Development and Validation of Perceived Inter-Parental Conflict Scale for Adolescents

Received 03 Sep, 2020

Accepted 14 Apr, 2021

Published 30 Sep, 2021

The study aimed to develop a culturally relevant scale to assess the perceived inter-parental conflicts in adolescents by using a mixed-method approach. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with 10 adolescents of age range 14-18 years were conducted along with 3 focus groups of parents and teachers that helped to generate a pool of 88 items. Construct validity and psychometric properties were determined on a sample of 500 adolescent with age range 14-18 years (M = 15.28, SD = 1.07). Principal axis factoring through direct oblimin rotation method postulated 60 items with six distinct factors (named as overt conflicts, familial conflicts, conflicts related emotional reactivity, financial conflicts, child related conflicts, and psychological conflicts) that accounted for 38% variance. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for total scale was .94 and ranged from .63 to .92 for six emerged factors. The convergent and discriminant validity of the scale was also satisfactory. Perceived Inter-Parental Conflict Scale for Adolescents (PIPCSA) was a reliable and valid measure to assess perceived inter-parental conflicts in adolescents.

Conflict is one of the essential human interactions and it is considered an unavoidable element of interpersonal relations (Cummings et al., 2012; Davis et al., 2016). In ordinary family life, inter-parental conflicts occur naturally. They are comprised of arguments, disagreement, and disputes among parents (Zhou & Buehler, 2017). It is a universal phenomenon; therefore, it has been studied widely in many disciplines. Inter-parental conflicts have been observed to have detrimental consequences across a wide range of functioning of children such as internalizing problems (Shelton et al., 2006), externalizing problems (Jelenova et al., 2013), poor social competence skills while interacting with family and friends (Du Rocher et al., 2004); low academic achievements (Harold et al., 2007) and physiological reactivity in form of disrupted sleep patterns (El-Sheikh et al., 2007), greater exposure to stress and drastic change in the parent-child interactions.

Due to their negative effects, it is important to make clear the mechanisms through which parental disputes can impact the occurrence of child behaviour problems. Different theoretical models have explained the different dynamics of parental conflicts. For example, the cognitive-contextual framework developed by Grych and Fincham (1990) presented four elements of perceived inter-parental conflict including “intensity” (it is the amount of negative affect or hostility), “content” (it is awareness about involvement, being blamed, or triangulated in inter-parental conflicts), “duration” (its time duration for exposure of children to a stressful situation), and “resolution” (its perception about parents’ failure to resolve conflict constructively). “Emotional security hypothesis” proposes children’s emotional security about inter-parental conflicts (Davis et al., 1996). Bowen (1978) presented the “triangulation model” to explain the nature of negative child behaviour when one of the parents uses the child to attack the other during disputes and get sympathies for him/herself from a child. The “spillover model” proposes that those negative emotions and behaviours that parents experience during the inter-parental conflict are more likely to be incorporated into their children through parenting practices.

Based on the “cognitive-contextual model”, Grych et al. (1992) developed the Children’s Perception of Inter-parental Conflict Scale (CPIC) to assess the perceptions of children about particular aspects of inter-parental conflict. The original CPIC was developed and validated for children under the age of 8 years. Subsequently, it was modified by adding a few more items and validated on the children of the age of 12 years with good psychometric properties as the original one (McDonald & Grych, 2006). The CPIC consists of 48 items distributed into nine subscales i.e., frequency, intensity, resolution, threat, coping efficacy, content, self-Blame, triangulation, and stability. The scale has been validated in the USA (Grych, et al., 1992), Europe (Bringhenti, 2005), Italy (Godde & Walper, 2001), Spain (Vairami & Vorria, 2007), Germany (Iraurgi et al., 2008), Turkey (Ulu & Fisiloglu, 2004), Greek, (Mei & Zhongjian, 2006), and China (Chi & Xin, 2003). However, results from a recent study with adolescents in Pakistan revealed a poorly fit model through confirmatory factor analysis and nine items had low factor loadings in the Asian sample (Bukhari & Masood, 2020). These findings highlight the matter that inter-parental conflicts are culturally specific phenomena and should be measured through an indigenously developed scale in a given cultural context to get a clearer picture concerning inter-parental conflicts perceived by adolescents.

