Intergenerational Transmission Effects on Relationship Satisfaction

Theoretical Background

Intergenerational family systems theory (Bowen, 1978) presumes that the level of differentiation of self or individuation that occurs within the family system and the balance between separateness and connectedness developed through the process of differentiation characterizes family functioning (Sabatelli & Bartle-Haring, 2003). Within well-differentiated families, parents promote individuality and autonomy by respectful, warm, and caring connections to one another and to their children, and such patterns of interaction enable individuals to differentiate themselves from their family and maintain both a sense of connectedness and a sense of separateness (Bowen, 1978). Individuals in less differentiated families may have difficulty in balancing separateness and connectedness within their family system and, consequently, may experience problems both in individual and relationship development (Bartle & Rosen, 1994). Individuals can recognize the family’s differentiating behaviors as either facilitating or hindering their individuating efforts (Sabatelli & Anderson, 1991). These propositions suggest that both the actual level of differentiation within the FOO as well as children’s perceptions of their family’s differentiating behavior may influence how they develop optimal balance between separateness and connectedness and, consequently, their own intimate relationships. Therefore, children’s perceptions of the relationship functioning and differentiating behavior in their FOO experience may play an essential role as a mediating factor in determining the nature of the association between relationship functioning in the FOO and in offspring’s own intimate relationships.

Gender Differences in the Process of Individuation and Intergenerational Transmission

Bartle and Rosen (1994) suggested that gender differences appear during the process of individuation. Although both males and females struggle to differentiate themselves from their parents and achieve some level of individuation, there may be gender differences in the type of relational problems manifested through this struggle. Males may appear “autonomous” although they want to have some connection, whereas females may appear “dependent” although they want to have some sense of autonomy. If this is true, males and females are most likely to bring both different types and levels of FOO effects into their intimate relationships. Therefore, each partner’s FOO experience is likely to affect the relationship in a different way. In fact, Sabatelli and Bartle-Haring (2003) showed that wives’ FOO experiences not only had stronger effects than husbands’ but also influenced husband’s marital adjustment, whereas husbands’ FOO experiences did not significantly influence wives’ marital adjustment. Several other researchers also found that females’ FOO experience had a greater impact on adult relationships than males’ FOO experience (Holman & Birch, 2001; Topham, Larson, & Holman, 2005).

Cultural Differences in the Process of Individuation

There are several studies on the differences in family systems, dynamics, or parenting styles of people from different cultures. Researchers generally have shown that there are unique patterns in how people in different cultures treat others especially within their family systems (e.g., Chao, 2001; Parke & Buriel, 2006). Rothbaum, Rosen, Ujiie, and Uchida (2002) thoroughly explained how American and Japanese interact with their family members differently and how they value unique family dynamics. They pointed out that although various forms of behaviors and interactions engaged by Japanese families are considered pathological or dysfunctional in the United States, Japanese people take a different view and find a different meaning in the behaviors and interactions. Therefore, those “pathological” or “dysfunctional” behaviors and interactions are more adaptive and acceptable in Japan than they are in the United States, and Japanese families could still function well even when they use these behaviors and interactions. “An over-involved” mother–child relationship, for example, is believed to promote insecure attachment in the United States; however, in contrast, a highly close mother–child relationship is believed to promote security in Japan (Rothbaum et al., 2002).

Differences in Cultural Identity Between Immigrant Generations

The transgenerational cultural identity model (Cardona, Busby, & Wampler, 2004) suggests that intergenerational transmission process may differ between immigrant generations. The model was developed based on the cultural identity theory, which assumes that individuals develop and may change their cultural identity as they go through various stages of psychological development. The integral parts of the theory include experiences of connection, differentiation, dynamics of oppression, and resiliency. The authors introduced two models: one for first-generation immigrants and the other for subsequent generations. The proposed five cultural identity categories were as follows: (a) original culture identification, (b) new country culture identification, (c) original culture identification open to expand, (d) new country identification open to expand, and (e) integrated identification. The model suggests that the cultural identity achieved by the first generation would influence which cultural identity the subsequent generation would achieve, although the values and sense of identity of individuals in the subsequent generation could be quite different from those individuals in the first generation.

