Parental choice in children's minds: exploring personality, sex and age contingencies

Abstract

Parents have a strong interest in their children's mating behavior, and they impose costs on them when their mate choices deviate from their wishes. As a consequence, evolutionary pressure is exercised on children to adjust their mating behavior in a way that minimizes the retaliation costs from their parents. On this basis, three hypotheses are tested: First, children take into consideration their parents' opinion when they exercise mate choice. Second, daughters are more sensitive than sons over the impact that their mate choices will have on their parents. Finally, personality predicts how sensitive children are to their parents' opinion when they exercise mate choice. Evidence from a study of 311 individuals lends support for all three hypotheses.

Keywords::

• parental influence
• mate choice
• parental choice
• big-five
• parental manipulation

Introduction

Parents and children are not genetically identical, which indicates that their genetic interests converge but also diverge (Trivers, 1974). One area where interests diverge is mate choice where children frequently make mating decisions which are not to the best interest of their parents (Apostolou, 2008; Buunk, Park, & Dubbs, 2008; Trivers, 1974). To use one example of why this is so, the coefficient of relatedness of parents to children is .50, but the coefficient of relatedness of grandparents to grandchildren is half as much, i.e., .25. This means that parents obtain fewer genetic benefits from a prospective in-law of high genetic quality (for instance, genes that can withstand effectively the environmental strains), than their children from a prospective mate of high genetic quality (Apostolou, 2008; Buunk et al., 2008). Therefore, although both parents and children prefer a mate and an in-law, respectively, to be of good genetic quality, children place more emphasis on this trait than their parents (Apostolou, 2008). Consistent with this, a number of studies have found that more emphasis is placed on the looks (a proxy of genetic quality) of a prospective mate than the looks of a prospective in-law (Apostolou, 2008; Buunk et al., 2008; Perilloux, Fleischman, & Buss, 2011).

Beauty is not the only area of disagreement, with good family background, similar religious background, and exciting personality being other areas (Apostolou, 2008; Apostolou et al., 2014; Buunk et al., 2008; Perilloux et al., 2011). These research findings suggest that if children are left to exercise mate choice on their own, they would choose mates who do not comply with their parents' preferences. That is, the interests of parents and children over mate choice do not overlap, in the sense that children choose mates who are not considered the best options for their parents. This motivates the latter to place the mate choices of the former under their control, and make in-law choices that best promote their own interests. In a pre-industrial context, parents can control directly their daughters' and sons' mate choices by using physical force and their children's dependence on their resources (Apostolou, 2010). As a consequence, in pre-industrial societies the most common mode of long-term mating is arranged marriage where parents choose spouses for their children (Apostolou, 2014; Blood, 1972; Broude & Green, 1983).

In post-industrial societies, parents are constrained from using physical force on their children, while the latter are usually financially independent from the former when they reach marital age. Therefore, parents have to resort to alternative means such as advice and reasoning in order to influence their children's mating decisions (Apostolou, 2013; Sussman, 1953). In turn, this raises the question of whether children take into consideration their parents' preferences when they exercise mate choice.

Apostolou (2009) argued that this is actually the case, particularly for daughters. More specifically, British participants were asked to rate how important they considered several traits in a prospective spouse including items, such as “being compatible with my parents” and “my parents approve him/her.” These items were scored as important by individuals (usually placed in the middle of their preferences' hierarchy), while women considered these more important than men. In a more recent study, Dubbs, Buunk, and Li (2012), using American and Dutch participants, provided further evidence that daughters were more sensitive to their parents' opinion about their romantic relationships than sons. The purpose of the current study is to advance this line of research by identifying some important predictors of children's sensitivity to their parent's influence.

Hypotheses on parental influence

In contemporary pre-industrial societies, and most likely in ancestral ones, although mate choice is usually regulated and parents are able to dominate over their children's mating decisions, daughters and sons have also space to exercise mate choice. This can take place in extramarital relationships, in later marriages where parents are less influential, in manipulating parents, and in forming romantic relationships when outside parental supervision (Apostolou, 2010, 2014). Perhaps the most effective way for doing so, is through divorce, as divorce decisions rest predominantly in the hands of children (Apostolou, 2010). Nevertheless, parents are unlikely to accept their children circumventing their control, forming sexual relationships with individuals they like.

