Parent Child Essay - Grade: A PDF

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This is the final paper for this course. This paper is about how divorce affects children....

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1 Rehnuma Reza PSY 33700 Paper #1

Parents Divorce Can Affect Children’s Romantic Relationship Parents play a crucial role in children’s development. A responsible parent can raise a responsible child. Children’s are like clay. They can be shaped in a good way or a bad way. Researches shows, if the parents show enough love and discipline toward the children from a very early age, children can turn out to have a very positive life. It can be very easy to create a bond between parent and child, because ever since a kid is born they have no idea about this new world. They learn everything from watching others. When the bond is broken between two parents, it generates confusion, betrayal, and emotion changes in child’s life. In this paper, I will be discussing parent’s divorce negative effect on children’s romantic relationship. As stated by U.S department of Health and Human Services, one third of the first marriage end up in divorce after 10 years, seventy five percent of the people tend to remarry and then forty percentages of remarriages end up in divorce within the next 10 years (South, 2013). Divorces in the United States are still increasing. Divorce not only affect two people who are getting divorced, but also the children who are part of the family. Therefore, in this study researcher was interested finding the correlation between parents divorce and adult children’s perception of romantic relationship. Many previous studies result showed that divorce could be traumatized for children. But there were few researches, which talked about how multiple divorces can affect adult children. Andrea South conducted a study with 50 participants. Among those 50 participants, 25 experienced one parental divorce, and the other 25 participants

2 experienced multiple parental divorces. Researcher hypothesized that children of divorced parents will experience more problems in their own romantic relationships, compared to who do not experience parental divorce. Also, children from multiple divorce family will be more personal disorganized than children who experienced one time divorce or children from an intact family. In order to test these hypotheses, South invited all 50 participants for an interview. At first participants filled out a worksheet about their family structure. Then each individual entered the room for interview, and the process was being audiotaped. Eighteen percent mentioned that their parent’s divorce was affecting their own view of marriage. They stated they don’t believe in marriage. One of the participant said families do not stay together, so it doesn’t shock him that rate of divorce is continuously increasing (South, 2013). Half of the participants mentioned that they do not think long-term marriage is doable for them. They have seen their parents failed at their marriage multiple times which discouraged them. They were afraid of being trapped in a marriage and also didn’t want to be dependent on their partner. These participants mentioned that they rather be in a live in relationship, then getting married to someone. It was not like parents were encouraging their child to not get married; instead their action was influencing them subconsciously. These participants had this mind set that since their parents failed at their marriage, they will also go down the hill as their parents. It’s the fear and less communication between parents and a child that lead to this decision. It’s the fear that their partner or themselves will not fight hard enough to stay in that relationship. They had never learnt to find solution of a problem instead they had seen their parents escaping from it. Although some participants mentioned in their interview that marriage was not for them, there were another 18% of people who didn’t want to get a divorce. They didn’t want their children to go through the same situation they went through growing up. Some participants among those wanted to wait longer

3 before getting married. Amelia who is 29 years old still felt she wasn’t ready for marriage. She claimed to have very high expectations from her partner, so she pushed away many men in her life. 21 years old David believed that people should get divorce when things are not working out between them. Similarly, Deborah agreed with what David said. She claimed that she could tackle single household more efficiently than a dual parent household because she had seen her mother do the same. Sixteen percent of the participants stated that the learned from their parents mistake. Staying in a multiple divorce family some learnt what to do and what not to do in a relationship. Kelly in the interview mentioned that she would never become like her mother, because her mother took a long time to take a stand for herself. Her father was an alcoholic and she grew up in a very dysfunctional family. Samantha’s mother married there times and brought many men home and often called herself a slut. Samantha felt like it is very hard for her to be involved in a relationship. Some participants mentioned that they didn’t want to become like their mother. But no one mentioned anything about the father. Which could imply that children after marriage tend to stay with their mother and spend less time with their father. It usually create bonding gap between parent and child. Sixteen percent of the participants mentioned that they didn’t have any previous successful and long-term relationships. They couldn’t define a healthy relationship. Most of them had problem communicating with opposite sex even if they liked the person, because their opposite sex parents were always absent. There was no book that talked about how to find a partner or how to date, so as a child they tend to model their parents as an ideal couple. And if they see their parents not communicating well with each other, that still becomes the ideal couple for them. They think this is how ideal couple should look like. Many individuals mentioned that they tend to take lots of decision about household without consulting their other half because they have seen their mother taking all the decision at a younger age.

