Marriage and daughters of divorce.

Abstract

Several studies have focused on the impact parental divorce exerts on daughters' courtship behavior. None, however, have investigated the marital relationships of adult daughters of divorced parents. In this study 80 married women from divorced and intact backgrounds, 40 in each group, were compared. Members of the sample were exclusively Caucasian and predominantly middle-class. The two groups did not significantly differ on demographic measures of age, length of time married, number of children, employment status, or socio-economic status. Analyses showed that daughters from divorce backgrounds differed significantly from intact background daughters on three outcome measures used to assess heterosexual adjustment and intimacy. Daughters from divorce backgrounds were less satisfied in their marriages, less secure in their romantic attachments, and more pessimistic about the durability of heterosexual relationships. In addition, while divorce-background subjects who were dissatisfied in their marriages or insecure in their attachments were more likely to consider divorce as an option, their intact-background counterparts did not view divorce as an option, regardless of the degree of marital distress they described.