Intergenerational Relationships in Asian American Immigrant Families

The literature on intergenerational relationships provides some clues to understand circumstances that may influence the intergenerational transmission process for Asians and Asian Americans. First, in Asian cultures, family members are highly interdependent, and children are both emotionally and socially dependent on their parents (Segal, 1991). However, children of Asian immigrants may prefer greater independence than what their parents expect because of the greater exposure to the American culture that emphasizes independence and separation from families (e.g., Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chan, & Buriel, 1990; Segal, 1991). Therefore, they may develop less Asian-oriented cultural values than their parents do. Consequently, Asian immigrants and subsequent generations are likely to experience an intergenerational gap and potential conflict in terms of cultural values and norms (Sluzki, 1979). In fact, Phinney, Ong, and Madden (2000) found that the intergenerational discrepancy between second-generation Vietnamese adolescents and their parents was much greater than that between first-generation Vietnamese adolescents and their parents.

In addition, Asian families place different expectations on male and female children to follow their family tradition. Male children are more strongly expected to conform to their family tradition than female children because of their primary role to keep their family names and take care of their aging parents. In contrast, the expectation for female children is not as strong as that for male children because females in Asian families usually become a member of the husband’s family when they marry (Segal, 1991).

Moreover, the idea of gender equality espoused in Western culture can have an impact on female children of Asian American immigrants who sometimes embrace Western values over traditional Asian values (Tang, 1997). Although first-generation Asian immigrant mothers tend to keep holding traditional Asian values (Kim & Hurh, 1998), their daughters are more likely to adopt Western values including emphasizing more individuation from their families, seeking individual achievement, and desiring more equal relationships between spouses in marriage (Suh, 2007). Therefore, female children of Asian American immigrants may be more likely to develop a pro-Western cultural identity than male counterparts or experience difficulty with developing their female identity and conforming to their mothers’ expectations stemming from traditional Asian values.

Based on the literature on individuation, we understand that there are gender and cultural differences in the level of individuation. In addition, the literature on cultural identity and intergenerational relationships in immigrant families suggests that there may be a larger intergenerational gap between first-generation immigrants and succeeding generations than that between first-generation immigrants and their parents. Therefore, we assume that gender, culture, and immigrant generations may all influence the intergenerational transmission processes.

The Purpose of the Present Study

The purpose of this study is to examine how gender, culture, and immigrant generations affect the influence of the FOO on relationship satisfaction. To examine cultural differences, we specifically compare Caucasians and Asians in this study because Asians are one of the understudied ethnic groups. In addition, we evaluate how FOO experiences uniquely influence male and female partners’ own and their partners’ relationship satisfaction. We also compare Asian-born Asians and North American–born Asians (hereafter referred to as NA-born Asians) to explore how the intergenerational transmission process differs between immigrant generations. We test the following two hypotheses:

The Conceptual Model

To test these hypotheses, we have developed a conceptual model of FOO influence on relationship satisfaction (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

The hypothesized model of the effects of family-of-origin experience on relationship satisfaction

Previous studies have found that both parental marital quality and parent–child relationship quality influence offspring’s intimate relationship quality and parental marital quality precedes parent–child relationship in influencing offspring’s relationship quality (Cowan & Cowan, 2005). In addition, Sabatelli and Bartle-Haring (2003) found that individuals’ perceptions of their FOO experience (i.e., parents’ marriage, father–child and mother–child relationships) significantly predicted their marital adjustment. Our conceptual model is similar to Sabatelli and Bartle-Haring’s model; however, we incorporated a mediating variable, the Evaluation of FOO (Busby, Holman, & Taniguchi, 2001) to explore the impact of the mediating factor on the association between FOO experience and relationship quality. The Evaluation of FOO scale measures how individuals evaluate their FOO experiences and its influence on their own intimate relationship. We incorporated this mediating factor for two reasons. First, intergenerational family systems theory (Bowen, 1978) suggests that both the actual level of differentiation in FOO and individuals’ perceptions toward their family’s differentiating behavior may influence how they develop optimal levels of differentiation of self and, consequently, healthy adult intimate relationships. Second, existing research has shown that not only the FOO experience itself but also how individuals evaluate their FOO experiences are likely to influence the intergenerational transmission process (Busby, Gardner, & Taniguchi, 2005). Thus, our focus was to test the model of intergenerational transmission of relationship quality mediated by individuals’ evaluation of the FOO experience.