4 They lack self- efficacy and think it is too late to fix everything because they are repeating their parent’s behavior. Ten percent stated that they had to work extra hard when they were in a relationship because they didn’t have any previous experience at communicating. Twelve percent tried finding partners that were totally different from their offending parent. Jeniffer mentioned that she was sexually harassed by her step -father and ended up marrying someone just like him who was a pedophile. It was hard for her to distinguish men. She had no idea what quality she should seek in her marriage. Lastly the last twenty percent of participants mentioned that they were very hard on their partners. They grew up in a multiple divorce family where there was no trust among the parents. Therefore, it became hard for them to trust their partners. Melissa who remarried claimed that her stepfather was very mean to her, so she always keeps an eye on her new husband. She doesn’t want him to treat her kids like Melissa’s father treated her. Melissa said she couldn’t wait to get married to her new husband (South, 2013). Deborah said when her girl friend from college asked her advise on their relationship, she tend to blame on the guy all the time. She is married now and it is hard for her to not be in control. As a child she saw her mother struggled a lot, her father didn’t pay for childcare support. Therefore, now she has become very bossy and likes things to be done in her way. Results after all these interview suggested that both groups of participants, who were from one parent divorce or multiple parent divorce, both were equally affected by their parents decision. It changed their attitudes toward their own marriage and romantic relationships. Some learned from their parents mistakes. Only differences between two groups were that multiple divorce parent group became very hard on their partners. At some point that they felt trapped and think they have to be in charge of everything.

5 Once a wise man said that- “your child is what you make him or her”. At a very early age if a children see their parents arguing most of the time, they are most likely to shape their behavior based on the observation (Bandura 1977). Social learning theory also suggested that, when young children see their parents fighting all the time, they begin to have a negative view on marriage. They tend to think marriage is the problem and avoid it as much as they can. To find the correlation between parent’s divorce and child’s own romantic relationship, researchers decided to conduct an experiment. Researchers hypothesized that individual whose parents are divorced will lean towards divorce and will have negative attitude toward marriage. Second hypothesis was that, in future this negative attitude would cause weaker commitment toward their romantic relationships. Lastly, individual’s quality of relationship most likely would be the same as parent’s relationship quality (Cui, Fincham, 2010). In order to support their hypothesis, researchers recruited 467 participants who were either from a complete family or a divorced family. Participants were give three surveys. One at the beginning, second survey was 7 weeks later and lastly 14 weeks later. There were two groups. One group had 285 participants; they stayed with the same partner for 14 weeks. Other group of 182 students claimed to have different partners during the study period. For the initial assessment participants were asked whether their parents had divorce or not (0 being no divorce, and 1 being divorce). Also, participants had to mention their parent’s marital conflicts. Participants whose parents were divorced mentioned about their parent’s marital conflicts before the divorce. Researchers main focus for the first assessment was to find answer for three statements. Statements were “my parents hardly ever argued or disagreed” (frequency), “my parents tended to get really angry when they argued or disagreed” (intensity), and when my parents argued they usually worked things out” (resolution) (Cui, 2010). Participants could either say true (1), sort of true (2) and false (3). The higher score

6 implied that there were more conflicts. To test researchers second hypothesis, they wanted to evaluate participant’s attitude towards marriage and divorce. Participants were presented with sets of statements. They had to strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with those statements. Statements were like, whether if it is okay for individual to get married to someone and thinking that if the relationship did not work out, they can always get a divorce. Second statement was it is more important feel happy than staying in marriage that is not working out nicely. Higher score suggested more positive attitude toward the marriage. Researchers also tried to examine participant’s commitment to their current relationship using the commitment scale. Again participants were given similar type of statements, where they had to answer each item ranging from 1 to 5. 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree. Statements were that whether participants wanted their relationship to stay strong even if they were going through a really rough time in their life. Also, whether if the were planning to not be with the same partner in near future. Participants who got higher score implied having a high level of commitment to their partner. Result found that 182 participants who were in various relationship throughout the period of the experiment mostly belonged from a divorced family. Researchers found positive correlation between divorce and marital conflict. Participants who came from a divorced family tend to give up easily when there is an argument as hypothesized. Also, group two had hard time committing to their romantic relationship. The result concluded that participants from a divorced family usually show less interest in a long-term relationship. They don’t work as hard as they should. They tend to think marriage is the problem and they have hard time finding resolution. As I have mentioned before children learn from their parents at a very early age. Parents are the primary educator. Children tend to adopt the behavior, if they see their parents fight all the time, not communicate nor respect each other and run away from the solution. Research shows these

