Abstract
Important decisions about romantic relationships are often made during adulthood, but the foundations for healthy relationships begin during childhood. Romantic development is related to experiences in the family of origin such as parenting, parents’ romantic history, and patterns of interaction within families. In order to better understand how this process unfolds into adulthood, we used relationship history interviews from 35 young adults (ages 24–40) to explore the mechanisms through which parents influence their children’s romantic development. We used Applied Thematic Analysis to guide our secondary analysis of relationship histories data. The findings suggest adult children internalize and apply the examples of parents whom they perceive to be good role models. When parents are seen as poor role models, young adults engage in trial and error as they look for partners that will help them avoid their parents’ mistakes and/or they commit to a partner at a young age to form a family of their own. Adult children also seek love, affirmation, and support from their romantic partners when they feel those things were lacking from their parents. We explore implications of these findings for future research on romantic development.
Forming stable, satisfying romantic relationships is among the most important developmental tasks of adulthood (Arnett, 2015; Erikson, 1968). Yet, building the capacity to form such relationships (i.e., romantic development; Furman & Wehner, 1997) begins during childhood. Interactions with parents and other caregivers are crucial in shaping romantic development because they influence individuals’ basic beliefs about themselves and relationships (Conger et al., 2000). Previous research has established the impact of family structure on children’s romantic outcomes (e.g., Conger et al., 2000; Cui et al., 2016), the relationship between parent–child attachment and romantic attachments in adulthood (e.g., Furman & Wehner, 1997), and the ways interactions with parents lay the groundwork for interactions with romantic partners (Shulman et al., 2012; Xia et al., 2018). Yet, there is a need to understand how young adults interpret and use information from their families of origin to inform their decisions about relationships. Using in-depth interviews, this study contributes insight about the mechanisms through which lessons and observations from the family of origin shape romantic development throughout young adults’ relationship histories. This is particularly important because it demonstrates how parental influence shifts as children develop into adults and manifests as they enter and exit different romantic relationships. By exploring parental influence throughout young adults’ romantic lives, this study adds an important link between children gathering information in the family of origin and implementing it in their romantic lives.
Social learning theory
According to social learning theory, most behavior is learned from observing others through role modeling (Bandura, 1977). This pattern occurs through something called vicarious learning, which involves learning by observing others’ experiences, seeing the consequences, and then adjusting one’s behavior accordingly. Children’s behaviors are particularly influenced by what they see within their families (Bandura). Seeing parents as role models and interacting with parents are both part of socialization during childhood and adolescence. Consistent with social learning theory, some of what children observe in their parents’ romantic relationships might surface during adulthood in their basic beliefs about relationships (e.g., positive vs negative beliefs about commitment; Cui et al., 2016) and in how they interact in romantic partners (Xia et al., 2018). In the present study, social learning theory serves as a framework for understanding how young adults translate what they learned in the family of origin into their behaviors in romantic relationships.
Parents as role models
Social learning theory suggests that adult children may make similar romantic decisions as their parents (Amato & DeBoer, 2001; Amato & Patterson, 2017). Specifically, parental role modeling is related to the intergenerational transmission of union instability (i.e., ITUI; Amato & Patterson, 2017; Bryant & Conger, 2002). ITUI has been linked to the transmission of individual characteristics (e.g., warm-supportive vs hostile/coercive interaction style) and relationship skills (e.g., communication) across generations (Bryant & Conger; Dush et al., 2018). These characteristics then influence the types of partners offspring choose for themselves, the interactions they have with partners, and the decisions they make about when and under what circumstances they cohabit, marry, or divorce.
Parental role modeling also shapes children’s beliefs about relationships. For example, adult children whose mothers have frequent relationship transitions may believe relationships are short and having frequent relationships is common (Cui et al., 2016). These attitudes may translate into lower levels of commitment to their romantic relationships (Ryan et al., 2009). However, parental relationship transitions are not the only source of role modeling in families. Frequent and intense parental conflict during adolescence undermines young adults’ belief in their ability to resolve conflict with romantic partners (i.e., relationship efficacy), which has been shown to result in higher levels of conflict and lower relationship quality (e.g., satisfaction and happiness) in adults’ romantic relationships (Cui et al., 2008). Observing parents’ romantic relationships is influential both in terms of offspring’s beliefs about relationships and in terms of acquiring the skills needed to build and maintain satisfying relationships during adulthood.
Parenting
Romantic outcomes for adolescents and young adults are related to closeness between parents and children (Cui et al., 2016), parental support and supervision (Tyrell et al., 2016; Valle & Tillman, 2014), and family conflict (Tyrell et al.). Having stable and connected relationships with family in adolescence predicts romantic relationship quality in young adulthood, whereas is discord in the parent–child relationship is related to negative relationship behaviors and lower quality romantic relationships (Crockett & Randall, 2006; Cui & Fincham, 2010).
