“I’m Scared because Divorce Sucks”: Parental Divorce and the Marital Paradigms of Emerging Adults

Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that parental divorce influences the relational beliefs and orientation toward marriage of adolescents and emerging adults. Most of this previous work has been limited to links between parental divorce and global attitudes toward marriage or attitudes toward divorce. Using a mixed-method design, the current study explored links between parental divorce and various aspects of emerging adults’ marital paradigms using cross-sectional, longitudinal, and qualitative data among a sample of unmarried emerging adults. Quantitative results suggested that parental divorce was linked to a variety of negative marital beliefs including less overall marital importance, less marital permanence, and less marital centrality. There was no evidence of longitudinal changes in these associations over time. Qualitative results among emerging adults with divorced parents revealed several key themes in how emerging adults viewed the impact of parental divorce, suggesting implications for perceived interpersonal competence and the internalization of negative marital beliefs stemming from parental role modeling.

Keywords

marital paradigms divorce emerging adults attitudes marriage

The stable but high rates of divorce in the United States (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2007; U.S. Census Bureau, 2011) have led many modern emerging adults to experience a parental divorce at some point in their life. On the subject of such divorces, scholars have spent immense time and energy attempting to understand the potential impact and consequences of ending marriages on children (see Amato, Kane, & James, 2011; Cartwright, 2006). One specific area of inquiry in this scholarship focuses on how parental divorce is related to the relational lives and decision-making of children and young adults. Parent-child relationships, often interrupted to some degree by divorce, have generally been considered an important precursor to relationship development during emerging adulthood (Collins & van Dulmen, 2006). Scholars in the past (Clarkberg, Stolzenberg, & Waite, 1995) and present (Willoughby & Carroll, 2015; Willoughby & James, 2017) have suggested that connections between parental divorce and relational development are often preceded by shifting relational perceptions and beliefs. Specifically, Cui, Wickrama, Lorenz, and Conger (2010) found that while parental conflict was associated with young adult relationship behavior through relationship processes, the impact of parental divorce on young adult relationships primarily operated through a shift in marital beliefs. Such findings have led several scholars to consider how the link between parental divorce and the future relational transitions of their children may be associated with the shifting marital beliefs of these emerging adults (Dennison & Koerner, 2008; Whitton, Rhoades, Stanley, & Markman, 2008).

While a handful of previous studies have explored these associations, most have been limited in scope, typically using cross-sectional samples and often focusing on single-item measurement or focusing on only one type of relational belief. The current study sought to expand the current scholarship in this area in two ways. Using a mixed-method longitudinal approach and utilizing Marital Paradigm Theory (Willoughby, Hall, & Luzack, 2015), we assessed the links between parental divorce and multiple dimensions of marital beliefs among unmarried emerging adults (aged 18–25). We assessed these associations cross-sectionally before exploring if such associations change longitudinally or if parental divorce is associated with longitudinal change in marital paradigms across the three years of the present study. In addition, we utilized qualitative data from interviews of emerging adult children who experienced a parental divorce to understand the subjective experience of how such emerging adults felt their parental divorce had influenced their perceptions of relationships and marriage. This represents the first mixed-method approach to this area of scholarship to date. Importantly, this study also extended the scope of measurement from previous studies, exploring how parental divorce may be linked to multiple aspects of marital beliefs for the first time.

Parental Divorce and Later Relational Outcomes

As mentioned, several previous studies have explored the link between parental divorce and the outcomes of children. Although both the positive and negative correlates of parental divorce appear to be numerous, many studies conducted in the past three decades have focused on the intergenerational transmission of divorce (ITD), or “whether parental divorce is associated with an increased risk of offspring divorce” (Amato, 1996). For instance, a large portion of the divorce literature evidences ITD as a persistent phenomenon, with parents’ relationship experiences influencing not only children’s likelihood of getting divorced (Amato, & Cheadle, 2005; Diekmann, & Schmidheiny, 2013) but also relationship formation patterns (Lyngstad & Engelhardt, 2009) and marital quality (Perren, Von Wyl, Bürgin, Simoni, & Von Klitzing, 2005).

Many scholars have suggested that ITD occurs through the altering and shifting of relational attitudes and beliefs after a parental divorce (Tasker & Richards, 1994). Children who experience a parental divorce have been shown to hold more negative views of relationships, including a lessened desire to marry (Tasker, 1992), lowered feelings of confidence (Cooper Sumner, 2013), lower commitment while in a romantic relationship (Cui, Fincham, & Ddurtschi, 2011; Whitton et al., 2008), and more anxiety about future marriage (Dennison, & Koerner, 2008). While variations in such attitudinal shifts likely occur, the generally negative outlook about relationships and marriages that may develop following a parental divorce may partially explain the phenomena of ITD. In particular, potential shifts in marital beliefs are likely important as the vast majority of emerging adults continue to list a future marriage as a “very important” milestone (Hymowitz, Carroll, Wilcox, & Kaye, 2013; Willoughby & James, 2017) and as marriage remains the primary relationship goal of most emerging adults (Wilcox & Marquardt, 2011; Willoughby & Carroll, 2015)

Recently, Willoughby and colleagues (see Willoughby & Carroll, 2015; Willoughby, Hall, & Luczak, 2015) have argued that marital beliefs are in fact multi-dimensional constructs that encompass a wide variety of different beliefs. Such scholarship has culminated in the proposal of Marital Paradigm Theory (Willoughby et al., 2015) that suggests that marital beliefs can be described across six interconnected dimensions that cover both beliefs about getting and being married. These dimensions are beliefs about marital salience, marital timing, marital process, marital centrality, marital permanence, and marital context. Marital salience refers to the overall importance one places on marriage. Marital timing refers to beliefs about the ideal and expected timing of marriage and relationship commitments. Marital process encompasses beliefs about how married life should function, including beliefs about gender roles within marriage. Marital centrality refers to the attitudes around how central a role marriage and spousal roles will take in one’s life. Marital permanence references beliefs centered on the longevity of marriage and the context in which the termination of marriage is acceptable. Finally, marital context beliefs refer to beliefs about the contexts under which marriage should occur, including beliefs about marriage readiness and preparation.

