A Life-Span Approach to Children-In-Law’s Perceptions of Parent-In-Law Communication

ABSTRACT

Relationships between children-in-law (CIL) and parents-in-law (PIL) can be enduring sources of delight or distress that influence the quality of spousal relationships and grandparent-grandchild ties. Little research, however, examines CIL perceptions of in-law relationships (ILRs) beyond the newlywed years. Drawing on the life course perspective and socioemotional selectivity theory, we hypothesized that marital duration would predict how frequently CIL encountered positive and negative PIL behaviors, and account for the degree to which these behaviors were appraised favorably or as problematic. A total of 179 individuals rated how often a target PIL provided informational support, instrumental support, emotional support, and companionship, and how frequently the target PIL was intrusive, rejecting, insensitive, and failed to help. The frequency with which both positive and negative in-law behaviors were experienced was predicted by marital duration (but not CIL age or PIL age), although quadratic and cubic marital duration terms were better predictors than the linear term.

Notes

¹ Byron (Byron & Halleck, 1844, p. 104) wrote of his mother-in-law “I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law; and even then, if I could have been certain to haunt her, and fling the shattered scalp of my sinciput and occiput in her frightful face—but I won’t dwell upon these trifling family matters”; Twain (Twain & Brennan, 2014) is reported to have quipped that “Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.”