of polygamous marital structures on the well being of children have been established by a wide range of sources [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Compared to their counterparts in monogamous families, children raised in polygamous families commonly exhibit developmental dysfunction, as to stress and violence in the family setting will tend to express more hostility and use more violent coping methods [29,30]. A chronic pattern of family violence typically leads to elevated levels of anger, aggression, and violence in the children [31].
Before we proceed to test these hypothesis, it is worth noting that some researchers challenge the fundamental concept that polygamy has a deleterious effect on children, contending that despite the multiplicity of stressors in the polygamous family unit, it does not have a negative impact on children [1,13,15,32]. These authors contend that a polygamous family structure provides benefits for children, including more role models for socialization, more opportunities for receiving attention and affection, and a more secure psychological basis for dealing with stress [12,33]. These authors point out that, far from having a negative effect, in many parts of the world polygamy is practiced by all social groups and "is an expression of a way of life which is deeply embedded in . . . religious and cultural obligation" [34]. For example, in Africa polygamy is considered to be the "most distinctive feature of an African marriage" [35].
Thus, it is likely that the prevalence of parent-child conflict in polygamous families may vary as a function of the surrounding culture and its values. Culture affects children's cognitive processes and has been found to alter the correlation between family variables and child development outcomes [17,36]. It appears that the way children assess and respond to interfamily conflict depends, at least to some degree, on the values of their culture. In addition, Jouriles et al. [37] found that children have the ability to differentiate between conflict that is child-related and other types of family conflict. In sum, the development of children within a polygamous marital structure may best be described as a culturally bound phenomenon, and we must take cultural values into consideration, for they may alter the direction of our hypothesis.

Participants
There were 212 participants, of whom 60 (28.3%) were male and 152 were female. About half (54.8%) of the participants were in grade 11, 41.4% were in grade 10, and 3.8% were in grade 12. The sample was drawn from four of the six Bedouin-Arab schools in a Negev Bedouin community in the 2000/2001 school year. The sample in each school was random and subjects completed the scale with the idea that the study needed to assess the type, nature, frequency, and styles of conflicts between children and their parents. Subjects were not informed that the study intended to compare the frequency and styles of parent-child conflicts within polygamous and monogamous families. After completing the scale, subjects were instructed to complete a socio-demographic questionnaire that included items such as age, gender, family type, parental education, and occupation.
The socioeconomic status of the participants' parents was low, as indicated by father's education (58.2% did not finish high school; 8.2% went beyond high school), and occupation (53.0% unemployed; 22.3% in unskilled labor). Mothers' levels of education and occupation were even lower. According to participants' reports of their parents' marital structure, 60.8 % were monogamous, and the rest came from families in which the fathers had two wives.

Measures
The parent-child conflict management scale was designed by the first author to assess adolescent conflict management styles in conflicts with their parents. The questionnaire used in the current study was adapted from the Conflict Management Inventory (CMI) [38]. The original CMI assessed five conflict management styles: compromising, avoiding, integrating, accommodating, and competing. However, unlike the original CMI, which asks generally about the global conflict management style of the subject, the questionnaire used in the current study assessed conflict management styles in each of five specific domains: privacy, career, money, physical appearance, and leisure times (see Appendix). We believe that conflicts between parents and their children tend to be more domain specific in nature than global. A second modification was the addition of more conflict management styles to the assessment. In addition to the five styles included in the original CMI, we added questions to assess four other styles of conflict management: deception, mediation, threat against parents, and threat against the self. Thus, there were nine conflict management styles assessed in each of five domains. Each style within each domain was assessed by one question, rated on a five-point scale from "Definitely not true of me" to "Clearly true in my case." For example, the item on the compromise style within the money domain was "When you have arguments with your parents about the money issue you specified, you use 'give and take' so that a compromise can be made." Styles tended to cohere across domains, as indicated by internal consistency estimates when all five items assessing the same style across the five domains were tested as a scale. Cohen's alpha ranged from 0.60 to 0.80 for seven of the styles, but dropped to 0.54 for mediation and 0.38 for deception.
In addition to the conflict management styles, the questionnaire also asked about a number of other conflict parameters within each domain, such as the frequency of conflict, who wins, who decides, how influential each party was, and how satisfied the adolescent was with the resolution. Finally, information on several demographic variables (parent education, marital status, participant's age, grade, and sex) was also collected.