In particular, parents retaliate when they find their children engaging in relationships that they do not consider acceptable. For instance, they punish severely a daughter who is caught in a romantic relationship with someone they do not approve (Apostolou, 2014; Blood, 1972). In the same vein, it is not infrequent for parents to send back a daughter who runs away from her husband, and even if the marriage dissolves, they will most likely arrange the subsequent ones (Stephens, 1963). They will also use the resources they control toward this end. For instance, fathers can deny assisting a son with the payments of bridewealth (i.e., the wealth he has to pay to the parents of the bride for the marriage to proceed) if they do not approve the bride or her family, or they may disinherit him if he proceeds with the marriage (Apostolou, 2014).

Accordingly, going against parental wishes, will cause the negative reaction of parents who are likely to impose fitness cost on their children in order to alter their behavior. In a pre-industrial context, when children engage in relationships that do not meet the approval of their parents, the latter retaliate by imposing heavy costs on their children including physical punishment, expulsion from the family unit and disinheritance (Apostolou, 2014). For example, in the previous century, in Greece, among the Sarakatsan shepherds a father discovered that his daughter had an affair with a villager he did not approve:

The father took the girl to a secluded place, shot her with a pistol, and disposed of her body by rowing out into the gulf and sinking it with weights attached. Later, he killed the villager and dealt with his body in the same way. This case is often cited as the right solution to problems of this kind. (Campbell, 1964, p. 200)

This exercises an evolutionary pressure on children to find a way to minimize this cost. One such way is to take into consideration their parents' preferences when they exercise mate choice (Apostolou, 2009), reaching in effect a compromise between what they prefer and what their parents prefer. In this way for instance, they will avoid engaging in relationships with individuals whose parents consider as totally unacceptable, or perhaps they will choose to stay married with individuals their parents approve, but themselves do not consider so desirable. On this basis, it is predicted that children will be sensitive to their parents' opinion when they exercise mate choice.

Parents are more interested in controlling the mating decisions of their daughters than of their sons. One of the reasons is that women invest more in their children, which turns them into the scarce reproductive resource over which men strive to gain access (Trivers, 1972). Consequently, by controlling their daughters instead of their sons, parents can extract more benefits since the former constitutes a more valuable reproductive resource (Apostolou, 2010). In addition, as men value chastity in a woman (Buss, 2003), and because pregnancy may result in committing a daughter's investment to a man her parents do not approve, parents are further motivated to exercise control over the mating behavior of their daughters than of their sons (Perilloux, Fleischman, & Buss, 2008). Moreover, women do not face parental uncertainty thus, mothers are more certain than fathers that their grandchildren coming from their daughters than the ones coming from their sons are their own (see also Voland, Chasiotis, & Schiefenhovel, 2014). In addition, because women bear the costs of pregnancy and they also face menopause, they are more limited than men in the number of children they can have in their lifetimes; consequently, offspring from daughters is more limited as opposed to offspring from sons. These also add to the motive of parents to control more the mate choices of their daughters than of their sons.

Overall, parents have more to gain from controlling their daughters than their sons and more to lose if their daughters than their sons deviate from desirable mating behavior. Consequently, they will retaliate harder if their daughter strays than if their son strays. This translates into women having also more to lose if they disobey their parents than men. That is, a stronger selection pressure is exercised on daughters to conform to their parents' wishes (Apostolou, 2009). This is augmented further by the fact that women are physically weaker than men, and thus, they have a lower capacity to defend themselves against their parents' physical retaliation. Moreover, women are a target for sexual assault; therefore, in a pre-industrial context, they will have a harder time to survive outside their family, which means that a disagreement with parents and an exclusion from the family unit will be more costly for daughters. On this basis, it is predicted that daughters will ascribe more weight to their parents' opinion than sons when they exercise mate choice.

People take into consideration the impact that their actions will have on others, with the degree of this consideration being moderated by an individual's personality. For instance, people who are not kind may not be particularly considerate of the impact that their actions will have on others, they may not care much, for example, if an act they perform causes psychological distress to others. On the other hand, people who score high in this dimension will be much more considerate of the impact their actions have on others. Accordingly, research indicates that individuals who score high on agreeableness and conscientiousness tend to take more into consideration the impact of their behavior on other people than low scorers (Jehnsen-Campbell & Graziano, 2001; Schmitt & Buss, 2001). Similarly, research on tactics of manipulation indicates that personality dimensions such as agreeableness moderate the tactics that individuals use (Apostolou & Papageorgi, 2014; de Miguel & Buss, 2011). For example, one study found that neuroticism and agreeableness are significant predictors of mate retention tactics (de Miguel & Buss, 2011).