7 behaviors stays with an individual unless they change the environment and make a different role model for themselves. Similar to the previous study, Scott R. Braithwaite was also interested finding the negative effect of parental divorce decision on young adults romantic relationships. This study is a more recent study of the previous one. Scott and his colleagues recruited 353 participants for this study. Their main goal was to see how might parent’s divorce distress their child’s relationship. They conducted similar experiments as Cui and added how children’s attachment and conflict management with their romantic relationships can be impacted by their attitude towards marriage. Participants were given an online survey and after 8 weeks they were required to do follow up survey. For the following up survey they had to answer whether they were in a relationship with the same person or broke up with them. Also, whether participants parents were divorced or not. In this study measured participants inter parental conflict, relational commitment, conflict management, pro divorce attitudes, attachment to partners and relationship satisfaction. Participants were given some statements from each category and they had to answer whether they agree or disagree. For inter parental conflict the higher the frequency score individual got, it showed that their parent had more conflicts. Higher score on intensity was accounted for intense parental conflict. The higher score on resolution scale indicated that the tried less to find solution. In relational commitment they main goal was to find how connected committed participants felt about their partner. Participants were given statements like- I desire other people more than my partner, I tend to think how my decisions would affect us not only me, I get satisfactions doing things for my partner (Braithwaite, Doxey, Dowdle, & Fincham, 2016). Higher score meant high commitment in relationship. For conflict management participants were given statements like- I twisted my partner’s arm or pulled their hair

8 (Braithwaite, 2016). This test was to see how they treated their partner. Answer was ranging from 0 to 25. Higher number conveyed that they became violent. Researchers also wanted to see how participants felt about themselves. Whether they felt depended on others, or if they felt that their partners did not love them. This was to test participants reliably. Lastly, participants were asked if they were satisfied in their relationships. They were given the same survey on first day and 8 weeks after. 8 weeks after they were also asked if they were still together with their partner. Results found that, participants whose parents were divorced showed to have insecure attachment to their parents. They felt like their partners didn’t love them enough. Parental divorce affected most participant’s relational commitment, conflict management, insecure attachment and attitudes toward divorce which later lead to either satisfaction or breakup. Individual whose parents did poor in their marriage, showed to do the same. On the other hand individual whose parents were divorced, but they were equally connected to both their parents showed equally good result as participants whose parents weren’t divorced. They were more satisfied in their relationship. At the end, results from all three study suggested that there is a correlation between divorce and children’s future romantic relationship. Parents who failed to show children what a healthy family should look like, not only failed at their marriage but also negatively affected children’s future romantic relationship. According to the studies, children showed low selfesteem, inconsiderate, self-doubt, and negative attitude toward marriage. They had hard time communicating and trusting partners. On the other hand, for some participants it was a learning experience. They learnt from their parents mistake what to do and what not to. They hope to become a better parent for their children.

9 Citation 1. Cui, M., & Fincham, F. D. (2010). The differential effects of parental divorce and marital conflict on young adult romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 17(3), 331-343. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01279.x 2. Braithwaite, Scott R., et al. “The Unique Influences of Parental Divorce and Parental Conflict on Emerging Adults in Romantic Relationships.” Journal of Adult Development, vol. 23, no. 4, 2016, pp. 214–225., doi:10.1007/s10804-016-9237-6. 3. South, A. L. (2013). Perceptions of Romantic Relationships in Adult Children of Divorce. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 54(2), 126-141. doi:10.1080/10502556.2012.755032...