Literature review suggests that children, adolescents, and emerging adults perceive interpersonal relationships and the presence of conflictual interactions between parents according to their developmental stage and cognitive maturity (Jouriles et al., 2000; McDonald & Grych, 2006). Adolescents due to their growing cognitive maturity are more likely to get involved in inter-parental conflicts and this growing capability in adolescents’ period may lead them to have more awareness and insight about the family environment and this distinctive experience about family relationships may not be available to younger children. The more adolescents get involved in the inter-parental conflict, the more they feel responsible for resulting troubles in parental relationships (Bosco et al., 2003). As previous research suggests, younger children have a more tendency of self-blame for marital disruption compared to adolescents (Grych & Fincham, 1990). As children grow, their understanding of threats related to inter-parental conflicts gets better, and consequently, their responses to conflicts become more problem-focused.

Studies further suggested that parental conflicts are influenced by socio-cultural influences (Barber, 1994; Shaw et al., 2003). The socio-economic environment of the house, family values, socialization method, and cultural mores about parenting not only has a direct and indirect impact on children's perceptions but also may vary from one culture to another. Parents living in more underprivileged socioeconomic (SES) conditions, for example, are likely to be less sensitive to children's exposure to their parents' conflicts than financially secure parents (Coltrane, 2004).

It is a well-documented fact that different parenting styles are practiced in Western and South Asian cultures. In Pakistan, traditional parents seem to be controlling and they held themselves responsible for the moral and social training of their children (Batool & Mumtaz, 2015). Pakistan being a collectivistic culture exerts more emphasis on conformity and group harmony. Parents often use an indirect mode of communication and free expression of feelings and opinions are discouraged in children. Whereas in Western culture, parents encourage free expression of feelings and opinions, they nurture self-esteem, and independence in their children (Ai et al., 2017; Lieber et al., 2006). When parental conflicts arise in the family, parents living in East Asian countries prefer not to discuss the conflicts with their children and try to resolve the problem themselves. However, adolescents due to their greater autonomy, self-expression, and independence compared to children are not only at higher risk of observing fights between parents, but they would presumably also get involved in heated arguments with their parents. Literature posited that due to gender differences and vulnerability to inter-parental conflicts, if a daughter has a closer relationship with her mother, more likely she will be involved in the parental conflict whereas boys try to avoid the parental conflicts (El-Sheikh & Whitson, 2006).

Even though inter-parental conflicts are indigenously determined and culturally intermingled phenomenon, existing diversity in the Western and South Asian culture, the cultural context has been overlooked in the development of psychological tools to assess the adolescents’ perceptions of inter-parental conflicts. Most studies conducted in Western and South Asian cultures have been using the Children’s Perception of Inter-parental Conflict Scale (CPI; Grych et al., 1992) and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976) to evaluate the perception and incidence of parental conflicts in adolescents. Researchers have also highlighted the need to develop a psychological measurement tool in the native language to support the adolescents who are socially and culturally exposed to hostile and aggressive interactions at home (Montenegro & Jankowski, 2017; Robbins, 2005). Cultural context can be a key factor when assessing inter-parental conflicts, as religion, socio-economic status of a family, deep-rooted cultural traditions, and social hierarchy are different from one culture to another. Like other collectivist cultures, family relationships and traditions also play a significant role for Pakistani people (Bukhari & Masood, 2020). The impact of this cultural expectation on the interpersonal relationship requires more cross-cultural and empirical attention. So, keeping in view the diversity in Eastern and South Asian cultures, and scarcity of culturally relevant tool for the measurement of perceived inter-parental conflicts by adolescents, the current study was undertaken to achieve the following objectives:

1. To develop the Perceived Inter-Parental Conflict Scale for adolescents.
2. To establish the validity and determine the psychometric properties of Perceived Inter-Parental Conflict Scale for adolescents.

METHOD

To develop and validate the Perceived Inter-Parental Conflict Scale for Adolescents (PIPCSA), empirical work was done into two phases. Items were generated in phase one, whereas in phase two, the psychometric properties of the scale were determined.