RESULTS
The monogamous and polygamous groups did not differ significantly with respect to gender, grade, age, or father's level of education. Table 1 displays the data for these comparisons. To test whether these groups differed on each of the continuous conflict parameters (variables other than the styles of conflict resolution), a MANOVA was conducted for each conflict parameter across the five domains. For example, the five frequencies of conflict variables, one for each domain, were entered into the MANOVA as the set of dependent variables. The dichotomous family structure variable was the independent variable. No significant differences emerged between the two groups on frequency of conflict, F(5, 163) = 1.30, p = 0.268. Table 2 displays the group means on all of the conflict parameters across all domains. There were also no group differences on the strength of the father's influence on conflict resolution, F(5, 162) = 1.09, p = 0.366, or the strength of the mother's influence, F(5, 160) = 0.72, p = 0.613, or the strength of the student's influence, F(5, 157) = 0.65, p = 0.666. Students were also asked how often they "win" arguments in each domain and how satisfied they were with the outcomes of those arguments. A MANOVA on each of these sets revealed no significant group differences on either variable, F(5, 169) = 0.41, p = 0.839 and F(5, 173) = 0.78, p = 0.563, respectively. To test whether there were differences between groups in the proportions of students affirming that they (versus their parents or both) should have the right to decide matters in each domain, chi-square tests were performed on each of these variables. The results from these tests are shown in Table 3, where it can be seen that there were no significant differences on any of these variables.  Figs. 1 and 2 show the mean score on each conflict resolution style within each domain for monogamous and polygamous families, respectively. A 5 (domain) × 9 (style) × 2 (family structure) MANOVA was conducted to determine whether there were differences in the degree of usage of each of the styles both within and across domains and family structures. Domain and style were within-subjects factors, whereas family structure was a between-subjects factor. There was no main effect for polygamy, F(1, 86) = 0.58, p = 0.450, nor a significant polygamy × style interaction, F(8, 79) = 1.59, p = 0.140, nor a significant three-way interaction, F(32, 55) = 0.68, p = 0.875. Thus, the two groups had an overall similar profile of styles within each domain.

DISCUSSION
The last 20 years have seen a growing body of research dealing with the institution of polygamy and its effects on children [16]. Most of this research, however, has examined only the family structure (polygamous or monogamous) as an explanatory variable for the effects on children, and this limited approach has led to conflicting findings. For example, in one Bedouin-Arab community, some studies have suggested that the high school students from polygamous families are doing as well as their peers in monogamous families [1,32], while other studies have identified disadvantages for those same children [11]. The present authors assert that much of this uncertainty can be attributed to excessive reliance on a one-factor conceptual framework based on family structure. Family structure alone is inadequate for explaining the effects of polygamy on children. There is a need for further research that will evaluate the effects of mediating and moderating factors within the family (such as intrafamily conflict). According to Elbedour et al. [16], careful attention must be given to the task of identifying and examining the mediating and moderating variables that to some extent determine child development outcomes in polygamous families. The current study of children in the Arab community assesses one of these mediating processesconflict between parents and children. In designing this study, we expected that polygamous family structure would be associated with a greater frequency of parent-child conflict. This expectation was drawn from previous studies that have established a correlation between polygamy and other forms of intrafamily conflict, such as competition between wives [19], rivalry between full-and half-siblings [15], and unequal treatment of wives by the husband [20]. In other words, we expected that the high potential for parental conflict in polygamous families and the exposure of children to this marital stress would increase the likelihood of parent-child conflict and affect the way the children would respond to conflict. Compared with their peers from monogamous families, we expected that children from monogamous families would tend to use different styles of conflict resolution and be more likely to use violent or aggressive means for resolving conflicts.
However, the results of the study do not support either of these hypotheses. Across the five domains that we examined (privacy, career, money, appearance, and leisure pursuits), the frequency of parent-child conflict in polygamous families was not significantly different than those reported by subjects in monogamous families in the same community. The results showed no differences in the use of various conflict management styles across domains and family structures. Overall, within each domain, the two groups (children from monogamous and polygamous families) had a similar profile of conflict resolution styles.
These results raise a number of unresolved issues that require further hypothesizing. One possible explanation is that the children in polygamous families distance themselves from their parents' quarrels. A second possibility is that the marital conflicts reported by previous investigators were based on mere assertion. Another potential explanation is that the conflicts within these families are not serious enough to spill over into the parent-child relationship.
A third explanation is that a supportive cultural context (e.g., collectivity and extended families within the Bedouin-Arab community) can moderate the stressful effects of a polygamous family structure. Cultural context affects the etiology and development of maladaptive behavior [39] as well as the behavior that is viewed as normal and desirable in the culture [40]. Since polygamy is common in this community, and no cultural stigmas are associated with it, these cultural values may promote resilience or act as a positive moderator of parent-child conflict within polygamous families.

CONCLUSIONS
Overall, the results of the current study demonstrate that polygamy is a complex phenomenon. Although the results of this study do not show a conclusive association between polygamy and parent-child conflict, they also do not eliminate the possibility that such a link exists. The lack of exacerbated parent-child conflict in the five domains examined in this study does not necessarily mean that polygamous families do not have a higher rate of these conflicts. The present study relies heavily on self-reported single informants (the adolescents themselves) and a single assessment method. Finally, it is possible that the domains that we used were not sensitive or specific enough to capture the nature, intensity, or duration of the conflict in these families. How much influence does each of the following individuals have on the way this conflict/argument is usually resolved? 2) I usually accommodate the wishes of my parents. 3) I use "give and take" so that a compromise can be made.   3) I try to find a middle course to resolve an impasse.   3) I use "give and take" so that a compromise can be made.  "Please indicate one career decision issue that provokes the most frequent conflicts/arguments between you and your parents. 2) I usually allow concessions to my parents. 3) I try to find a middle course to resolve an impasse. 6) I try to talk to a brother or sister or someone to convince my parents.