Rosemary Dunlop

Parental Marital Quality and Family Conflict

Abstract Recent studies by Amato and Booth (1997) and Wallerstein, Blakeslee and Lewis (2000) have reported that the children of highly-conflicted parents who remained together, and the children of low-conflict parents who separated, were as adults more poorly adjusted than others, and less successful in themselves forming and maintaining intimate relationships. These associations were explored in a longitudinal study of 67 adolescents aged 13-16 when first interviewed, at which time half the families involved were at the point of divorce. Mothers, fathers and adolescents initially rated the level of conflict in the family, and parents also rated their marital adjustment and their satisfaction with marital conflict resolution (in the case of the divorce group, at the time just before the decision to separate). The adolescents also reported whether they got involved in their parents disagreements, and completed standardised measures of self-image, anxiety and depression. Ten years later the now-adult children repeated these items, along with measures of readiness for intimacy and wariness about relationships, and some further family conflict items. Family conflict at Time 1 (as perceived by the child) predicted self-image and anxiety at Year 1, but not at Year 10. However, the adult childrens current rating of happiness in the family of origin predicted current self-image. As adults, daughters were more anxious than sons, and daughters who had previously rated their families as highly conflicted were more depressed than other sample members. Parents marital status was relevant only to wariness about relationships. Children from the divorce group were more wary overall. Their level of wariness was unaffected by their Year 1 reports of involvement in parental disagreements, but within the intact group, greater wariness was associated with greater involvement in parental conflict at Year 1. These findings indicate a different pattern of long-term outcomes from those reported by Amato & Booth (1997) and Wallerstein, Blakeslee and Lewis (2000).

“Which Basket Are Your Eggs In?” Emotional Investments From Early Adolescence to Early Adulthood Among Sons and Daughters of Divorced and Nondivorced Parents

The “Eggs in a Basket” task (Topham, 1973) has proved valuable in the practice of family therapy, but has not until now been employed in research. In the present study, it was used to explore changes in the spread of emotional investments over the 10-year period from early adolescence to the mid-twenties, among 57 sons and daughters from divorced and nondivorced homes. The Eggs task required participants to divide up a set of 12 eggs between a “self”, “mother”, “father”, and “other” basket to indicate “how much of yourself you give” to each of these baskets. Participants performed the task at the time of parental divorce in the divorce group (when aged 13 to 16 years old), and 3 years (aged 16 to 19 years old) and 10 years later (aged between 23 and 26 years). Investment in the self-basket rose between early and later adolescence, but by the mid-twenties had returned to the early adolescent level. Mother scores were high at Time 1 but then declined steadily. Father scores were lower than mother or self at Time 1 and fell to quite a low level over time. “Other” scores were lower at Time 2, but were highest of all at Time 3.There were no gender or parent group differences at Time 1, but at Times 2 and 3 daughters were more invested in their mothers than were sons; and the intact family group were more invested in their fathers than the divorce group. A three-way interaction analysis showed that divorce-group daughters stood out from others in maintaining a high emotional investment in their mothers into their mid-twenties; at which time they were less invested in others than were the rest of the sample.

Children and parental divorce: The meaning of small effects

Abstract Rodgers (1996) presents a critique of Australian studies of children of divorce, including our own research. He argues that the small and often nonsignificant effects usually reported should not be disregarded, because even small disadvantages are serious when they apply to a large group. He argues further that the effect sizes found in the Australian studies are similar to those of US studies, which commonly do report significant findings; the difference is that the US studies usually have larger samples and thus greater power. As a corollary, the Australian studies would have had similarly significant results had they used equally large samples. We present an analysis of the effect sizes we obtained for five independent variables (divorce, gender, father-child relations, mother-child relations, and fathers occupation) on three outcome variables (anxiety, depression, self-concept). Compared to the effects of the other four predictors, the effects of divorce were very weak, and in the case of an...