Some scholars have suggested (see Tasker & Richards, 1994) that parental divorce may have different effects across different types of marital beliefs. Tasker and colleagues (1994) argued that some children of divorce might actually marry early due to a lack of available socioeconomic resources post-parental divorce, and that parental divorce may have a more nuanced effect on transitions into a first marriage as opposed to a universally negative one. In other words, parental divorce may not universally make one more negative or positive toward marriage. Despite this call occurring more than twenty years ago, limited work has been accomplished in this area. Recent theoretical advancements in the study of marital beliefs, especially work noting that such beliefs exist as a multi-dimensional construct, would now allow for a more holistic exploration of what dimensions of marital beliefs are the most associated with a history of parental divorce.

Current Study

While the link between parental divorce and marital beliefs appears to be a critical one to understanding the long-term impact of such divorces on relational development, the current literature is limited by an incomplete scope of measurement that has not yet fully utilized the latest theoretical developments in this area. Therefore, in the current study we sought to use Marital Paradigm Theory (Willoughby et al., 2015) as a foundation to explore links between parental divorce and a variety of marital beliefs during emerging adulthood. Specifically, we utilized available data on dimensions of Marital Paradigm Theory encompassing marital salience, marital timing, marital permanence, and marital centrality in the current study. The four dimensions utilized in the current study have been shown to be among the most robust predictors of outcomes and behaviors among emerging adults in previous studies (see Willoughby & Carroll, 2015 for a review of this literature). We explored such links both cross-sectionally (n = 557) and longitudinally (n = 99) using a sample of emerging adults in their early to mid-twenties. Based on the previous literature suggesting generally negative links between parental divorce and perceptions of relationships (Dennison & Koerner, 2008), we explored the following hypothesis:

H1: Parental divorce will be associated with negative marital beliefs in the form of less marital salience, less marital centrality, less marital permanence, and a later expected age of marriage.

While previous research has suggested a link between parental divorce and negative relational attitudes, virtually no research has explored such links longitudinally. Recent research has highlighted two important aspects of marital beliefs that may suggest an exploration of such links is important. First, marital beliefs appear to be dynamic cognitions for emerging adults, beliefs that shift and change based on lived experiences (Willoughby & Carroll, 2015). Generally, studies have shown that adolescents tend to place progressively more importance on marriage as they approach graduation and through emerging adulthood (Willoughby et al., 2015; Willoughby, 2010). Willoughby and Carroll (2015) argued that marital beliefs are likely continuously evaluated, shifting based on current, past, and anticipated future events during the emerging adulthood years.

Second, research has suggested that associations between lived experiences and marital beliefs may also shift across time or that such experiences may have longitudinal effects on marital beliefs. In their same study of college students, Willoughby and colleagues (2015) showed that relational experiences had longitudinal effects on marital salience and centrality beliefs. Such longitudinal effects have since been replicated in other studies (Arocho & Kamp Dush, 2016; Leonhardt & Willoughby, 2018). This research has clearly demonstrated that individual experiences and associations between these experiences and marital beliefs appear to have a longitudinal component. While previous research has yet to test this specific association in relation to parental divorce, past findings suggest the need to empirically test such an assertion.

It is currently unknown if parental divorce is associated with ongoing changes in marital beliefs. Given the lack of research in this area, we refrain from offering specific hypotheses regarding this association. However, given past research suggesting the possibility of longitudinal effects, we explored the following research question.

RQ1: Is parental divorce associated with changes across time in beliefs about marital salience, marital centrality, marital permanence, and the expected age of marriage?

Finally, we also utilized qualitative interviews with 29 emerging adults who experienced a parental divorce to explore the themes emerging adults associated with their parental divorce experiences and their current marital beliefs. In terms of links between parental divorce and marital beliefs, qualitative data offers a unique ability to explore yet another limitation of the current scholarship. While parental divorce is assumed to be linked to shifting relational beliefs (Dennison, & Koerner, 2008), the exact nature and mechanisms between such links is currently unknown. While links likely exist, what elements of parental divorce are most salient from the perspective of emerging adults, what specific aspects of future marital relationships are viewed as most effected, and how emerging adults make sense of such associations is currently unknown. This last element provides perhaps the strongest reason to pursue qualitative inquiry as such data would provide insights into how emerging adults internalize parental divorce and apply it to their future relational decisions. This subjective interpretation of how emerging adults make links between their experience with divorce and their current beliefs about marriage might provide valuable information for scholars as they continue to explore mechanisms and links between these two constructs.

Regarding the divorce literature, qualitative research has provided unique information on similar questions. For example, qualitative research has found that children of divorce may be less committed to their own marriage (Kavas, & Gunduz-Hosgor, 2011), more cautious about marriage (Burgoyne, & Hames, 2002), and have a higher chance of being insecure in their relationships (Crowell et al., 2009). This limited scholarship has provided some insights into the cognitions of children of divorce, but additional qualitative data is still needed to extend the context and depth of our understanding regarding how emerging adults make connections between their parent’s divorce and their own relational lives. More specifically, we utilized this data to help us understanding the subjective ways in which emerging adults integrate past parental divorce with their future thoughts on marriage. This portion of the study was guided by the following research question:

RQ2: What are common themes in how emerging adults make connections between parental divorce and future marital beliefs?

Methods

Participants and Procedure

The sample for the cross-sectional study consisted of a baseline sample of 557 unmarried emerging adults from a large public university in the Midwest, originally collected in 2013. The students were undergraduates who were included in a university-wide research pool and were sent an email from the research team inviting them to participate in a study on relationships. Interested participants were asked to follow a link to an online survey. The survey software used allowed only one entry per computer to avoid multiple entries from a single participant. Once participants had completed the survey, they were thanked for their time and entered into a random drawing for a series of $50 gift cards. All aspects of study design and data collection were approved by the institutional review board at the principle investigators’ universities.