Method

Measures

The RELATE (Busby et al., 2001) is a comprehensive relationship evaluation instrument with approximately 300 items measuring four important contexts of couples’ experiences: the individual, family (of origin), cultural, and couple. It is designed to assess couples’ relationships in a variety of relationship stages, from casually dating to married. The conceptual model of the RELATE presumes that “each relationship is made up of multitudinous differences and similarities between the partners and contexts” (Busby et al., 2001, p. 309; see Busby et al., 2001 for more details on the theoretical foundation and reliability and validity evidences).

All measures in the conceptual model (Figure 1) were existing subscales in the RELATE (see Table 1 for the descriptive statistics for the variables and Table 2 for the correlation matrix). Exogenous variables were Parents’ Marriage, Father–Child Relationship, and Mother–Child Relationship. The literature has suggested that parents’ marital relationship is one of the determinants of their relationship with their children (e.g., Kendler, Sham, & MacLean, 1997). Therefore, the model assumes that Parents’ Marriage not only directly affects Evaluation of FOO but also indirectly affects it by influencing both Father–Child and Mother–Child Relationships.

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Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics for the Study Variables for Male and Female Partners

	Male Partner			Female Partner
Variable	Mean	SD	α	Mean	SD	α
Parents’ Marriage	3.34	1.19	.92	3.26	1.25	.92
Father–Child Relationship	3.30	0.99	.77	3.35	1.05	.80
Mother–Child Relationship	3.72	0.89	.75	3.75	0.96	.77
Evaluation of Family-of-Origin (FOO)	3.98	0.72	.84	3.84	0.86	.90
Relationship Satisfaction	3.86	0.68	.83	3.85	0.73	.86

Note: N = 245. Higher scores (i.e., means) reflect higher quality of FOO relationships, evaluations of FOO, and relationship satisfaction.

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Table 2.

Correlation Matrix of the Study Variables

	Parents’ Marriage (Male)	Parents’ Marriage (Female)	Father–Child Relationship (Male)	Father–Child Relationship (Female)	Mother–Child Relationship (Male)	Mother–Child Relationship (Female)	Evaluation of FOO (Male)	Evaluation of FOO (Female)	Relationship Satisfaction (Male)	Relationship Satisfaction (Female)
Parents’ Marriage (Male)	1.00	0.08	0.38**	0.04	0.27**	0.00	0.66**	0.08	0.13*	0.08
Parents’ Marriage (Female)	0.08	1.00	0.17**	0.58**	0.13*	0.41**	0.15*	0.67**	0.11	0.13*
Father–Child Relationship (Male)	0.38**	0.17**	1.00	0.17**	0.57**	0.10	0.46**	0.06	0.12	0.05
Father–Child Relationship (Female)	0.04	0.58**	0.17**	1.00	0.15*	0.46**	0.15*	0.58**	0.16*	0.25**
Mother–Child Relationship (Male)	0.27**	0.13*	0.57**	0.15*	1.00	0.09	0.41**	0.09	0.19**	0.13*
Mother–Child Relationship (Female)	0.00	0.41**	0.10	0.46**	0.09	1.00	0.04	0.52**	0.20**	0.21**
Evaluation of FOO (Male)	0.66**	0.15*	0.46**	0.15*	0.41**	0.04*	1.00	0.15*	0.27**	0.18**
Evaluation of FOO (Female)	0.08	0.67**	0.06	0.58**	0.09	0.52**	0.15*	1.00	0.22**	0.26**
Relationship Satisfaction (Male)	0.13*	0.11	0.12	0.16*	0.19**	0.20**	0.27**	0.22**	1.00	0.67**
Relationship Satisfaction (Female)	0.08	0.13*	0.05	0.25**	0.13*	0.21**	0.18**	0.26**	0.67**	1.00

Note: N = 245. FOO = family-of-origin.