This suggests that personality is likely to be an important factor in children-parent interaction over mate choice. For instance, a highly agreeable son may avoid dating a girl which is unacceptable to his parents, so as to avoid causing sorrow to them. A low conscientious daughter may engage in romantic relationships without considering the impact that her behavior will have on her parents and the rest of her family. Accordingly, it is hypothesized that children's personality predicts how sensitive daughters and sons are to their parents' opinion when they exercise mate choice.

Last but not least, it has been argued above that daughters have more to lose than sons and are therefore more responsive to the preferences of their parents. Thus, there is a stronger situational force for daughters to listen to their parents compared to sons. This being the case, and given that personality has less impact on strong situations and more impact on weak situations (Snyder & Ickes, 1985), it is likely to be the case that personality may have a stronger effect on sons than on daughters. In different words, interaction effects between the sex of children and their personality are likely to arise.

In sum, three hypotheses are tested: First, children consider their parents' opinion when they exercise mate choice; second, daughters are more sensitive than sons regarding the impact that their mate choices will have on their parents, and third, personality predicts how sensitive children are to their parents' opinion when they exercise mate choice.

Overall, most of research efforts have been focused on identifying the various manipulation tactics that parents employ in order to influence their children's mating decisions. It has been proposed, however, that parents can remain influential even if they do not actually do anything, the reason being that their children are predisposed to take into consideration their opinion over their mate choices. This study aims to expand this research by (a) constructing a specific instrument to measure the impact of parents, (b) identify the various aspect of this impact, (c) measure the impact in a specific cultural context where this was not done before, and (d) test specific hypotheses on this impact.

Methods

Procedure

Two research assistants were employed for the purposes of this study. They recruited individuals who volunteered to participate in research on family relationships (no payment was given). The research got the approval of the institution's ethics board. The data collection process lasted approximately two months. The study took place in the Republic of Cyprus, and the participants came predominantly from the two biggest cities of the republic, namely Nicosia and Limassol. A snowball sampling technique was used where the research assistants recruited first several individuals and then obtained references for other individuals who may be interested in participating in the study. To qualify for participation, individuals had to be adults (18 years old or more). The participants were initially asked to sign a consent form, and then they were given the survey. Upon completion, the participants put the questionnaire in an unmarked enveloped and sealed it.

Participants

In this study, 311 Greek-Cypriots took part (179 women, 132 men). The mean age of women was 27 (SD = 9.6), and the mean age of men was 28.8 (SD = 10.1). Moreover, 39.2% of the participants were single, 34.4% were in a relationship, 22.8% were married, 2.3% were divorced, and .6% were widowed. Finally, 41.3% had completed high school, 45.8% had a university degree, and 12.9% had a postgraduate degree.

Materials

In order to develop an instrument that adequately measures sensitivity toward parents' opinion with respect to romantic relationships, a focus group was employed. The focus group consisted of eight participants (four men and four women, all post-graduate students in psychology) who were asked to discuss the question of whether their parents' opinion about their mates was important to them. One of the authors and one independent researcher recorded participants' responses. Participants indicated that they were concerned about dating, marriage, and the psychological impact that their choices will have on their parents. For instance, participants were arguing about terminating a relationship in order to please their parents, or about what will be the impact of such a relationship on the wellbeing of their parents. On this basis, an instrument was constructed which consisted of statements that reflect individuals' primary concerns related to their parents' opinion about their mating decisions. Overall, the instrument consisted of 10 items that participants had to rate in a 7-point Likert scale (1-strongly disagree, 7-strongly agree).

In order to measure the personality traits, the Big Five Inventory (BFI) was used. The instrument consists of 44 questions which measure the Big Five dimensions of personality (John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008). This was employed because it has good validity and reliability and has the advantage of not being particularly long. The BFI was translated into Greek by a bilingual post-graduate student, and, in order to examine consistency, it was back translated into English by a different post-graduate student. During this process, culturally inappropriate terms were not identified. Participants' answers were recorded in a 5-point Likert scale (1-strongly disagree, 5-strongly agree).

The survey had three parts. In the first part, participants had to rate their agreement with the 10 statements measuring sensitivity to parents' opinion, in the second part they were ask to score the BFI, and in the third part, demographic information was collected (age, sex, marital status). The order of presentation of parts one and two was counterbalanced across participants.