The baseline sample was primarily female (75%). The oversampling of female participants was likely partially attributed to overall university demographics. Sixty per cent of current undergraduates at the sampling institution were female, giving females a higher likelihood of participating. Further gender bias may be due to female students being more likely to participate in a research study focused on marriage and relationships as some research has suggested that female emerging adults are more likely to express interest in marriage (Carroll et al., 2007). Regardless of the reasons, results should be interpreted with this gender imbalance in mind. Racial distribution in the sample mirrored that of the university as a whole. The majority of the sample was White (91%) and heterosexual (90%). The average age was 21.6 years (SD = 5.03). Participants generally came from affluent homes. Twenty-three per cent of the sample reported that their parents made over $100,000 per year, while only 13% reported a combined parental household income of less than $30,000 per year. Most reported that their parents were still married (68%). The most common religious affiliation was Conservative Christian (25%) followed by Liberal Christian (24%) and Roman Catholic (14%). See Table 1 for a full breakdown of sample demographics.

Table 1.

Sample Demographics and Proportions at All Three Waves.

	Wave 1N = 557	Wave 2N = 157	Wave 3N = 99
Gender
Male	24.7%	32.5%	32.3%
Female	75.3%	67.5%	67.6%
Age (average)	21.6(SD = 5.03)	23.3(SD = 6.13)	23.5(SD = 4.83)
Race
African American	3.6%	1.3%	2.0%
Native American	.5%	1.3%	2.0%
White	90.7%	91.9%	89.9%
Hispanic	2.0%	3.1%	4.0%
Other	3.2%	2.5%	2.0%
Dating Status
Not Dating	25.56%	18.75%	21.43%
Casual Dating	13.83%	17.5%	20.41%
Have a boy/girlfriend	41.48%	41.25%	36.73%
Engaged	10.93%	9.38%	15.31%
Married	8.20%	13.13%	6.12%
Religion
Christian	65.4%	63.13%	–
Jewish	.3%	1.25%	–
Other	34.3%	35.62%	–
Year of education
1^st year college	28.87%	1%	–
2^nd year college	22.26%	11.25%	–
3^rd year college	18.65%	24.38%	–
4^th year college	21.2%	25.63%	–
5^th year or higher	8.87%	18.13%	–
Not enrolled in College	0.15%	20.0%	38.75%

For longitudinal analysis, additional data were collected on a portion of the original sample willing to participate in a longitudinal follow-up. The original sample was contacted one and two years after the original survey through email and asked if they would be willing to take a follow-up online survey. Participants who completed this second survey were all given $25 gift cards at wave 2 and $50 gift cards at wave 3 as incentive for completing the survey. Of the original participants, 157 participants (28%) of the initial sample agreed to participate at wave 2. While this was a low percentage of the original participants, those who elected to participate at wave 2 did not differ from those who did not in terms of age, education level, parents’ income, hours of employment, number of children, GPA, race, sexual orientation, ideal timing of marriage, or general importance of marriage. Participants who completed wave 2 did differ on gender. Participants at wave 2 were more likely to be female (χ² (2) = 9.91, p < .001). Therefore, while attrition at wave 2 was high, the demographic profile of those who participated appeared to be virtually identical to those who did not provide data at wave 2.

In total, 99 participants completed both the survey and interview at the third wave. Those that participated at wave 3 were not significantly different on any of the earlier named variables from those who participated at wave 2, suggesting that no additional attrition bias was introduced into the sample and the results between waves 2 and 3. Interviews from wave 3 from participants who reported having divorced parents (n = 29) were included in the present study.

Quantitative Measures

Marital Beliefs

Marital Salience was assessed by a four-item scale adapted from a marital salience scale used in previous studies (see Willoughby & Hall, 2015). Items included “Getting married is more important to me than having a successful career,” “Getting married is among my top priorities during this time in my life.,” “Getting married is a very important goal for me,” and “Getting married is more important than my educational pursuits and achievements,” Agreement with these items were measured on a six-point scale (1 = very strongly disagree; 6 = very strongly agree). These items showed strong internal reliability (baseline: α = .82; wave 2: α = .90 wave 3: α = .86). Marital Permanence was assessed by averaging three items, each assessed on the same six-point scale (1 = not true at all; 6 = very true). These items were “Personal happiness is more important than putting up with a bad marriage (reverse coded),” “It is okay to divorce when a person’s needs are no longer met (reverse coded),” and “Marriage is for life, even if the couple is unhappy.” Higher scores indicated greater belief in marital permanence. These items also showed strong internal consistency (baseline: α = .82; wave 2: α = .83; wave 3: α = .79). A single-item assessment used in previous studies (Willoughby, Hall, & Goff, 2015), adapted from a measure developed by Kerpelman and Schvaneveldt (1999) was used to assess Marital Centrality. Participants were asked to indicate how much importance they expected to place on the following aspects of their life in the future: marriage, parenting, career, and personal leisure/hobbies. Participants assigned a percentage importance to each of these four areas with the total adding to 100%. The percentage of importance placed on marriage was utilized in the present study as a continuous measure and allowed for an assessment of the relative centrality of one’s future marital role compared to other adult roles and obligations. Similar to previous studies of marital timing beliefs (see Carroll et al., 2007), one item was used to assess Marital Timing, asking all participants “At what age do you expect to marry?”

Parent’s Marital Status

The relationship status of parents was assessed by one item, asking participants to indicate their parent’s current marital status. Options included the following: married, married but separated, divorced within the past five years, divorced five years or more ago, parents never married, or widowed. Some statuses were combined due to low sample size (n < 20) to create three options, married, divorced, or other.

