Perception of Family Structure, State-Anger, and Parent-Child Communication and Adjustment of Children of Divorced Parents

Abstract

The present research focused on the effects of parental perceptions of family structure on children's sense of self-worth. Perceived family structure was measured by the ‘ideal’ and ‘actual’ versions of FACES III (Olson, Portner, &Lavee, 1985). Participants consisted of 191 divorced custodial fathers and mothers and one of their children between the ages 6-18. It was hypothesized that the parental perceptions of family structure affect the child's self-worth through the mediating effects of parental state-anger, as well as through parent-child communication. The path models were analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The original model could not be tested since the relation between perceived family structure and children's sense of self-worth was not statistically significant. In the next stage, it was hypothesized that the parents' perceptions of family structure would affect parent-child communication through the mediating effect of parental state-anger, and this model was found to fit the data. More positive perceptions of ‘actual’ family structure correlated with more positive parent-child communication and lowered state-anger, while higher ‘ideal’ perceptions correlated with more negative communication and higher state-anger