Results

In order to examine whether the instrument had any underlying components, principal components method for factor extraction and direct oblimin as the rotation method were used. Direct oblimin method was chosen because the assumption of non-correlated factors is unlikely to hold. The KMO statistic was .909 indicating a very good sample adequacy. The results suggested a two-factor solution (Eigenvalue>1).

The first factor extracted relates primarily to whether children are willing to change their relationship status (i.e., break up or forge a relationship) based on the opinion of their parents. In particular, the facets of this factor include individuals breaking up their relationship if this is not approved by their parents, or not entering in a relationship in the first place if this is unlikely to be approved by their parents. Another facet of this factor is that individuals take into consideration their parents' opinion about their relationship, even if they do not directly think of altering it.

The second factor relates to the psychological impact on self, caused by the negative psychological impact that an undesirable relationship has on parents. One facet of this is that the individuals' level of happiness is dependent on their parents' approval of their relationship. That is, they feel happy when their parents are happy with their relationship and unhappy when their parents are unhappy with their relationship. Another facet of this factor is that individuals consider dating individuals who they think will make their parents happy. Factor loadings are presented in Table 1. Reliability analysis indicated Cronbach's alpha to be .89 for the first factor and .75 for the second factor.

Table 1 Factor loadings and mean scores for sensitivity to parents' opinion.

	Factor loadings	Mean	SD
Alter relationship status
Overall		2.47	1.30
I am dating someone who my parents do not approve of. I consider breaking up the relationship	.879	2.18	1.52
Someone is flirting with me but I feel that he/she will not be liked by my parents. I would not go out with him/her	.844	2.15	1.63
My parents ask me to break up my relationship. I consider doing so	.811	2.11	1.41
I am to marry my boyfriend/girlfriend, but my parents strongly object to this. I would consider calling off the marriage	.791	2.59	1.77
When I am dating someone, I always consider whether my parents approve or disapprove of him/her	.716	2.62	1.73
I always take into consideration my parents' opinion about my boyfriend/girlfriend	.427	3.25	1.78
Psychological impact on self
Overall		4.25	1.48
I would be happier knowing that my parents approve of my boyfriend/girlfriend	.906	5.57	1.86
I am depressed knowing that my parents do not approve of my boyfriend/girlfriend	.753	4.08	2.01
My parents are depressed with my current relationship. I am very concerned about it	.535	3.65	1.93
I know a man/woman who my parents are likely to approve of and like very much. I would consider dating him/her	.466	3.70	2.02

In order to explore the overall sensitivity of children to their parents' opinion about their intimate relationships, we computed means and standard deviations for both factors and for the individual items composing each factor. These are presented in Table 1, where we can see that although individuals consider their parents' opinion, they would not consider parental disapproval to be a crucial reason for altering their relationship status. Nevertheless, individuals worry considerably about the impact that an undesirable relationship will have on their parents.

To test the rest of the hypotheses of this study, multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was applied to each factor. The scores for each question composing the factor were entered as dependent variables and the participants' sex, age, and personality scores (five variables, one for each personality dimension) were entered as independent variables. The results are presented in Table 2.

Table 2 Sex, personality and age contingencies of sensitivity to parents' opinion.

Alter relationship status	Sex				Conscientiousness		Age
	Men mean (SD)	Women mean (SD)	p	d	p	ηp^2	p	ηp^2
Overall	2.15 (1.21)	2.72 (1.32)	.008	.45	< .001	.085	< .001	.105
I am dating someone who my parents do not approve of. I consider breaking up the relationship.	1.94 (1.32)	2.39 (1.63)	.010	.30	n.s.	n.s.	< .001	.054
Someone is flirting with me but I feel that he/she will not be liked by my parents. I would not go out with him/her.	1.85 (1.46)	2.36 (1.69)	.003	.32	n.s.	n.s.	< .001	.042
My parents ask me to break up my relationship. I consider doing so.	1.86 (1.27)	2.27 (1.45)	.006	.30	.029	.016	< .001	.085
I am to marry my boyfriend/girlfriend, but my parents strongly object to this. I would consider calling off the marriage.	2.20 (1.61)	2.86 (1.81)	< .001	.39	n.s.	n.s.	< .001	.081
When I am dating someone, I always consider whether my parents approve or disapprove of him/her.	2.24 (1.64)	2.90 (1.71)	.001	.39	.001	.037	.005	.026
I always take into consideration my parents' opinion about my boyfriend/girlfriend.	2.90 (1.75)	3.49 (1.75)	.004	.34	.040	.014	.025	.017
Psychological impact on self
Overall	3.78 (1.60)	4.59 (1.29)	< .001	.56	.037	.034	.001	.058
I would be happier knowing that my parents approve of my boyfriend/girlfriend.	4.95 (2.10)	5.98 (1.53)	< .001	.56	.032	.015	n.s.
I am depressed knowing that my parents do not approve of my boyfriend/girlfriend.	3.50 (1.99)	4.42 (1.93)	< .001	.47	.003	.030	.001	.038
My parents are depressed with my current relationship. I am very concerned about it.	3.17 (1.90)	4.00 (1.90)	< .001	.44	n.s.	n.s.	.008	.024
I know a man/woman who my parents are likely to approve of and like very much. I would consider dating him/her.	3.28 (2.08)	3.91 (1.90)	.005	.42	n.s.	n.s.	.002	.033

