Children that live in maritally discordant homes are hypothesized to be at an increased risk for antisocial behavior and delinquency. Although several studies have found that marital discord and child antisocial behavior covary, few researchers have investigated the family processes that my link these two constructs. Following social-interactional theory, it was hypothesized that marital discord disrupts the parenting skills of discipline and monitoring, resulting in increased levels of child antisocial behavior. Two-hundred and one high risk boys and their families from an urban area were followed from the fourth to the eighth grade. Parents, siblings, teachers, and the target child participated in a multi-method assessment across three major waves of data collection. Families were observed interacting in their homes and during laboratory problem solving discussions. Information on child police contacts was collected from juvenile court records. A two-stage analysis was conducted. First, the cross-situational consistency of marital and parenting behavior and the impact of marital and parenting observed behavior on child antisocial behavior was investigated for both baserate and sequential variables. Second, the disruptive impact of marital discord on child antisocial behavior was investigated using the demographic variables of current family status (two biological parent family or single parent/stepparent family in any given year) and target child first arrest. Baserates of negative affect were related across time and settings, but measures of negative reciprocity between family members were not. Measures of ongoing marital distress were generally unrelated to child antisocial behavior. However, using discrete-time survival analysis, current family status was found to predict arrests at all time points, with boys in single parent/stepparent families at a significantly higher risk for first arrest. As predicted from the social-interactional model, boys in single parent families were rated as spending more unsupervised time on the street. Implications of the results for future research on family processes are discussed.