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Abstract
We used path analysis to investigate the impact of parental divorce on God image, mediated by father–child and mother–child attachments, among 178 college students at a Christian university. Findings revealed that parental divorce negatively impacts father–child attachment; however, father–child attachment does not impact God image. Instead, the quality of mother–child attachment, which does not seem to be influenced by parental divorce, best predicts the development of a healthy God image. Thus, preliminary findings elucidated that parental divorce undermines the quality of attachment between father and child but not mother and child, and mother–child attachment ultimately influences God image. Further research is needed to replicate and generalize these preliminary findings.
Notes
a Total does not equal 100% due to several participants leaving item blank or due to rounding.
b Several participants left this item blank.
For the parental divorce variable, 0 = no and 1 = yes; Ns within the correlation matrix ranged from 166 to 178 due to missing scores among participants.
*p < .05, **p < .01.
Unfortunately, Marquardt (2005) only published descriptive data and did not operationally define spirituality.
This study was modeled after research conducted by Mustonen et al. (2011), who found that parental divorce negatively impacts adult romantic relationships, mediated by parent–child relationships.
Although the IPPA was designed for use with adolescents up to age 20, we administered this instrument to young adults between the ages of 17 and 24 to assess the potential link between attachment to parents and God image, consistent with the correspondence theory of God image/attachment (see, e.g., McDonald et al., Citation2005). In either case, the mean age for the participants in this study was 19 years old, within the age range of the IPPA original design.