Attachment Style, Self-esteem, and Locus of Control in Adult Children of Divorce

Abstract

Prior research has indicated that the attachment styles of children who have been through a parental divorce develop in a less secure way in comparison to children with intact parental relationships (Evans & Bloom, 1996; Sprecher, Cate, & Levin, 1998; Brennen & Shaver, 1998; Summers, Forehand, Armistead, & Tannenbaum, 1998; Lewis, Feiring, & Rosenthal, 2000, as cited in Sirvanli-Ozen, 2015). It has also been demonstrated that lower self-esteem is associated with children who have weaker parent-child relationships (Mustonen et al., 2011), as well as an unclear pattern of locus of control between these two groups (Glover & Steele, 1988; St-Yves et al., 1989; Kalter et al., 1984). This study examined the relationship between attachment style, self-esteem, and locus of control between children of divorce and intact families. The purpose of doing so is to provide a better understanding of not only how parental divorce impacts a child’s future relationships, but their feeling of self and the world around them. Adults aged 21-30 (N = 222) were separated into groups contingent on their parental status and completed self-report measures assessing their attachment style, self-esteem, locus of control, and perceived interparental conflict as a child. This experiment utilized a differential group method where results relied on correlational and regression analyses. No prior research has implemented a self-discrepancy style self-esteem measure for these groups, which was shown to mirror Rosenberg Self-Esteem (RSE) results. Results showed children of divorce displayed less secure forms of attachment, with no differences in self-esteem or locus of control between groups. While results showed that increased perception of conflict was significantly associated with attachment anxiety in children of divorce, this was not the case for attachment avoidance or attachment ambivalence.