The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between experiencing parental divorce as a child and cognitive schemas of primary relationships as an adult. Four questions were of interest: is there a significant relationship between experiencing parental divorce as a child and adult attachment style? Do women with parents who divorced during their childhood describe their relationships with their parents in different ways than those whose parents stayed married? What, if any, are the differences between the romantic relationships of young women whose parents divorced when they were children and those whose parents are still married? And fourth, what role does conflict play in attachment style and relationship expectations? Each of the first three questions has been, to varying degrees, examined by previous research. This study, then, is an effort to replicate and integrate those diverse findings and to consider the additional role of conflict. Subjects were 196 female undergraduate students at a large state university and at a small private college. A measure of interpersonal schemas was used to determine expectations of, and stated satisfaction with, relationships during adulthood. Retrospective and current conflict between and with parents was measured as well. Adult attachment measures, adjective lists and questions about mental models were used to elicit further information about experiences and descriptions of relationships. Women whose parents divorced when they were children did not differ significantly from those with married parents on the measures of attachment or in their descriptions of their mothers. They were also equally likely to be in a romantic relationship and to describe their romantic partner and the relationship in positive terms. However, women with divorced parents were much more negative about their fathers. Attachment style was usually related in different ways to each of the measures in this study, suggesting that parental divorce and attachment have somewhat independent effects on adult relationships. The strongest finding of this study was that increased levels of conflict between parents during childhood is a stronger predictor of decreased satisfaction with current relationships with both mothers and fathers than parental divorce itself. Additionally, conflict with each parent during childhood was the strongest predictor of satisfaction with the current relationship with that parent. Attachment was the factor which most significantly predicted satisfaction with romantic partners as an adult, although the regression equation with the greatest amount of predictive validity for that relationship also contained parental divorce as a factor.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-9045 |
| Date | 01 January 1995 |
| Creators | Dimmitt, Catherine Langdon |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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