Parental marital conflict and divorce, parent‐child relationships, social support, and relationship anxiety in young adulthood

Abstract

Based on research documenting harmful long‐term consequences of parental conflict and divorce for offspring, relations between recollections of parental conflict, parental divorce, and social outcomes in young adulthood were examined. A total sample of 566 young adults from divorced and intact families completed measures of parental conflict, quality of parent–adult child relationships, anxiety in relationships with others, and perceptions of social support from others. As hypothesized, divorce and conflict had significant independent effects on outcomes in young adulthood. Effects of conflict were uniformly negative for quality of parent‐child relationships, perceived social support from others, and anxiety in personal relationships. Parental divorce was associated with lower quality father‐child relationships, yet divorce was associated with significant positive outcomes for quality of mother‐child relationships, social support, independence facilitated by both parents, and reduced anxiety in relationships. Importantly, these effects occurred regardless of participant sex, parental remarriage, and parental socioeconomic status.

Parental Divorce Among Young and Adult Children: A Long-Term Quantitative Analysis of Mental Health and Family Solidarity

“…earlier life experience of parental divorce. Furthermore, family solidarity might also mediate the relationship between the experience of parental divorce and later life mental health (Aquilino, 1997;Riggio, 2004). However, given the potentially unique consequences associated with the timing of divorce, we hypothesize that both the nature of the consequences and the mediating role that social support plays could differ for children who experience parental divorce as a child versus as an adult.…”

“…First, although some young children might actually benefit or thrive after parental divorce if they were living in a hostile environment (Amato, 2000;Riggio, 2004), most studies conclude that young children exhibit lower academic performance (Astone & McLanahan, 1991, Wolfinger et al, 2003, delayed psychological development (Kurdek et al, 1994), strained relationships with family members (Poortman, 2009), and poorer mental health (Ängarne-Lindberg, 2009). These consequences, especially those that have the potential to persist into the later stages of the child's life course, could be initially affected through short-term disruptions in education (Amato 2000;Booth & Amato, 1991) and social networks (Cotton, 1999;Kim & Woo, 2011).For example, when experiencing parental divorce at a young age, the custody arrangements agreed on by the parents might disrupt a child's social network and education (e.g., by moving between parent's houses), thereby decreasing later educational attainment (Wolfinger et al, 2003), which often leads to poor occupational outcomes.…”

“…Most of these have focused on outcomes associated with young children (Allison & Furstenberg, 1989;Amato, 1996;Bouchard, Lachance-Grzela, & Goguen, 2008;Kaufman & Uhlenber, 1998;McCabe, 1997;Pett, Lang, & Gander, 1992;Riggio, 2001Riggio, , 2004, but far fewer studies have focused on the consequences of parental divorce for those who experienced the dissolution of their parents' marriage as adult children (Aquilino, 1994;Cherlin, 1998;Shapiro, 2003). These studies attempt to document the consequences that parental marital dissolution can create for children-based on the life stage in which children experience parental divorce, but no research that we are aware of has directly compared the experiences of young and adult children of parental divorce.…”

Organization of Parent Knowledge: Compartmentalization and Integration in Adult Child-Parent Relationships

“…In lower quality relationships, such as those associated with family dysfunction or divorce, type of relationships may correspond to strategy for managing problematic aspects (Riggio, 2004). In particular, relationships with negative parents may be characterized by enmeshment between parents and adult children (in which there are weak boundaries between parent and child, such that the child becomes responsible for parents' emotional wellbeing), disengagement (in which boundaries are overly rigid), or a continuum between the two (Jacobvitz & Bush, 1996;Mackensen & Cottone, 1992;Watt, 2002).…”

The mental health and parenting practices of recently separated parents

“…has focused on areas such as the financial status of adults (Duncan & Hoffman, 1985), the areas and level of conflict between adults post-separation (Simons, Lin, Gordon, Conger & Lorenz, 1999), the amount of time spent with children post-separation (Kelly, 2005;Smyth, 2005), and the parent-child relationship post-separation (Riggio, 2004). There is a paucity of research that solely investigates parents who go through a marital dissolution or separation and even less research which focuses on the parent"s mental health and parenting practices post-separation.…”