“Love Doesn’t Just Happen…”: Parent-Child Communication About Marriage

Abstract

This study takes an exploratory, qualitative approach to examine the communication between parents and their children on the topic of marriage. Two research questions guide this study regarding what messages newlyweds recall receiving from their parents about marriage and how accurate the newlyweds perceive these messages to be. An inductive theme analysis revealed several meanings of marriage were transmitted from parent to child: Marriage means a lifelong commitment, marriage means work, and traditional values of marriage. Largely, these meanings of marriage were perceived to be accurate by the newlyweds.

Keywords:

• Family Communication
• Interpersonal Communication
• Marital Myth
• Memorable Messages
• Parent-Child Communication
• Social Learning Theory