Parental divorce, parent–child bonds, and adult attachment orientations among college students: A comparison of three racial/ethnic groups.

Abstract

Despite evidence indicating that race/ethnicity and parental divorce may respectively affect perceptions of family and other intimate relationships, the conjoint influences of these sociodemographic variables on self-reports of both early (parent-child) and current (intimate adult) attachment relationships have not been investigated. In the present study, the authors examined (a) the contributions of parental marital status and race/ethnicity to scores on these measures and (b) the relative abilities of parental bonds to predict adult attachment orientations among students from different family backgrounds (i.e., intact and divorced) and from different racial/ethnic groups (i.e., White, Black, and Hispanic/Latino). Results indicated that race/ethnicity and parents' marital status had significant effects on the attachment measures, and that the extent to which parental bonds predicted adult attachment orientations varied among students with different family backgrounds and race/ethnicity. Implications of these findings to the conceptualization of college students' psychosocial development are discussed.