Controls

Several controls were used in our models to account for potential selection effects. These included gender (1 = female), age, race (1 = nonwhite), parent’s income, number of siblings, the presence of their own biological children, and sexual orientation (1 = heterosexual). Parent’s income was assessed on a scale from 1 (none) to 8 (over $250,000). Age was explored in a number of ways to determine if any potential non-linear associations with marital attitudes were found. To assess potential non-linear effects, age was explored as both a continuous and categorical variable in all models. These preliminary analyses suggested that associations between parent’s marital status and marital beliefs remained stable, regardless of how age was treated as a covariate and no non-linear effects were found. Age was utilized as a continuous covariate in cross-sectional models and as a categorical variable in longitudinal models to demonstrate the lack of non-linear associations.¹

Analysis Plan and Qualitative Coding

Baseline differences across family structure were first explored using MANOVA models. Differences were then explored with controls using hierarchical regression models where controls were entered into step 1 and parental marital status was entered into step 2. To estimate the longitudinal model, we employed a multilevel linear regression model (sometimes termed hierarchical models) to deal with the non-independence (intra-subject correlation) of time points (level 1) nested within respondents (level 2). One advantage of these models is they allow some time points to be missing (Singer & Willett, 2009), thereby allowing an analysis of longitudinal trends in our data despite our high levels of attrition over the three waves.

At wave 3, all participants were interviewed through online video interviews conducted through Skype. Interviews were semi-structured and were conducted by a member of the research team. Questions focused on both personal experiences as well as general thoughts and attitudes related to marriage and relationships. Interviews generally lasted 45 to 60 minutes. For this particular study, only those participants who reported having divorced parents were included in the analysis in order to explore themes on marriage and relationships among emerging adults who have experienced a parental divorce. This sub-sample included 29 emerging adults from the wave 3 data.

Interviews for all participants were recorded and transcribed following the completion of the interview. After each interview, analytic memos were then created for each participant following guidelines by Saldana (2012). These memos were created by the principle investigators of the project. with assistance from graduate students. Interviews were initially coded using both Values coding (Gable & Welf, 1993) and In Vivo coding (Charmaz, 2014). Values coding aims at exploring the underlying values, attitudes, and beliefs expressed by the participants. In Vivo coding seeks to code interviews based on retaining the participant’s own voice and words. Two coders coded each interview, and agreement on codes was over 95%. Any disagreements on themes were resolved through a discussion between these two parties.

As our research question specifically focused on attempting to understand what beliefs that emerging adults subjectively felt were most influenced by parental divorce and why, our coding process focused on the section of the interview were participants were asked to reflect on past family experiences (i.e., “How have your parents influenced your beliefs about marriage?) and how such experiences were related to their current beliefs about marriage. In other words, our goal was to understand and explore the subjective interpretation of how emerging adults linked past parental divorce with current marital beliefs. For the sections of the interview coded for this study, this process generated over 500 In Vivo codes and 600 Values codes across values, beliefs, and attitudes for interviews with participants with divorced parents. Upon completion of this coding by trained research assistants, the principle investigators utilized thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to explore common themes in codes across the interviews. Following recommendations by Rubin and Rubin (2012), these categories were then organized into a hierarchy where multiple categories fit within an overall structure (i.e., “Impact of Divorce–Negative views of Dating”) and to reduce the number of themes being considered. Once this was completed, a second round of data reduction took place to identify common themes across the categories and further reduce the data.

Results

Cross-sectional Findings

Using wave 1 data, the three parental marital statuses were first explored for mean differences across marital beliefs using a MANOVA to establish baseline differences. Overall multivariate differences were found (Wilks Λ = .915, F (8, 1100) = 6.28, p < .001). Follow-up univariate results suggested significant mean differences across parent’s marital status for marital salience (F (2, 553) = 13.87, p < .001, partial η² = .048), marital permanence (F (2, 553) = 6.72, p < .001, partial η² = .031), expected age of marriage (F (2, 553) = 10.19, p < .001, partial η² = .036), and marital centrality (F (2, 553) = 10.78, p < .001, partial η² = .038).

Post-hoc pairwise comparisons utilizing the Bonferroni method to control for multiple comparisons found that emerging adults with married parents reported significantly higher marital permanence (M = 3.61) than both those with divorced parents (M = 3.10; p < .001) and those with parents in another type of relational status (M = 2.69; p = .001). Those with divorced parents and those in another relational status did not significantly differ from each other. For marital salience, the same pattern was found. Those with married parents reported significantly higher marital salience (M = 2.75) than those with divorced parents (M = 2.42; p = .001) and those with parents in another relational status (M = 2.42; p = .045) who did not differ from each other. For marital timing beliefs, those with parents in another relational status reported a significantly later expected age of marriage (M = 29.23) compared to both those with divorced parents (M = 26.75; p =.023) and those with married parents (M = 25.62; p < .001) who did not differ from each other. Finally, for marital centrality, those with married parents reported significantly higher marital centrality (M = 31.59) than those with divorced parents (M = 26.74; p < .001). No other significant differences were found.

Regression models were then run predicting marital beliefs based on parental marital status, with demographic controls including gender, race, sexual orientation, and age. Two-step hierarchical models were explored with controls entered into the first step and a parental marital status dummy variable entered into the second, allowing for an assessment of if parental marital status predicted beliefs above and beyond controls. Cross-sectional results are presented in Table 2. Once demographic controls were entered into the model, parent’s marital status continued to have a significant relationship with marital beliefs, with the exception of marital timing. Specifically, having divorced parents was significantly associated with less marital salience (β = −.154, p < .001), less marital permanence (β = −.151, p < .001), and less belief in marital centrality (β = −.184, p < .001) compared to those with married parents. Likewise, having parents in another relational arrangement that was not married or divorced was also significantly related to less marital salience (β = −.092, p < .001), a later expected age of marriage (β = .142, p < .001), and less belief in marital permanence (β = −.156, p < .001). These models generally suggested a small effect, accounting for between 3% and 5% of the variance in marital beliefs.

Table 2.

Cross-sectional Results Predicting Marital Paradigm Beliefs from Parental Relationship Status.

