Family-of-origin ties and relationships and how they affect dealing with one’s own marital conflicts

Abstract

There is a common belief that the family of origin is important for the development and acquisition of psychosocial skills necessary to carry out various life tasks by all members of the family. This is confirmed by familiologists and their research on generational transmission process, based on psychological learning mechanisms: observation, imitation, modelling and identification. This article analyzes the relationship between the quality of ties and relationships in the family of origin and the methods of coping with conflicts in one's own marriage in adulthood. A study including 250 couples of young spouses was conducted in order to determine to what extent the properties of generational family, measured with the family rating scales based on David H. Olson's Circular Model, are related to the frequency of conflicts in their marriages, what the course of such conflicts is and what effects they have on the quality of the mutual marital relationship. The results obtained confirmed that there is a relationship between coherence, flexibility, the quality of communication in the family of origin as well as the level of one’s satisfaction with growing up in these families and the ways of coping with conflicts in one's own marriages in adulthood. In this way, the results show that the process of generational transmission in the families of the respondents indeed took place.