Interparental Conflict and Young Adult Romantic Relationships: A Systematic Review

Abstract

In the last two decades, researchers have been progressively investigating the impact of interparental conflict (IPC) on young adults romantic relationships. This systematic review aimed to synthesize literature on IPC and romantic relationship outcomes among young adults and highlight mechanisms found in this link. Following the PRISMA protocol, 3232 studies were identified using Boolean searches on ProQuest, PubMed, EBSCOhost, Jstor, Cochrane, and Google Scholar, and 17 met the eligibility criteria. To be included, in addition to having IPC and romantic relationship outcomes as variables, studies had to be quantitative in design, have a mean sample age of 18–25, include only participants in romantic relationships at the time of the study, and be published in English with full text available. The review found that IPC is associated with negative conflict management, both perpetration and victimization of aggression, worse communication, negative conflict behaviors, and poor relationship quality. Other outcomes like relationship satisfaction, commitment, as well as mediator variables in the link between IPC and young adult romantic relationship outcomes, such as attitudes towards marriage and conflict attributions, yielded varied results. Several shortcomings in the methodology of the reviewed articles, such as the research sample and measures, were discovered. To deal with the impact of IPC on offspring’s romantic relationships, preventive interventions should be designed and evaluated, and more research with different variables and study designs, with more men, other ethnicities, and more representative sample frames are needed to detect crucial mediators and obtain reliable and generalizable results.