Parental Marital Quality, Parental Divorce, and Relations with Parents

Abstract

The quality of relationships between adult children and their parents has been shown to have implications for psychological well-being for both generations (Umberson, 1992) and for the amount of support provided in times of need (Cooney & Uhlenberg, 1990). Extensive research has focused on the adult child as a source of care for elderly parents, an interest stemming from the potential of such help for forestalling elderly entrance into institutional care. Important in understanding these links is information about the quality of adult child-parent relationships soon after offspring reach adulthood. The quality of relationships at this early stage is likely to set the tone for relations throughout the life course. Despite the importance of this stage in the development of child-parent relationships, little is known about the way in which the parents' marital relationship when children are growing up affects the closeness of later ties. This study tests whether parents' reports of marital quality in 1980 predict children's reports of parent-child relationship quality in 1992. Our unique longitudinal design avoids same-source bias while allowing us to examine the long-term consequences of parents' marital quality and stability on children's relationships with their parents. This study fills several major gaps in our knowledge by allowing us to: (a) assess the effects of marital quality as well as divorce; (b) focus on the young adult's perspective; (c) determine which relationships are most at risk; and (d) increase our understanding of the mechanisms by which the parents' marriage affects adult offspring-parent relationships. PRIOR RESEARCH There are two streams of research that help inform the direction of our inquiry. One is from the child developmental literature. The second is research on the long-term effects of parental divorce and poor marital quality on adult offspring. Research on children finds that parental divorce is negatively related to the quality of parent-child relations. Hetherington, Cox, and Cox (1982) found that recently divorced custodial mothers were less affectionate toward their children and used harsher punishment than did mothers in intact two-parent families. While there was some improvement with the passage of time, tension persisted in mothers' relationships with sons. In relation to fathers, research consistently shows that contact between noncustodial fathers and children declines over time (Furstenberg & Nord, 1985; Seltzer & Bianchi, 1988). In a meta-analysis, Amato and Keith (1991) found that parental divorce was significantly associated with poorer relationships with both parents, although mean effects sizes were stronger for fathers (-.26) than mothers (-.19). Few studies have focused on the quality of the parental marital relationship in intact families. Isabella and Belsky (1985) investigated 64 children, beginning from the last trimester of pregnancy and ending when the child was 1 year of age. Mothers who experienced a marital decline were more likely to have insecurely attached infants. In a second study of 100 children from the last trimester of pregnancy to age 3, Belsky, Youngblade, Rovine, and Volling (1991) found that a decline in marital quality was manifested in the father being more intrusive and less supportive and the child behaving more negatively. For mothers, the analysis suggested a tendency to compensate for a decline in the marital relationship by being more supportive of the child. Studies of children in middle childhood and adolescence (Amato, 1986; Peterson & Zill, 1986) have also found stronger associations between parental marital conflict and poorer relations with fathers than mothers. Studies on the long-term effects of parental divorce and marital quality on adult offspring have seldom examined intergenerational relations. Amato and Booth (1991), drawing on a national sample of married people, examined the way in which the amount of contact with parents was related to parental divorce and, in cases in which no divorce occurred, retrospective accounts of parental marital quality. …