Phase 1: Items Pool Generation
To generate the items pool for the scale, first of all, semi-structured in-depth interviews with 10 adolescents (5 boys and 5 girls) of ages ranging from 14 to 18 years were conducted. Moreover, three focus groups including one with parents (N = 10), and two with school teachers including 10 men and 10 women were conducted. Informed consent for participation and audio recording was taken from the participants. They were ensured about the confidentiality and right to withdraw their participation during the interview, and focus group discussions. The core interview question was “In your opinion what are the reasons for inter-parental conflicts?” The interview guide was also formulated from general to specific manners to get detailed and inclusive information about the perceptions of inter-parental conflicts from the participants. Interviews and group discussions were transcribed and 145 items concerning parental conflicts were drawn. Two PhD psychologists having expertise in scale development reviewed all the initial items repeatedly and finalized a pool of 87 items after eliminating complex, ambiguous, and surplus items. Few statements were rephrased and 4 items were added as suggested by professionals. Subsequently, a pool of 88 items along with response categories was finalized for the tryout. Response categories of the scale were decided with a four-point Likert scale where 1 for Never, 2 for Sometimes, 3 for Often, and 4 for Always was used.

Pretest; try out. To pretest the suitability of a scale, it was administered on adolescents (N = 20) with an age range of 14 to 18 years from the target population to make sure the comprehensibility, readability, and difficulty level of items. Based on adolescents’ feedback, few modifications were made by replacing some difficult words with common words.

Phase 2: To Establish the Validity and Determine the Psychometric Properties of PIPCSA
In this phase, the factor structure of the scale was determined with principal axis factoring. The relationship of PIPCSA with children’s perception of inter-parental conflict scale and father involvement scale was assessed to evaluate convergent and discriminant validity.

Sample. The sample of the study comprised 500 adolescents including boys (n = 253) and girls (n = 247). The age of the participants ranged from 14-18 years (M = 15.28, SD = 1.07). The sample was recruited from ten public high schools of city Lahore. Those schools were selected randomly and students from class 9^th and 10^th were taken based on convenience. While choosing the participants from the concerned schools; it was made sure that participants of the study were homogeneous concerning the cultural background, academic milieu, and currently living with both parents. Adolescents from step-families were excluded because of their different family dynamics (Fomby & Cherlin, 2007).

Measures. The details of scales are as followed:

Perceived Inter-Parental Conflict Scale for Adolescents (PIPCSA). The final 88 items of PIPCSA scale that was developed during phase 1 of this study was utilized to get data in this phase. This scale is designed to measure 6 dimensions of inter-parental conflicts (viz. Overt Conflicts, Familial Conflicts, Conflicts Related Emotional Reactivity, Financial Conflicts, Child Related Conflicts, and Psychological Conflicts) perceived by adolescents. Each item is to be rated on a four-point Likert scale where 1 for Never, 2 for Sometimes, 3 for Often, and 4 for Always.

Children’s Perception of Inter-parental Conflict Scale (CPIC). The Urdu version of CPIC (Butt, 2014) with 48 items was used in the study. It is developed to measure the 9 dimensions of inter-parental conflicts like Frequency, Intensity, Content, Resolution, Threat, Coping Efficacy, Triangulation, Stability and Self-blame. The sample item is “My parents often get into arguments about things I do at school”. Scale items were rated using the 3-point Likert type options (True = 3, Sort of True = 2, False = 1). The CPIC al­pha reliabilities on nine subscales have been reported ranges from .61 to .83. The possible scores range from 48 to 144. High scores mean elevated perception of a child towards inter-parental conflicts (Grych, et al., 1992).

Father Involvement Scale (FIS). The father involvement was measured through 20-adjectives Father Involvement Scale (Finley & Schwartz, 2004). The sample item is “Sharing activities” and respondents are required to rate their father involvement on five response categories ranged from 1 for almost never to 5 for almost always. Urdu translation of this scale was done by researchers for research purposes. This scale has demonstrated good Chronbach alpha of .88 in previous research (Rodríguez Ruíz et al., 2019).

Procedure. After getting approved the study from The Advance Research Board of the university, the permission was taken from the concerned school administration. The participants also signed the written informed consent for participation in the study. They were ensured about the confidentiality of the data taken by them and their right to withdrawal from the study at any stage. After the briefing session, the participants were instructed to rate the items of the scale according to the response categories to which they could relate the most. It took 20 to 30 minutes to complete the questionnaire. A total of 650 participants were referred by the school administration to the researcher. Finally, 500 participants completed the scale without missing any information on a demographic sheet or scale items. Hence the turn out rate was 77%.

