Parents' Marital Functioning and the Development of Adolescent Romantic Relationships

1. Parents' Marital Functioning and the Development of Adolescent Romantic Relationships Amanda L. Hare, F. Christy McFarland, & Joseph P. Allen University of Virginia Copies of this poster & related research will be available at: www.teenresearch.org

2. Introduction The developmental significance of romantic relationships in adolescence has recently gained new attention in the literature (Collins, 2003). In addition to the association with subsequent relationship functioning (Furman & Flanagan, 1997), early romantic relationships are also a primary impact on adolescents’ general well-being. For instance, positive experiences with early romantic relationships have been linked to lower stress, lower loneliness, and higher academic satisfaction (Moore & Leung, 2002). They likely promote certain normative developmental tasks as well, including identity development, autonomy from the family of origin, and scholastic achievement (Furman & Shaffer, 2003).

3. Introduction Although a small body of literature supports the theory that family-of-origin functioning is a primary influence on romantic relationships in adolescence (Reese-Weber & Bartle-Haring, 1998), much of the research focuses on parent-child relationships rather than on the parents’ marital relationship as predictors. The few studies that have investigated the influence of the parents’ marital relationship have unfortunately been limited to self-report measures. In contrast, this study used longitudinal, multi-reporter data to examine the influence of parents’ marital relationship functioning on subsequent adolescent romantic relationships.

4. Method • Participants • Participants reported on 51 target adolescents (51% male), averaging 13.2 years of age at Time 1 and 17.8 years of age at Time 2. • 86 Parents (56% female) participated at Time 1. • 51 Romantic Partners (51% female) participated at Time 2.

5. Method • Measures • Parents completed the Consensus and Affectional Expression subscales from the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976) about their partner at Time 1. • Sample Consensus items: “How much have you and your partner disagreed about Handling family finances?”, “…matters of recreation?”, “…religious matters?”, • Sample Affectional Expression items: “How much have you and your partner disagreed about demonstrations of affection?”, “…sexual relations?”

6. Method • Measures • Romantic partners completed the Antagonism and Dominance subscales of the Network of Relationships Inventory (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985) at Time 2. • Sample Antagonism item: “How much do you and this person hassle or nag one another?” • Sample Dominance item: “How often does this person end up being the one who makes decisions for both of you?”

7. Method • Measures • Romantic partners completed the Relational Victimization subscale from the Romantic Relational Aggression and Victimization (Morales & Crick, 1998) at Time 2. • Sample relational victimization item: “My romantic partner tries to make me feel jealous as a way of getting back at me.”

8. Results & Conclusions Higher maternal reports of dyadic consensus are related to significantly lower romantic partner reports of teen antagonism four years later.

9. Results & Conclusions Higher maternal reports of marital consensus are related to romantic partner reports of significantly more equitable relationships with teens four years later.

10. Results & Conclusions Higher paternal reports of dyadic affectional expression are related to lower romantic partner reports of teen relational aggression four years later in females, but not in males.

11. Discussion • Overall, the current findings support the idea that family-of-origin functioning (and not just children’s perceptions of family-of-origin functioning) during childhood is in fact a primary influence on adolescents’ subsequent romantic relationship. • Future research will include observational measures of teens’ use of conflict resolution tactics with their romantic partners, in order to assess the accuracy of romantic partners’ perceptions.

12. References Collins, W. A. (2003). More than myth: The developmental significance og romantic relationships during adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 13(1), 1-24. Furman, W. & Buhrmester, D. (1985). Children’s perceptions of the personal relationships in their social networks. Developmental Psychology, 21, 1016-1022. Furman, W. & Flanagan, A. (1997). The influence of earlier relationships on marriage: An attachment perspective. In Halford, W. & Markman, H. (Ed.) Clinical handbook of marriage and couples interventions (pp. 179-202). New York, NY, US: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Furman, W. & Shaffer, L. (2003). The role of romantic relationships in adolescent development. In Florsheim, P. (Ed.) Adolescent romantic relations and sexual behavior: Theory, research, and practical implications (pp. 3-22). Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Moore, S. & Leung, C. (2002). Young people’s romantic attachment styles and their associations with well-being. Journal of Adolescence, 25, 243-255. Morales, J.R. & Crick, N.R. (1998). Self-report measure of aggression and victimization. Unpublished measure. Reese-Weber, M. & Bartle-Haring, S. (1998). Conflict resolution styles in family subsystems and adolescent romantic relationships. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 27(6), 735-752. Spanier, G. B. (1976). Measuring dyadic adjustment: New scales for assessing the quality of marriage and similar dyads. Journal of Marriage & the Family. Vol 38(1), 15-28.

13. Acknowledgments • We would like to thank the National Institute of Mental Health for funding awarded to Joseph P. Allen, Principal Investigator, (Grants #R01-MH44934, and R01-MH58066) to conduct and write-up this project.