Parental divorce and adult children's attachment representations and marital status

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore adult attachment as a means of understanding the intergenerational transmission of divorce, that is, the propensity for the children of divorce to end their own marriages. Participants included 157 couples assessed 3 months prior to their weddings and 6 years later. Participants completed the Adult Attachment Interview and questionnaires about their relationships, and were videotaped with their partners in a couple interaction task. Results indicated that, in this sample, adult children of divorce were not more likely to divorce within the first 6 years of marriage. However, parental divorce increased the likelihood of having an insecure adult attachment status. For women, age at the time of their parents' divorce was related to adult attachment status, and the influence on attachment representations may be more enduring. Among adult children of divorce, those who were classified as secure in their attachment representations were less likely to divorce in the early years of marriage than insecure participants.

Keywords:

• attachment
• divorce
• parental divorce

Notes

1. We used major classification (Secure, Insecure-Dismissing, Insecure-Preoccupied) excluding the Unresolved classification, as the means to classify individuals as Secure or Insecure. The Unresolved classification, although considered Insecure (Main & Goldwyn, 1994), appears to be distinct from the major classifications: (1) it is not a stable classification comparatively speaking, and the correlates of its stability are different than those of the major classifications (Crowell et al., 2002b); (2) equivalence of the coding based upon the traumatic experiences of loss versus abuse is unclear (Colon-Downs, 1997; Crowell et al., 2002b). Furthermore, the classification appears to have a different meaning when it is paired with a Secure versus an Insecure major classification (Creasey, 2002).