Results. To establish the construct validity of the PIPCSA, Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) was used followed by Direct Oblimin Rotation. Different assumptions were considered empirically to assure the suitability of the factor analyzed. The Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin (KMO) value of 0.931 suggested a sufficient sample size. Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ² approx = 18476.677, p < .001) was highly significant indicating the adequate size of correlations. An initial solution proposed 22 factors with Eigenvalue over Kaiser’s criteria of eigenvalue greater than 1 and 61.36% of the total variance. On the contrary visual scree plot revealed 6 factors, Monte-Carlo parallel analysis (Version 2.3, Watkins, 2000) also revealed six factors with Eigenvalues greater than randomly drawn Eigenvalues. Therefore, the analysis was run again for a 6-factor solution. Factor correlation matrix revealed 5 correlations in the matrix greater than .32 suggesting an overlap in factor variance and hence use of Direct Oblimin Rotation was supported (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).

Table 1:	Factor Loadings for Exploratory Factor Analysis with Direct Oblimin Rotation of Perceived Inter-Parental Conflicts Scale (N=500)
Note. Factor loadings ≥ .30 are boldface and have been retained exclusively on one factor

Table 1 shows the final six factors solution that comprised of 60 items on the factor loading criteria ≥ .30 exclusively on one factor. Total 28 items which were either having less than .30 loadings or having loadings on more than one factor in factor structure were excluded. The amount of accumulated variance for retained factors was 38% and items included in those six factors indicated good item-total correlation.

Factor 1was labelled as Overt Conflicts it was related to the perceptions of hostile behaviours and affect between parents. Factor 2 comprised of eleven items and was labelled as Familial Conflicts. The third factor was labelled as Conflicts Related Emotional Reactivity. Items loaded on this factor were related to the emotional and behavioural reactions of adolescents over parental conflicts. The fourth factor was given the name of Financial Conflicts. The fifth factor comprised of five items and was labelled as Child Related Conflicts. The sixth factor was labelled as Psychological Conflicts. It was related to a lack of mutual understanding between parents.

Results in Table 2 depicted the number of items, means, standard deviations, ranges of the score, values of skewness, kurtosis, and internal consistency of PIPCSA and its six subscales. The Cronbach’s alpha for subscales and total scale were quite good.

Table 2:	Descriptive Statistics of Perceived Inter-Parental Conflict Scale for Adolescents (N =500)
Note. k = no of items, α = Alpha coefficient, S = Skewness, K = kurtosis

Results in Table 2 showed that full scale and six subscales were found to be internally consistent.

Table 3:	Inter Correlations among Perceived Inter-Parental Conflicts Scale and its Subscales
**p ˂ .01.

The results in Table 3 indicated the correlation analysis among subscales and the total scale of PIPCSA. All the six subscales have significant positive relationships with each other and also with the total score of PIPCSA. The significant inter-correlations among the whole scale and its subscales also supported adequate construct validity.

To establish the construct validity of PIPCSA, the convergent validity of the PIPCSA was determined by comparing it with the Children’s Perception of Inter-parental Conflict Scale (CPIC; Grych, et al., 1992) and Father Involvement Scale (FIS, Finley & Schwartz, 2004) was used to determine discriminant validity of the newly constructed scale.

Table 4:	Inter-Correlations among Subscales of PIPCSA, CPIC, and FIS
Note. Conflicts RER = Conflicts Related Emotional Reactivity; CR Conflicts = Child Related Conflicts; CPIC = Children’s Perception of Inter-parental Conflict Scale; FIS = Father Involvement Scale *p ˂ .05. **p ˂ .01

As presented in Table 4, all subscales of PIPCSA moderately related to CPIC. On the contrary, Father Involvement scale was not related to subscales of PIPCSA except Familial conflict subscales. Results indicated satisfactory convergent and discriminant validity of the newly developed perceived inter-parental conflicts scale for adolescents.

