Parental Divorce Disclosures, Young Adults’ Emotion Regulation Strategies, and Feeling Caught

ABSTRACT

Little research has focused on young adult children’s emotion management during parental divorce disclosures. However, understanding the ways in which divorce disclosures impact young adults is paramount in promoting healthy family communication. A greater comprehension of these impacts can help families process through difficult conversations and understand disclosures’ influence on individuals’ mental and emotional health. Guided by the divorce disclosure model (Afifi, Schrodt, & McManus, 2009b), the current study included 419 young adult (i.e, aged 18–30) participants who completed an online questionnaire, including a newly developed communicative emotion management measure. Through structural equation modeling, results indicated that cognitive reappraisal and feeling caught mediate the relationship between divorce disclosures and emotion regulation strategies and that this association is contingent upon young adults’ mental health. Implications are discussed, and suggestions for family research and practitioner guidance are offered.

Notes

^1. One reviewer asked whether the structural model would change if we removed the participants who did not report their age (5% of the sample). Eliminating these from the sample did not meaningfully alter model fit, χ²(394) = 623.86, CFI = .98, NNFI = .97, RMSEA = .038_{[90% CI = .033:.044]}. Likewise, this truncated sample yielded parameter estimates that did not differ from the direction, magnitude, or significance of the regression parameters obtained for the full sample. The only exceptions were the linear effect of disclosure on silence, which was significant in the full sample (B = −0.12, SE = 0.06, β = -.11) but nonsignificant in the truncated sample (B = −0.11, SE = 0.06, β = -.11), and the curvilinear effect of disclosure on face, which was nonsignificant in the full sample (B = −0.10, SE = 0.06, β = -.09) but significant in the truncated sample (B = −0.12, SE = 0.06, β = -.12). Given that these two deviations are minor (simply hovering around the p = .05 cutoff), we conclude that removing those who did not report age does not meaningfully alter study results. Contact the lead author for additional details on this reanalysis.