We can see that in terms of personality, conscientiousness appears to be an important predictor for both dimensions of the sensitivity to parental control. Conscientiousness comes with a positive coefficient, indicating that the more conscientious individuals are, the more importance they ascribe to their parents' opinion. Participants' sex is also an important predictor, with women being more willing than men to alter their relationship's status, and they worry more about the impact that their relationship will have on their parents. In addition, age is an important predictor for both dimensions of sensitivity to parental opinion. The coefficient of age is positive, indicating that younger individuals are less sensitive to their parents' opinion than older ones.

Finally, in each case, interaction terms between the sex of the participants and each personality dimension (i.e., five interaction terms) were entered as independent variables. No significant results were produced.

Discussion

Consistent with the original hypothesis, personality, and specifically conscientiousness, constitutes an important predictor of how sensitive children are to their parents' opinion about their mate choices. Furthermore, both daughters and sons, but particularly daughters, take into consideration their parents' opinion when they exercise mate choice. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that the sensitivity to parents' opinion has two aspects, one reflecting the consideration of changing relationship status to comply with parental wishes, and the other reflecting the psychological impact on self, caused by the negative psychological impact that an undesirable relationship has on parents.

These results indicate that although, on the surface, it appears that in post-industrial societies children exercise mate choice unconstrained, there is a subtle constrain namely, daughters' and sons' predisposition to take into consideration their parents' opinion when they choose mates. One implication of this is that mate seekers, particularly men, with traits that appeal to parents have a selective advantage over others who lack these traits. This is because, although women may not be particularly interested in such traits (e.g., good family background), they may nevertheless see those who have them favorably in order to please their parents. Consistent with this, Dubbs et al. (2012) found that children who are more sensitive to their parents' opinion have more converging mate preferences with in-law preferences than those who are less sensitive.

As expected, conscientiousness came as a significant positive predictor of sensitivity. This was expected also for agreeableness, which, however, did not become significant. We are not sure why this is the case, and future studies need to replicate this finding in different samples and perhaps using different instruments to measure personality. Also, it is not surprising that the remaining personality dimensions did not become significant. For instance, there is no reason to believe that people high in openness or extroversion differ in the sensitivity they exhibit to their parents' opinion from low scorers in these dimensions. Finally, interaction effects between the sex of the children and the sex of the parent were not found.

One possible explanation for this is that in the cultural context where this study took place, parents may not be willing to discriminate between their children and apply more punishment on their daughters than on their sons. Thus, the situational force exercised on daughters to comply with their parents' wishes may not be that different for sons for significant interactions between sex and personality to be produced. This suggests, however, that such interaction effects are likely to arise in other contexts (e.g., in pre-industrial societies) where the situational force is stronger over daughters. Future research needs to examine if this is the case.

Age appears also to be an important predictor, with older children taking more into consideration their parents' opinion than younger ones. One possible explanation for this is that there is a shift toward less parental involvement in mate choice recently compared with past decades. This being the case, this finding could be a secular trend underlying the results rather than due to participants' age per se being the primary cause. Consistent with this, a few decades ago parents in Cyprus were heavily involved in their children's mate choices with arranged marriage being also a common form of long-term mating (Mallinson, 2008). However, in the last few decades, economic development have resulted in much more economic autonomy of children from their parents, and a consequent, less parental control over mate choice. Parents are still heavily involved in their children's mate choices, predominantly through the use of manipulation (see Apostolou, 2013); yet, their capacity to exercise direct control through physical punishment or withdrawal of parental investment has been decreased considerably.