DISCUSSION

The current study was carried out to develop an indigenous assessment tool to measure the perceived inter-parental conflict among adolescents in Pakistan. To achieve the study goals, empirical work was done in two phases. In the first phase, the items pool was generated by conducting interviews with adolescents and focus groups with parents and teachers while focusing to explore perceptions concerning inter-parental conflicts in our culture which is collectivistic. More focus was given to information elicited through adolescents about their perception of inter-parental conflicts because adolescents’ perceptions would be different from parents and significant others. The factor structure of the scale was analyzed through PAF with the direct oblimin rotation. Six distinct factors were chosen based on criteria of Eigenvalue greater than 1, scree plot, Monte-Carlo parallel analysis, no factor fewer than three items, and theoretical relevance (Hair et al., 2010; Kline 2013).

The Perceived Inter-parental Conflict Scale for Adolescents (PIPCSA) appeared as a multidimensional and unique measure in terms of content as its sub-scales revealed five distinct inter-parental conflicts types and one scale for emotional reactivity to conflicts. It indicates the importance of the true representativeness of one’s culture by assessing parental conflicts with an indigenously developed tool. The three sub-scales of PIPCSA which were labelled as “Familial Conflicts”, “Financial Conflicts”, and “Psychological Conflicts” were not part of the “Children’s Perception of Inter-parental Conflicts Scale” (CPIC) or other available scales for measuring inter-parental conflicts in the western world. The conflicts that arise due to family-related issues are reflected from the statements like “Conflicts between my parents arise when my mother frequently visits my maternal family (her parents, brothers, and sisters)”, “My parents argue when my mother tries to hide children’s mistakes from my father”, “My parents argue when my father restricts daughters to move alone outside the home”. The conflicts over financial issues reflect from their statement of “My parents argue because my family’s social status is lower than others”, “My parents fight because they couldn’t afford our expenses”. The lack of mutual understanding between parents reflects through the statements of adolescents of “My parents have disagreements because they have different habits” and “My parents have a disagreement on the issue of buying essential home appliances”.

The first subscale Overt Conflicts defines hostile behaviours and affects between parents; screaming at spouse or children, insulting and taunting each other, arguing on minor issues, feelings of disliking, and resentment for each other. This subscale gets support from the hostile conflicts style described by Buehler et al. (1998). Hostile conflict style includes those “hostile behaviors and effects that indicate the indirect manifestation of negative connections between parents” (Buehler et al. 1998, p. 120). Research has indicated a strong association between hostile conflict styles and problem behaviors. These patterns of results have been reported among males and females, in young children and adolescents and different families types such as intact vs. divorced families; low vs. high socioeconomic status families (Bradford et al., 2007).

The second subscale Familial Conflicts are those conflicts between parents which characterized a typical family set up in our culture such as strict parenting practices, creating a religious family environment, overprotective behavior of the mother, and make a comparison of children’s academic achievement with other relatives’ children. According to family system theory (Minuchin, 1974) interaction between family members takes place with some pre-defined implicit rules of a particular family. If those boundaries are broken by husband-wife, mother-son, or father-daughter under stress then it causes conflicts between family members. In a similar vein, Smetana (1989) postulated that inter-parental conflicts frequently occur over issues of non-compliance attitude of children and breaking the family rules set by parents. Skeer et al. (2009) also endorse this point in their research that families with elevated levels of conflict predicted external behaviour problems and psychological stress in adolescents.

The third subscale Conflicts Related Emotional Reactivity was related to those emotional and behavioural reactions of the adolescents that result from perceiving parental conflicts. Items on this subscale were a mixture of adolescents’ feelings and their reactions to parental conflicts. This subscale is somehow comparable to the Perceived Threat and Coping Efficacy subscales given by Grych et al. (1992). Adolescents’ reactions can be better explained by two types of strategies namely emotion-focused strategies and problem-focused strategies. These two types of strategies were introduced by Folkman and Lazarus (1980) to describe the coping behaviour that people use at the time of stress. To regulate their feelings, people use emotion-focused strategies, and to reduce the stress by altering the stressful situation, problem-focused strategies are used. Due to cognitive maturity, adolescents are better at applying emotion-focused strategies to come out of stressful situations compared to younger children. Moreover, problem-focused coping acts as a protective factor for internalizing behaviour problems in adolescents (Hampel & Petermann, 2006). In a similar vein, problem-focused coping also has been reported to associate with few externalizing behaviour problems and other adjustment issues in adolescents (VanMeter et al., 2020).