*

p < .05. **p < .01.

Parents’ Marriage was a three-item scale that evaluated the quality of the parents’ marriage. A sample question was “My father was happy in his marriage.” The Father–Child Relationship and Mother–Child Relationship were three-item scales that evaluated the quality of the Parent–Child Relationships. A sample question was “My father participated in enjoyable activities with me.” A 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree was used for these scales.

The intervening variable was the Evaluation of FOO scale, which consisted of seven items. A sample question was “We had a loving atmosphere in our family.” A 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree was used for this scale.

The endogenous variable was the Relationship Satisfaction scale, which consisted of seven items that evaluated how satisfied participants were with their intimate relationship in six areas from physical intimacy to communication. A 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from very dissatisfied to very satisfied was used. We added the error covariance between male’s and female’s Relationship Satisfaction assuming that Relationship Satisfaction for partners in the same relationship should have some common variances not represented by exogenous and intervening variables in the model.

Analytic Strategy

We tested the conceptual model using the multigroup structural equation modeling analysis in AMOS Version 7.0 (Arbuckle, 2006). We first evaluated the model fit of the hypothesized model (see Figure 1) for the whole sample. After confirming that the model fit the data, we conducted the multigroup structural equation modeling analysis to compare the model for three groups (see Figure 2). Though we originally included relationship length as a control variable, we later eliminated it from the model because it was not significantly related to relationship satisfaction.

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Figure 2.

The model with standardized estimates

Results

Following recommendations offered by Hoyle and Panter (1995), we used both absolute fit indexes and incremental fit indices to evaluate the model fit.

The fit indices show that the model (Figure 1) fit the data well, χ²(28) = 37.87, p = .10; comparative fit index = .99; Tucker–Lewis index = .98; root mean square error of approximation = .04; and all the path coefficients were significant. Therefore, we conducted the multigroup structural equation modeling analysis to compare the model fit when the coefficients for the three groups were constrained to be equal. The chi-square difference was significant, Δχ²(28) = 41.36, p = .05, indicating that the overall model for the three groups was significantly different. The standardized path coefficients are shown in Figure 2.

The differences between the three groups in the patterns of significant pathways are noteworthy. More than half of the pathways for the NA-born Asians were nonsignificant, whereas the majority of the pathways for the Asian-born Asians and Caucasians were significant. In fact, there was no significant pathway from female’s Evaluation of FOO to Relationship Satisfaction for the NA-born Asians. In contrast, both male’s and female’s Evaluation of FOO significantly predicted their own Relationship Satisfaction for Asian-born Asians though they did not predict their partner’s Relationship Satisfaction. For the Caucasians, the pathways from male’s Evaluation of FOO to Relationship Satisfaction were not significant. One common pattern seen in all three groups was that Parents’ Marriage retained a moderate direct effect on Evaluation of FOO even though it was partially mediated by Father–Child Relationship and/or Mother–Child Relationship.

A few significant differences were found between the three groups in the size of the path coefficients. The standardized path coefficients for the Caucasians were significantly larger than those of the NA-born Asians for the two paths: (a) the path from the male’s Parents’ Marriage to Father–Child Relationship and (b) the path from the female’s Mother–Child Relationship to Evaluation of FOO. In addition, the path coefficient for the path from Evaluation of FOO to Relationship Satisfaction for Asian-born Asian males was significantly larger than that for Caucasian males.

An interesting pattern emerged for the squared multiple correlations (SMCs) for the intervening and endogenous variables. Although the SMCs for Asian-born Asian group were smallest for the Evaluation of FOO (.47 for males and .30 for females), the SMCs for the Asian-born Asian group were largest for Relationship Satisfaction (.22 for males and .14 for females). In contrast, although the SMCs for the Caucasian group were largest for the Evaluation of FOO (.53 for males and .68 for females), the SMCs for the Caucasian group were smallest for males (.06) and nearly smallest for females (.07) for Relationship Satisfaction. The SMCs for Relationship Satisfaction for Asian-born Asians were more than three times larger than that for Caucasian males and two times larger than that for Caucasian females.