	Marital Salience				Marital Permanence				Expected Marital Timing				Marital Centrality
	Model 1		Model 2		Model 1		Model 2		Model 1		Model 2		Model 1		Model 2
Variables	β	SE	β	SE	β	SE	β	SE	β	SE	β	SE	β	SE	β	SE
Parents married(reference)
Divorced			−.154**	.088			−.151**	.135			.079	.523			−.184**	1.10
Other			−.092*	.140			−.156**	.215			.142**	.840			−.058	1.77
Age	−.129**	.010	−.112**	.010	−.081	.016	−.059	.016	.240**	.062	.223**	.061	−.074	.131	−.059	.130
Female	−.010	.086	.004	.086	−.047	.133	−.037	.131	−.113**	.513	−.116**	.512	.087*	1.09	.107*	1.08
Heterosexual	.196**	.122	.187**	.121	.214**	.187	.197**	.184	−.156**	.728	−.142**	.723	.132*	1.53	.123**	1.51
Race	.059	.122	.039	.123	.071	.189	.040	.189	−.003	.733	−.003	.733	.027	1.55	.011	1.55
R²	.057**		.074		.049**		.084		.094**		.113		.034**		.056
R²Δ			.027**				.038**				.022**				.033**

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

Longitudinal Findings

We next examined whether these results could be observed using our longitudinal data. These models also expanded control variables collected across waves that were not available in the original data collection wave. Controls included age (categorical), gender, race, parental income, having a child, number of siblings, and sexual orientation.

Again, we observed general differences across waves between emerging adults whose parents were married compared to those in the other groups. Emerging adults with divorced parents had lower marital salience (b = −0.36, p < .05), lesser marital permanence (b = −0.68, p <.001), and diminished levels of marital centrality (b = −6.31, p < .001) compared to emerging adults with married parents. These differences appeared stable over time based on our inclusion of a parental marital status by wave interaction (see Table 3). None of the interaction variables were significant, suggesting that these parental relationship status differences in marital paradigms are static across the waves of the study.

Table 3.

Longitudinal Results Predicting Marital Paradigm Beliefs from Parental Relationship Status.

	Marital Salience	Marital Permanence	Marital Timing	Marital Centrality
Married	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)
Other	−0.20 (0.22)	−0.96^** (0.29)	1.02 (1.13)	−1.24 (2.85)
Divorced	−0.36^* (0.14)	−0.68^*** (0.18)	0.61 (0.70)	−6.31^*** (1.78)
Wave	0.31^*** (0.05)	−0.24^*** (0.06)	0.17 (0.19)	−2.33^*** (0.62)
Married # Wave	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)
Other # Wave	−0.05 (0.14)	0.15 (0.16)	0.11 (0.58)	−0.43 (1.75)
Divorced # Wave	0.02 (0.09)	0.17 (0.11)	0.28 (0.35)	1.22 (1.14)
Age 18	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)
Age 19	0.16 (0.15)	−0.24 (0.22)	0.73 (0.93)	0.10 (1.70)
Age 20	0.12 (0.15)	−0.16 (0.22)	0.86 (0.94)	−1.26 (1.72)
Age 21	0.05 (0.15)	−0.43 (0.23)	1.66 (0.98)	−1.07 (1.79)
Age 22	−0.03 (0.16)	0.02 (0.23)	1.28 (1.00)	−0.57 (1.86)
Age 23	−0.12 (0.21)	−0.51 (0.31)	3.85^** (1.32)	−2.54 (2.43)
Age 24+	−0.32 (0.19)	−0.46 (0.30)	7.96^*** (1.24)	−4.11 (2.30)
Male	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)
Female	0.07 (0.08)	−0.09 (0.13)	−0.95 (0.54)	3.38^*** (0.99)
LGBT	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)
Heterosexual	0.58^*** (0.12)	0.92^*** (0.18)	−2.28^** (0.76)	4.71^*** (1.38)
White	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)	0.00 (.)
Not White	−0.09 (0.12)	−0.15 (0.18)	1.13 (0.78)	−1.18 (1.44)
Constant	1.81^*** (0.19)	3.33^*** (0.28)	26.92^*** (1.16)	27.51^*** (2.24)
Observations	818	792	784	787
# of People	594	568	587	564

Variables where coefficients=0.00 and no standard errors are the reference categories.

p < 0.05, ^**p < 0.01, ^***p < 0.001.

Qualitative Results

Our qualitative coding from interviews resulted in three themes related to how emerging adults made specific links between their parental divorce and their beliefs about future marriage. Emerging adults generally related links between parental divorce and their beliefs about marital permanence, salience, and timing. We briefly review these three themes and offer illustrative quotes for each.

Perceiving the negatives of divorce

The first theme that emerged was one related to perceiving the negative consequences of divorce. A consistent theme in the beliefs of these participants as they spoke about relationships and marriage was that such emerging adults viewed divorce in a predominately negative way. Specifically connected to their beliefs about marital permanence, such emerging adults appeared to connect their beliefs about the permanence of marriage to a specific belief in the negative consequences of divorce they attributed to their parent’s own divorce. One female who had experienced multiple parental divorces told us:

I grew up in a divorced household, and my mom’s on her third marriage now, and if my dad did marry his current girlfriend that’d be his fourth marriage. So like, I’ve never known my parents together. They were married for a year that was it. You know, so growing up, 21 years now, being the middle man for all that, it’s just like, I don’t ever want to put my kids through that.

Such sentiments were also shared by the majority of participants who had only seen one parental divorce in their family. One participant stated that, “divorce really just is not an option for me. My parents were divorced when I was younger and it’s not something that I want to put myself through, to put my family through.” Another said, “you can still be happy with somebody [and] you don’t have to be married. Like, divorce is horrible, [it is] horrible for everybody around. I never want that to happen so we [her and her current boyfriend] just won’t get married.” A young man who had never seen his parents together, shared a similar connection, stating, “Divorce is like the absolute 100 last thing I would like to do in my life. There’s just so much emotion, so much baggage, if you have kids it’s hard on them. I grew up underneath a single mother my whole life . . . she was married once before I was born.”