Another contributing factor can be that older participants have older parents than younger participants. Consequently, older participants may worry more about the possible consequences of their mating decisions on their parents' health. For instance, an undesirable marriage may cause strain to parents, and children, whose parents are old and presumably with more fragile health, may worry more about the impact of this on their parents than children with younger parents who presumably enjoy a more robust health. Future research needs to distinguish between alternative explanations.

Moreover, although individuals are not very willing to alter their relationship's status in order to satisfy their parents, they are more concerned about the impact that their relationship will have on them. Furthermore, our findings indicate that parental influence over mate choice would reach a maximum in high conscientious older daughters and a minimum in low conscientious younger sons. Parents then may prefer to use more psychological manipulation on their children if they are conscientious, female and of older age, as this is likely to be effective. On the other hand, if their children score low in conscientiousness, are young and male, they may prefer instead to use a more direct approach (e.g., bribe them with money).

There are systematic differences in personality between men and women (Else-Quest, Hyde, Goldsmith, & Van Hulle, 2006). For instance, women score higher than men in facets of agreeableness, such as tender-mindedness (Chapman, Dubestein, Sorensen, & Lyness, 2007; McCrae, Terracciano, & 78 Members of the Personality Profiles of Cultures Project, 2005). Thus, although previous research has found that daughters are more considerate of their parents' opinion when they exercise mate choice (Apostolou, 2009; Dubbs et al., 2012), this may be due to the differences in personality between sexes rather than due to women being more sensitive to their parents' opinion about their romantic relationships than men. Accordingly, one contribution of the present study is that, by controlling for personality traits, it provides support for the hypothesis that the observed sex difference reflects an evolved predisposition and it is not a proxy effect.

Nevertheless, there are still other factors that may contribute to the observed sex difference. For instance, women tend to seek fewer and more intense relationships for support that can be more reliably drawn upon to aid in survival and childcare (Campbell, 2013). Daughters then tend to maintain more consistent contact with their parents than sons, reinforced through enhanced emotional sensitivity, and this would show up in various domains, one of which is parental choice.

Furthermore, cross-cultural variability on the sensitivity of children to their parents' opinion is expected (see also Goodwin, 2008); for instance, in societies where children are more dependent on their parents and where parents are less constrained in using physical force, it is anticipated that daughters and sons will be more considerate of their parents' opinion. One limitation of this study is that it cannot examine such variability, as it is based on a single culture. Thus, future research needs to replicate these findings in different cultural contexts. Furthermore, this study is based on self-report data which involves certain biases. Research hypotheses, particularly in the areas of mating and reproduction, are affected by normative response formats one being social desirability. There is also the assumption that the participant can give an account of the targeted psychological concept in a self-report, which may not be the case. For instance, individuals may be more or less considerate of their parents' opinion than they indicate here when they have to actually exercise mate choice. In addition, individuals may not have an accurate perception of their personality. They may, for instance, consider themselves to be higher in agreeableness than they really are. Accordingly, future studies need to replicate these findings using methods other than self-report for personality assessment (e.g., use observer-report data).

Moreover, we developed our instrument with the use of the focus-group method as this allows an in-depth understanding of a phenomenon for which there is little research (Liamputtong, 2009). Yet, the sample employed was neither extensive nor representative of the population; thus, some dimensions of interest may have been missed. Last but not least, as the importance of a relationship increases, one might anticipate that this will have an impact on the sensitivity to parental acceptance. For instance, individuals may consider more the opinion of their parents when they engage in a relationship which has the prospects of marriage than in a casual relationship. In this study we have asked participants different scenarios about their relationship, but we have not manipulated the seriousness of the relationship, and future studies may attempt to do so in order to examine the impact on children's considerations.

One important conclusion that comes from this research is that parents remain influential over mate choice even if they do nothing to influence their children's mating decisions. Actually, parents may not be even close in proximity (i.e., they may live in a different city or country) when their children choose mates, and yet they can have an impact on these choices as their daughters and sons will tend to consider their preferences. These results can benefit future studies which may attempt to examine social influence which is not the product of an observed action such as an act of manipulation (e.g., a threat).

Overall, to our knowledge, this is the first study that assesses whether personality predicts children's sensitivity to their parents' opinion concerning their intimate relationships. Apart from personality, sex and age have been identified as important predictors of how much weight children ascribe to their parents' opinion. Future research needs to investigate the implications of these findings in parents-children interactions and family dynamics.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editor Ilja van Beestand and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback which enabled us to improve our work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.