Discussion

The results support our first hypothesis that Asians experience a greater influence from their FOO to their Relationship Satisfaction. This is consistent with the previous literature that suggested the greater emphasis in Asian culture on closeness and interdependency between parent and child as compared with the Western culture (Rothbaum et al., 2002; Segal, 1991). This finding is an important contribution to the literature because it reveals that intergenerational transmission processes may vary from culture to culture. This suggests an important clinical implication that clinicians may need to pay greater attention than usual to FOO influences when they treat relationship problems in Asian immigrant populations.

It is important to note that the SMC for the Evaluation of FOO is actually larger for Caucasians than for the Asian-born Asians. However, the larger perceived influence of the FOO for Caucasians does not affect Relationship Satisfaction as much as it does for Asian-born Asians. This result provides a potential understanding of the mechanism of the intergenerational transmission processes. Even if individuals perceive a greater influence from their FOO, it is possible for them not to project much of that influence onto the relationship with their partner. In other words, the magnitude of the Evaluation of FOO may be similar across cultures whereas the magnitude of the influence of the FOO projected onto the next generation may be different between cultures. However, it is not clear enough based on our data as to why Caucasians do not project as much of their perceived FOO influence onto their relationships as do their Asian-born Asian counterparts. One possible explanation is that this finding may reflect a difference between Caucasians and Asians in the level of separateness and connectedness (Rothbaum et al., 2002; Segal, 1991) with their families. Because Asians tend to be highly interdependent within their family (Segal, 1991), they may emphasize the importance of passing on their family heritage to the next generation. In contrast, because Caucasians are more independent from their FOO (Harrison et al., 1990; Segal, 1991), they may focus more on developing their own unique heritage rather than relying on the heritage of their FOO. Additional research is merited that would help clarify these differences by using more extensive measures of the process of passing on values and of the dimensions of separateness and individuation.

Our results further supported the first hypothesis that Asian-born Asians experienced greater influence from their FOO than North-American born Asians. This finding is congruent with the previous literature on the intergenerational gap between immigrant generations. Because first-generation Asian immigrants are likely to retain their Asian-oriented values more than succeeding generations (Phinney et al., 2000; Sluzki, 1979), first-generation immigrants (Asian-born Asians in our study) are more likely than succeeding generations (NA-born Asians in our study) to show a stronger influence from the FOO on their adult relationships. In contrast, succeeding generations may have established a stronger connection with the Western culture and become somewhat alienated from the Asian culture. This could be categorized into the new country cultural identification among the five categories of cultural identification proposed by Cardona et al. (2004). As demonstrated by the positive associations between FOO variables and Evaluation of FOO, they seem to still regard the relationship within their FOO as positive. Yet they may not desire to create a traditional Asian family environment for their own family of procreation as much as Asian-born Asians do. These findings suggest that intergenerational transmission processes for first-generation immigrants and second- or third-generation immigrants may be different although they share the same racial origin. Therefore, first-generation immigrants and subsequent generations should be evaluated separately in terms of their intergenerational transmission processes. Additional research with cultural identity measures may clarify these relationships. However, one thing to note is that the gender difference seems to remain across generations in that the NA-born Asian males still experience a greater influence from the FOO than their female counterparts. Perhaps the stronger norms placed on males in the Asian culture (Segal, 1991) has a more enduring effect than other Asian values.

Our study suggests that there are similarities and differences in the type of FOO experience that is more influential to each group. First, Parents’ Marriage has the largest impact on Evaluation of FOO in all three groups. In addition, Parents’ Marriage significantly influenced both the Father–Child and Mother–Child relationships except for NA-born Asian males. Therefore, it may be common across both cultures and gender that parents’ marital relationship is more influential than their individual relationship with their children on how children perceive the experience within their FOO.

In contrast, cultural difference is found in the relative impact of Father–Child and Mother–Child relationships on the Evaluation of FOO scale. The smaller perceived influence of Father–Child Relationship than Mother–Child Relationship for Asian-born Asians may be attributed to the difference in the degree of involvement with children between distant fathers and deeply involved mothers described by Rothbaum et al. (2002). One study done by Ishii-Kuntz (1994) provides additional support for this assumption. The study revealed that Japanese fathers spend much less time with their children than Caucasian fathers and that their children tend to perceive the relationship with their fathers negatively unless their mothers are unemployed and available.