Many of the participants spoke of seeing the negative financial and personal consequences of divorce first hand. As one participant noted, “I want to be able to support myself. My mom got divorced and now she’s screwed, she was a stay-at-home mom. I want a good career, I don’t want to be left with a child I can’t support.” This was echoed by another participant who explained in her interview, “I’m not going to end up like my mother, penniless and paying credit so we can eat. Career comes first for me.” Others saw the personal emotional toll that divorce took on their parents. One participant shared that, “Everything has changed since (the divorce)” before describing in depth how her parent’s divorce had led both parents on a downward personal spiral in terms of physical and emotional health.

To the participants, divorce had costs that influenced their own upbringing. Linked to their specific beliefs about the permanence of marriage and the acceptability of divorce, participants directly linked their experience with parental divorce to a real and tangible disdain for the personal and familial costs that divorce entailed. While the exact nature of the negative effect divorce might have varied from participant to participant, they had largely all come to the same conclusion. They had seen divorce have a negative impact on their own family lives and wished to avoid it in their own future through a shift in marital permanence beliefs.

Deprioritization and fear of marriage

The next theme that arose from our analysis related to their beliefs about marital salience and was one of deemphasizing or deprioritizing marriage based on previous experience with divorce. Emerging adults’ generally negative perception toward divorce was often applied to future relationships and marriage, connecting the experienced negative costs of the past to the potential negative costs of the future. Emerging adults in the sample noted direct links between their parent’s divorce and their specific thoughts on the importance of marriage in their life. One emerging adult experienced multiple parental divorces associated committed relationships, and especially marriage, with failure. As she put it, “I think my mom getting divorced so many times was awful. In my mind a lot of failures come from marriage.” Another young man explained to us that his low desire to marry was connected to his experiences with divorce across several generations of his family, stating:

I didn’t see one successful marriage and I think that’s another reason about expecting to get married. I don’t expect to get married probably because why would I just wanna end up getting divorced? Cause that’s my viewpoint of it now. Because that’s the kind of environment I was raised in, no one stayed together. I would rather stay with the person I’m with and not be married to them and be happy, than be in an institution where I feel its setting me up for failure.

This negative connection between parental divorce and marital salience appeared to be connected to a fear or disinterest toward marriage, connecting parental divorce not just to general marital salience but relative salience as well. As one female told us:

I think it [parent’s divorce] made me a little bit leery on getting married just because I saw how hard it was on my mom to lose that. So I think that’s made me a little more scared I guess about marriage. And it’s made me a little more cautious.

Another female participant showed an even more apathetic stance towards marriage, noting that after her parent’s divorce,

I feel like the definition of marriage is outdated and I feel the concept is also a little outdated. Because if there’s no real benefit to getting married anymore, besides just being with the person forever, then what’s the point of actually going down and getting, paying all this money for something?

In her interview she felt marriage carried with it financial obligations she was not willing to make. One young woman who had experienced a parental divorce felt marriage has lost personal value, saying:

I don’t think [marriage is] meaningless, it doesn’t have a lot of value to me personally but I don’t think it’s wrong for other people or that it’s not worth something to people that value it. I think it’s a way for people to kind of solidify their monogamy and they’re loyalty for each other. And that’s great for them but it’s not for everyone . . . . I’m sure when I’m like 40 there’s going to be some chemical reaction that will make me want babies and husbands. Right now it’s not what I want.

Their specific negative marital salience beliefs led many in the sample to view marriage in a pessimistic, fearful, and less essential way. One participant noted, “Marriage is just between two people, I don’t think you need the marriage license to be married,” while another noted “people can still be committed without this imaginary marriage concept around them.” As participants spoke about the impact of their parental divorce, they would note that marriage had lost value in their lives. These participants appeared to see little value or importance in pursuing an institution they viewed as scary, unnecessary, and in some cases unhealthy. As one emerging adult put it:

It’s okay if people get married, for me, it doesn’t work. There’s no benefits anymore. There’s pressure from society as soon as you [marry] to act a certain way. I am never, ever, ever, getting married.

Another emerging adult echoed a similar sentiment, saying:

Marriage is less needed now, especially for women. We’re able to be financially independent, in the work force, educated. It’s [marriage] less something needed than something desired.

The message appeared clear among many of these participants coming from divorced parents. Parental divorce led many to avoided marriage and many had simply decided they did not need it.

Not the right time

Emerging adults with divorced parents appeared to hold unique marital permanence beliefs related to their negative views of divorce while also adopting pessimistic marital salience beliefs of marriage as an institution. The final theme that emerged related to how emerging adults in the sample connected the experience of parental divorce to their beliefs about marital timing. Many participants with divorced parents simply did not feel ready to marry or accept the probability of divorce such a marriage would imply. Generally, this theme of divorced parenting influencing marital timing beliefs was related a belief in delayed marriage. Often this sentiment began with emerging adults we spoke to noting they simply did not feel they were ready for marriage and did not trust their potential partners to be ready. One young woman noted a strong belief that too many around her were getting married too soon. She noted,

I think it’s [marriage] totally a personal choice and it’s up to the couple. It’s definitely a big decision to make . . . marriage is this giant thing . . . . You scroll down through Facebook you know that’s all you see is somebody else is getting engaged or married or having a kid and it’s just like, really? We’re so young, I think a lot of people have this idea that like the older generation especially our grandparents were getting married like right away like out of high school and that’s so weird. . .I think that people now a days are getting married earlier than they maybe should but again like I said to each their own.

She would go on to explain that she did not want to marry until at least 30 years old, explaining that after her parent’s divorce she felt she wasn’t ready. In most cases, and like in the previous example, this theme was accompanied by discussion of education and career advancement. Participants seemed to reason that if they were able to achieve a high level of educational or career success, they would not need to rely on another person. One participant explained, “School and career are more dependable than a person. If one day they don’t want to be with you, your entire life is ruined.”