The fourth subscale Financial Conflicts defines those issues which arise due to poor social status of the family and inadequate money to fulfil the basic needs of the family members. This subscale gets support from the Family Stress Model which proposes that psychological distress triggered by financial stress influences inter-parental conflicts and parenting behaviours followed by adjustment problems in children and adolescents (Conger & Conger, 2002; Conger et al., 1994). Studies conducted in Turkey and Korea also reached the same conclusion that inter-parental conflicts are the direct or indirect end product of financial stress (Aytac & Rankin, 2009; Kwon et al., 2003). One of the possible reasons is the cultural or conventional gender roles of society. Due to financial strain, the husband in a family feels unable to perform the breadwinner role which leads to direct marital chaos between couples (Ponnet et al., 2013).

The fifth subscale Child Related Conflicts explained the children’s mischievous and quarrelsome behaviours, arguments with a father figure, and disobeying parents, etc. This subscale to some extent is comparable to the Content subscale of The Children’s Perception of Inter-parental Conflict Scale given by Grych, et al., (1992). Content as a conflict factor that includes the content of disagreements over child-related issues has been discussed in literature frequently. Exposure to parental conflicts over child-related issues leads the child to exhibit more aggressive responses during inter-parental conflicts (Cummings et al., 2004). Similarly, Shelton et al. (2006) reported that if the conflict between parents is about children related issues, then children get more involved in inter-parental conflicts by shouting at their father or passively observing conflicts. Exposure to child-related inter-parental conflicts is difficult for children, even when they are managed with positive emotions by their parents.

The final subscale Psychological Conflicts is an indication of poorly developed intimate relationships and a lack of mutual understanding between parents. It is defined as dissimilar beliefs, values, and interests between couples. Psychological conflicts between couples can be described as non-verbal and non-physical types of conflicts. Pryor and Pattison (2014) introduced the term “silent conflicts” to better explain the phenomena. Psychological conflicts between parents not only cause distress and risk to the stability of the family but also associated with adverse outcomes for children (Gottman 1998; De Arth-Pendley, & Cummings, 2002).

Most recent researches in the field of family studies and parental conflict studies have paid more attention to investigate the children’s characteristics that had exposure to inter-parental conflicts, children’s coping responses, and contextual factors of inter-parental conflicts that may be related to adjustment problems (Cummings & Davis, 2002). The PIPCSA provides a detailed overview of those contextual factors of inter-parental conflicts perceived by adolescents and their coping responses within the Pakistani cultural context. For example, subscales of PIPCSA which are labelled as “Conflicts Related Emotional Reactivity” “Child Related Conflicts” and “Financial Conflicts” are a true representation of our Pakistani culture. Particularly “Conflicts Related Emotional Reactivity” represented the adolescent’s cognitive and emotional reactivity over parental conflicts. It indicates that adolescent’s reactions are natural when they perceive or witness the hostile conflicts between parents. According to Rhoades (2008), it is not the parental conflicts themselves but rather children’s reactions to inter-parental conflicts that mediate the relationship between inter-parental conflicts and child behavior problems. Because children’s responses aid in understanding how they process and make meaning of inter-parental conflicts concerning their own needs, aspirations, and intentions.

IMPLICATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Since this scale was developed and validated on adolescents living in intact families with both parents. Future studies should focus on comparing the factor structure of PIPCSA across diverse family structures such as broken families, step-parent's families, etc. Future validation of the current scale should be done with other resource persons such as parents, siblings, or other close family members (Moura et al., 2010). Such comparison could help in identifying whether adolescents’ perception is pertinent to subjective experience, the vulnerability of adolescents, or relevance to particular developmental stages. Despite its limitations, this scale will help family counselors to develop complete insight into the nature of inter-parental conflicts and to cultivate strong and significant relationships between parents and adolescents once the nature of parental conflicts identified. This scale may provide an opportunity for those defensive adolescents who are reluctant in talking about parental conflicts and adapting proper emotion regulation strategies for dealing with parental conflicts.

CONCLUSION

The current study provides evidence that inter-parental conflicts are cultural-specific and particular society traditions play a key role in modifications of adolescents’ perception concerning inter-parental conflicts. The six distinctively reliable subscales of PIPCSA assist in assessing different aspects of inter-parental conflicts in the Pakistani cultural context.

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