This research focuses on husbands' and wives' perceptions of parent-child
relationship quality in stepfamilies. One goal was to examine the links between parents'
ways of coping with family stressors and changes in parent-child relationship quality over
time. A related goal was to consider the difference in relationship quality for parents'
own children and parents' stepchildren. This difference was referred to as the "stepgap".
It was expected that characteristics of the family, characteristics of the children, and
parents' ways of coping with family stressors would all have an impact on relationship
quality. It was also expected that some of these characteristics would alter the "stepgap".
Multilevel analyses of family data (Snijders, 1995) were used to replicate
consistent findings in the stepfamily literature and extend them by allowing for the
drawing of within-family conclusions. For Time 1 relationship quality, characteristics of
children and characteristics of the family were modeled on parents' perceptions of
relationship quality with individual children. At both levels, the influence of these
characteristics on the "stepgap" was also considered.
The initial sample interviewed at Time 1 consisted of 154 couples. Of these, 142
couples also participated at Time 2. Husbands initially rated the closeness and tension
they perceived in their relationships with 404 children (191 stepchildren, 213 own
children). Wives rated the closeness and tension they perceived in their relationships
with 407 children (204, stepchildren, 203 own children). Results provided evidence of a
"stepgap" in relationship quality for both husbands and wives. However, results also
indicated that relationship quality was affected by child age, amount of time spent in the
family home, whether there were children from the current union, and the number of
years the stepfamily had been in existence.
A subsample of these families (81 couples) also provided daily diary data that
were used to explore lagged daily relations between parents' reports of affection and
tension with children and stepchildren, and parents' ways of coping with family stress.
Three ways of coping relevant for interpersonal stressors were examined: compromise,
confrontation, and interpersonal withdrawal. Results provided evidence of a direct
relationship between parents' ways of coping with family stress and changes in daily
relationship quality in terms of affection from children and tension with children.
To link the microlevel and the macrolevel, aggregated variables describing
parents' typical way of coping with family stressors across a seven-day period were used
to explain changes in relationship quality two years later. Results of these analyses
indicated that husbands' and wives' coping predicted change not only in the quality of
their relationship with children in the stepfamily, but also affected their spouses' stepgap
in relationship quality. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/11293 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Preece, Melady |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 7662891 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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