There was a strong theme of self-reliance across the interviews, as several participants noted a belief in later marital timing due to a desire to have stability individually prior to committing to any kind of long-term relationship. One emerging adult noted:

I wanna make sure I’m stable and have the things I want like a car and whatever before I take that next step.

Another explained why he recently ended a committed relationship, stating, “I wanted to focus on myself, trying to navigate all that [education/career goals] while in a relationship wasn’t the best option. I need to make sure I’m totally ready before I take another step again,” while a young women noted that she valued stability after viewing her parent’s three year marriage fail. She explained,

When you’ve got a stable career and you know where you’re going to be in your life and you’ve already said hey . . . this is how life has been established. [Then] you can get married and be in a relationship. Before that I think that you should definitely be kind of more settled before marrying.

In generally, “I’m not ready” was a common sentiment across the interviews as emerging adults made connections between parental divorce and beliefs about marital timing. Of course, if these emerging adults needed to get ready, by extension they must not be ready yet. One emerging adult stated, “I don’t see myself getting married anytime soon. I want to be in a situation financially and emotionally where I can give enough myself to someone else and they can give it to me as well.” Another said, “My own needs are more pressing right now, throwing another person in the mix is not a good idea.” One participant in a committed relationship noted that her current desire to marry was “pretty low”, explaining:

School is really important to me and maintaining a healthy relationship with my partner is important to me but the actually being married part? We already know that we’re going to get married, I think it’s [the desire to be married] pretty low. I already know that there’s that commitment between us so, I don’t feel like if I don’t marry him in the next 3 months he gonna leave me or anything like that. I don’t stress out about it. I feel like I need to put us in the best position possible when we start our lives together.

One participant even ended a significant and apparently healthy relationship due to this lack of trust that she was ready for the next step. She explained:

I felt like I needed to (break up) because he wanted to get married, I felt like I needed to figure some things in my life before I make that huge step.

Discussion

Results from the present study help replicate and expand on previous scholarship exploring parental divorce and current relational beliefs among emerging adults. Across both our quantitative and qualitative results, new insights into how parental divorce may influence the marital paradigms of emerging adults arose that may help scholars further understand the ITD.

Quantitative results

Our quantitative results replicated findings from several previous studies suggesting parental divorce is linked to less positive beliefs about marriage (Dennison, & Koerner, 2008; Tasker, 1992). Like these previous studies, findings from the current study confirmed hypothesis 1 and suggested that emerging adults with divorced parents had more negative views toward marriage than those with married parents and that such differences appeared stable across time. Expanding on previous scholarship that used global and general measures of marital beliefs (see Dennison & Koerner, 2008), using multiple assessments of marital paradigms helped provide greater context for the nature of this views. Rather than simply noting that emerging adults with divorced parents had more pessimistic views of marriage, the results of the current study suggested that this perception manifests as a lower belief in the salience of marriage, a lower belief in marital centrality, and a lower belief in the permanence of marriage.

Such emerging adults appear to not only alter their specific beliefs about the probability and acceptability of divorce, but also several other aspects of how they prioritize and view marriage. It is interesting to note that after controls, parental divorce was not associated with differences in marital timing beliefs. Age, gender, and sexual orientation all appeared to have clear links with expected marital timing. As these controls represent rather static demographic markers, one implication of this finding may be that marital timing beliefs are more sensitive to individual background factors rather than familial experiences. For example, being older was linked to a later expected marital timing, likely linked to emerging adults pushing expected marital timing out in the life course to reflect their current reality of being an older single. Such a proximate reality may have a stronger effect on timing beliefs than on more secondary familial influences. Gender results should be interpreted with caution due to the oversampling of females into the study. As noted, this oversampling may have occurred due to females being more drawn to a study on marriage given their higher expressed interest in marriage (Carroll et al., 2007) and due to the general demographics of the sampling university. As such, it is possible that overall results may be more applicable to females as they compromised the majority of the sample.

It is also possible that marital timing beliefs are simply less shaped by parental divorce. Despite the fact that emerging adults with divorced parents were placing less overall importance on marriage and future spousal roles, and had less confidence in the permanence of marriage, they did not expect to marry any later than those with married parents did. To reframe this finding in another way, despite the general negativity that such emerging adults placed on marriage, they did not appear to alter when they expected marriage to occur. Perhaps the normative culture of marital timing is sufficiently strong that emerging adults with divorced parents continue to feel pressure to marry at a certain time in their life course. Despite claims that marriage has become deinstitutionalized (Cherlin, 2004) and the continued general decline in marriage rates within the United States (Copen, Daniels, Vespa, & Mosher, 2012), marital timing beliefs appear remarkably consistent across emerging adults samples (Willoughby & Carroll, 2015). This expectation to marry at a certain time is perhaps felt by emerging adults with divorced parents, despite their more negative views of marriage overall. This may be one key to understanding the elevated divorce risk among those with divorced parents (Amato & Cheadle, 2005; Diekmann & Schmidheiny, 2013).

Regarding research question 1, emerging adults with divorced parents did not appear to shift their views about marriage over time. Although differences between those with and without divorced parents remained stable across waves, there was no evidence across the three years of data collection that emerging adults with divorced parents were becoming increasingly negative about marriage. Although possibly an artifact of the homogenous college sample used, such findings raise the possibility that divorce may have only a proximate effect on changes in marital beliefs. As none of the emerging adults in the sample experience a parental divorce during the study, perhaps divorce influences adolescents’ and emerging adults’ marital beliefs during or shortly after the divorce occurs. Adolescents and emerging adults may then carry these more negative views of marriage throughout the remainder of their life, or at least until their own marital relationship provides them with a more contemporary and proximate view into what marital relationships are like. If true, future research should explore how divorce and other parental relationship transitions may specifically influence not only mean-level shifts in relational attitudes but also trajectories of such attitudes during or shortly after such events.

