Marital interaction in dyadic and triadic contexts: continuities and discontinuities

While the systemic metaphor used in much current family research requires examination of the interrelationships among individuals, relationships, and the family as a whole, work on triadic relationships has generally been missing. This research examined the presence of second-order effects in marital interaction: changes in interactions between spouses when the husband-wife dyad became a parent-parent-child triad. Results indicated the presence of consistent context effects. Parental behavior when alone was not a good predictor of parental behavior in the presence of a child: behaviors occurred at significantly lower levels in parental dyads than in parent-parent-child triads, and correlations across the two contexts were less than consistent. Results are discussed in light of their implications for observations of families.