On the other hand, NA-born Asian females experience a smaller influence of the mother–daughter relationship as compared with the father–daughter relationship. This may stem from NA-born females’ exposure to Western females’ gender ideals that are contradictory to the traditional Asian females’ gender ideals (Suh, 2007; Tang, 1997). Therefore, even if the mother–daughter relationship itself is perceived to be good, daughters may resist meeting their mothers’ expectations to adhere to traditional Asian female gender ideals, thereby reducing the influence of their mothers.

The nearly equal influence of Father–Child and Mother–Child Relationships for Caucasians is different from either Asian-born Asians or NA-born Asians. This difference could be attributed to lower levels of unbalance in the mother–child and father–child relationships and to the absence of cultural transitions that are experienced by Asians.

Interestingly, despite these differences between the three groups, the similar levels of Evaluation of FOO implies that even if people from different cultures profess similar levels of perceived influence from their FOO, the source of influence may vary. For example, the mother–child relationship may likely be more influential for individuals in one culture while the father–child relationship may be more influential for individuals in another culture.

The results partially support our second hypothesis. Although females’ FOO experience does have a stronger influence on relationship satisfaction than males’ FOO experience for Caucasians, this is not true for Asian-born Asians and NA-born Asians. Similarly, the crossover effect found for Caucasian female’s Evaluation of FOO was not evident for NA-born Asian and Asian-born Asian female’s Evaluation of FOO. These findings illuminate the gender-specific patterns in the intergenerational transmission processes. Researchers have found that females’ FOO experience has a crossover effect and a stronger impact than males’ FOO experience on adult relationship quality in Caucasian samples (Holman & Birch, 2001; Sabatelli & Bartle-Haring, 2003; Topham et al., 2005). However, the findings in the present study suggest that the crossover effect and the stronger impact of females’ FOO experience may not be universal, and gender-specific patterns of intergenerational transmission processes may vary from culture to culture. The greater influence of males’ FOO experience for Asian-born Asians and NA-born Asians may indicate that expectations and pressures for male children in Asian culture to follow their family tradition (Segal, 1991) are indeed considerably stronger than those for female children.

The results of this study must be interpreted with caution. First, the sample sizes for Asian-born Asian and NA-born Asian couples were relatively small. This may have prevented associations between variables from reaching statistical significance. Second, the data are based solely on retrospective report on a self-report instrument. Thus, shared reporter and method variance may have inflated the magnitude of associations between variables. In addition, we do not know how participants’ recollection of FOO experience may reflect the actual level of functioning in their FOO. However, we would like to note that our focus was to test the association between perceived FOO experience, rather than actual level of relationship functioning in FOO, and current relationship satisfaction. Third, we used generational status as a proxy for cultural identity for Asian-born and NA-born Asians since it has been found to be one of the three proxy measures that are highly correlated with existing acculturation measures (Cruz, Marshall, Bowling & Villaveces, 2008). However, if we could have used a more comprehensive acculturation measure, it may have enabled us to analyze the cultural differences more accurately.

Even with the limitations of the study, this is one of the first attempts to examine the cultural differences in intergenerational transmission processes on relationship quality. The findings in the present study suggest that the intergenerational transmission processes may be both culturally specific and gender specific. In particular, considering many developmental and contextual factors that are associated with relationship quality, the amount of variance (22%) in relationship satisfaction for Asian-born Asian males explained by Evaluation of FOO is not negligible. Researchers and applied professionals should take both gender and culture into consideration as they try to understand and deal with issues concerning the influence of the FOO experiences on adult intimate relationships. Future studies that compare Asian Americans with Asians who have lived in Asian countries for their entire lives may prove fruitful in revealing the meaning of the differences we have found in this study and illuminating the distinctions between these cultures in terms of the intergenerational transmission process. In addition, considering the unique impact of gender and culture on intergenerational processes, comparisons between intracultural and intercultural couples from a variety of cultures may provide a new understanding of the interplay between gender and culture for couples.