When listening to your parents bicker in the room next to you, your never thinking anything good of it. Family arguments aren’t ever enjoyable and you never really see them helping you, but instead taring you apart inside. Look on the bright side of things, if your one always listening to these arguments you may be in luck… studies show that children who experience them are more likely to be able to handle conflict in their own future relationships.

According to Huffington Posts article, “Family Fights May Have A Surprising Upside For Children,” published November 30, 2014 by David Freeman, “Research has linked relationship conflict to anger, depression, anxiety, and other psychological problems.” Although these are all negative aspects to conflict, the study suggests a new uplifting one. The researchers of the experiment are actually from Penn State, they studied 50 couples who are in college and attend Penn State. To begin the experiment, samples of saliva were taken from each individual to determine stress level. Next, individuals were asked to fill out surveys about their childhood family conflicts followed by interviews about their relationships. After all this information was gathered, the couples were required to discuss a conflict between them for ten minutes. Another sample of saliva was taken and the results indicated that the couples who tended to have greater conflict had higher levels of cortisol(stress hormone) then earlier. Although there was an increase of stress levels in everyone, it was smaller in those who admitted to experiencing family conflicts at home during childhood.

First off, I think the sample size needs to be much larger to conclude that this information is true. The fact that only college students were tested could have also changed the results. Maybe the number of cortisol was lower in the college kids because they just care less. Maybe there were other things causing the stress besides the argument, such as school work, which caused a rise in cortisol. The study does not include how much smaller the cortisol levels were in the individuals that experienced conflict as a child. Without this vital information, we aren’t able to tell how effective it is. The participants could have just been nervous under pressure which caused them stress. The participants who had lower stress levels may not be due to the fact that they experienced conflict like this as a child, but instead due to the fact that they just don’t really get stressed out. We don’t know how bad things really were at home, maybe the intensity of the arguments effect people differently. We cannot just conclude that childhood incidents can make us less stressed, we have to take into consideration the fact that these people may just be better at dealing with conflicts in general, regardless of their past.

In order to make the conclusion more accurate, I would definitely test more people at different colleges and even couples beyond college. I feel the only way to have complete accuracy is to follow people throughout their lives. To see what they experienced at home first hand and to see how it has impacted them in the future, and there really is no way of making this happen, it is far fetched. I just do not feel there is enough information to prove this true and that there are other factors that help to deal with conflict. I feel there are more negative effects on witnessing a family argument than positive.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/30/family-fights-new-study-children_n_6220090.html?utm_hp_ref=brain