Another possibility is that the three-year window of the current study was simply too narrow of a period to detect changes in marital beliefs. Perhaps changes related to parental divorce and other family of origin factors are more subtle and would require a larger measurement period to observe. In this way, the short time span of the study may be one reason for the lack of longitudinal change noted. While previous studies have found year-to-year change in marital beliefs due to proximate factors such as romantic relational dissolution (Leonhardt & Willoughby, 2018; Willoughby et al., 2015), perhaps familial factors result in changes that are more slow forming yet are still influential on the overall trajectory of marital beliefs over the life course. It is also possible that contextual factors linked to a parental divorce, such as parental conflict, relocation, or child age, may influence how quickly or enduring associations with marital beliefs may be. Previous studies linking parental factors to marital and relational beliefs have often explored longer time periods across adolescence or young adulthood. For example, Axinn and Thornton (1993) found links between parental union formation attitudes and child behavior over the span of five years while Cunningham and Thornton (2006) examined associations between parental marital status and child attitudes over a two-decade period. While such studies have often utilized larger national datasets that lack the precise measurement of the current study, they do suggest that a longer data collection window may uncover more subtle but significant changes in marital beliefs after a parental divorce.

Qualitative results

Qualitative findings provided additional insights into the slightly more negative views of marriage held by emerging adults with divorced parents. Corresponding with quantitative results, qualitative themes suggested that emerging adults detected subjective changes in their marital permanence, salience, and timing beliefs because of parental divorce. Qualitative results also suggested some interesting caveats to the quantitative findings that may offer insights for further scholarship in this area.

First among these was the finding that many emerging adults in the sample with divorced parents had developed marital permanence beliefs related to a negative view of divorce based on the example of their parents. On the surface, this seems to contradict previous quantitative findings (Kapinus, 2004) and findings from the current study that suggest those with divorced parents have generally more favorable attitudes toward divorce. However, this apparent contradiction may have a straightforward explanation. Perhaps some emerging adults with divorced parents have come to accept the potential (or for some even inevitability) of divorce when they marry. Although they understand the individual and relational consequences of divorce and wish to avoid such negatives, they also understand, based on personal experience, that divorce does happen. Combined with a general lack of confidence in their own readiness for marriage noted in our qualitative findings, this perhaps provides another important intervention point for educators and others in that emerging adults who have experienced a parental divorce may need additional reinforcement of the skills needed to build healthy long-term relationships.

The final theme that emerged from the qualitative findings related to marital timing beliefs. Emerging adults in the sample appeared to feel they were not ready for marriage and wished to delay marital transitions. While we did not detect any quantitative differences in marital timing beliefs after controls, such a finding suggests that emerging adults perceive a subjective change in their beliefs about the context of marital timing. This theme offers perhaps the most important insight for future scholarship. One possible explanation for these findings is that some emerging adults we interviewed appeared to have low confidence in their ability to navigate healthy relationships due to their parent’s divorce history. Such beliefs demonstrated a consistently low level of what some scholars have deemed interpersonal competence (Carroll, Badger, & Yang, 2006). Interpersonal competence is the ability to navigate and support long-term relationships via healthy processes and relationship-first values. Such competence has been suggested to be the cornerstone of healthy long-term marriages (Carroll et al., 2006), and the lack of confidence some emerging adults feel in this area may be an important contributing factor to the elevated divorce risk of emerging adults with a familial divorce history (Amato & Cheadle, 2005). Further scholarship should continue to explore this perceived lack of interpersonal competence as a potential factor that may alter the marital timing of such emerging adults.

Collectively, these findings suggest that the emerging adults interviewed were subjectively identifying a variety of ways in which the experiences of their parents were shifting and altering their approach to future committed relationships and marriage. Such findings are important in that they suggest the links between parental divorce and relational beliefs go beyond simple links between divorce and more “negative” views of marriage. These negative views appear nuanced and plentifully yet individualized for the emerging adults in the sample.

Limitations and Conclusions

Several limitations should be kept in mind when interpreting and generalizing results. Most quantitative findings produced small effects, on the order similar to previous studies of marital attitudes (Carroll et al., 2007; Willoughby et al., 2015). While parental divorce may have a small direct effect on marital beliefs, other confounding variables may be related to both constructs. For example, socioeconomic factors could be related to both marital conflict and eventual parental divorce and specific negative marital beliefs in line with those found in the present study. Additionally, an underlying family history of mental health concerns may likewise be connected to both an increased likelihood of parental divorce and more negative marital beliefs.

Although we focused on the effect of parental divorce on emerging adult’s marital paradigms, the context of the parental divorce was not assessed and may be an important moderating factor to the results reported here. The timing of the divorce, the nature of visitation and custody, and a variety of other factors related to the divorce itself may alter the effect of such divorces on the marital beliefs of children and emerging adults. Such contexts should be further explored in future research. In addition, the sample here included predominately middle-class emerging adults, most of whom had recently graduated college by the final wave of data collection. Marital trajectories vary based on socioeconomic status (Gibson-Davis, Edin, & McLanahan, 2005), and care should be taken not to generalize these results to emerging adults from low-income backgrounds. Our sample also only explored associations for unmarried emerging adults, and future studies may wish to explore how parental divorce may have unique effects on the marital beliefs of those already married. The sample was also skewed toward females. Although none of the preliminary or main findings suggested that gender had a large influence on the results presented, it is possible that our predominately female sample exaggerated some results and minimized others. Further research is needed to see if results presented here may be replicated in samples that are more diverse.

As noted, the findings of this study continue to advance our understanding of how parental divorce influences the relational trajectories of children through the altering of specific marital beliefs. As scholars continue to explore how parental divorce influences the relational beliefs of children, better education and intervention may be created that will help reduce the risk of divorce in the lives of those emerging adults who eventually transition to marriage.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Brian J. Willoughby

Notes

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