Children also establish many of their social skills by interacting with their parents. Positive engagement such as expressions of love and affection between parents and adolescents, is related to better problem-solving strategies and greater feelings of love, connection, and trust with romantic partners during young adulthood (Xia et al., 2018). Similarly, Conger et al. (2000) found that parents who demonstrated high warmth, low hostility, positive monitoring, and consistency in their interactions with their adolescent children predicted similar qualities in their children’s interactions with their romantic partners at the age of 20. When parents are supportive of their children, young adults demonstrate more positive behaviors with their partners, such as better integration of the good and bad in relationships (Einav, 2014) and the ability to maintain longer and more stable relationships (Conger et al., 2000). In contrast, negative childhood experiences (e.g., insecurity, harsh parenting, little involvement) is related to less positive interactions with romantic partners (Dinero et al., 2008; McCarthy & Maughan, 2010). Together, these studies suggest that parenting quality and offspring’s perceptions of their relationships with their parents shape adult children’s romantic experiences in important ways. Despite the strength of existing research, there remains an opportunity to explore how parenting is enacted in relationships across developmental stages, particularly as individuals engage in relationships in their mid-twenties and thirties.
Present study
Previous research demonstrates strong links between the family of origin and the quality and stability of adult children’s romantic relationships. Social learning theory proposes a framework for understanding why these links occur. Yet, there remains a gap in understanding how young adults translate what they have observed in their families of origin into their choices of romantic partners and their interactions with those partners. In the proposed study, we used qualitative data from relationship history interviews to answer the following research questions: (1) What are the mechanisms through which young adults implement lessons they learned about romantic relationships from their parents in their own romantic relationships? (2) How does parental influence vary throughout young adulthood?
Method
This study is a secondary analysis of data from a qualitative investigation of young adults’ relationship histories, which included in-depth interviews with 35 individuals. The Relationship Histories Study (RHS) was conducted by the first author between 2016 and 2018. RHS participants were recruited using fliers posted in coffee shops, laundromats, apartment complexes, and grocery stores. Advertisements were shared on social media sites and posted on the first author’s professional website. Interested participants completed an online screening form to establish eligibility (i.e., ages 25–40 and reported having at least one sexual or romantic relationship) and gather basic demographic information. Eligible participants were contacted for in-depth interviews. During sampling, one exception was made to the age criterion in order to interview a married, 24 year-old African American woman. Interviews took place either in person (n = 17) or using video conferencing software (n = 18); these modes yielded interviews of similar length and quality.
The interview procedure for the RHS began with creating a family genogram (i.e., a diagram of the family). Genograms included participants’ parents or other adults who raised them, siblings, and the participants’ spouses and/or children when applicable. Interviewers and participants then co-created a timeline of every romantic and sexual relationship the participant was involved in beginning in adolescence and ending at the time of the interview. The interview technique was semi-structured, which is consistent with grounded theory interviewing techniques (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). As each relationship was added to the timeline, the participant was asked, “What do you remember about this person?” Based on the participants’ responses, the interviewer asked probing questions about the relationship’s development, positives, challenges, and (when applicable) dissolution. The goal of the interview protocol was to elicit the most salient information about each partner, rather than asking the same questions about each partner. Thus, the interview protocol was purposefully designed to be flexible and was not linked to theory or a priori hypotheses. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. All names mentioned in this study are pseudonyms.
Secondary analysis
Qualitative data collection often yields rich datasets which cannot be fully interpreted or explained in a single study (Hinds et al., 1997). During open coding of all the relationship histories data, the code “family influence” was created. The large amount of data collected within this code suggested the RHS could support a new research purpose relating families with romantic development (Hinds et al.). Because data collection for the RHS was guided by grounded theory, it is also important to situate a secondary analysis within that methodological tradition. Corbin and Stauss (2015) suggested that categories in secondary analyses may be less thoroughly elaborated, yet typically there is enough variation in key concepts to allow for further analysis. Thus, a secondary analysis was methodologically justified, and the topic was sufficiently distinct from the original study to merit the present investigation. We conducted a secondary analysis of all 35 transcripts to answer the research questions.
Sample
All 35 participants in the RHS made meaningful comments about their parents’ influence on their romantic lives. Thus, both the RHS and this investigation share the same sample. The sample included 20 women (57%), 14 men (43%), and one transgender man ranging in age from 24–40 years (M = 31 years). Participants reported identifying as heterosexual (n = 26), bisexual (n = 5), or gay/lesbian (n = 4). The self-reported race of participants was White (n = 26), Asian (n = 4), African American (n = 3), and Latinx (n = 2). Twenty-four participants had a bachelor’s degree or more and 11 individuals had a high school degree, some college, associate’ degree, or vocational training. Participants reported their current relationship status as single (n = 9), casually dating (n = 3), exclusively dating (n = 8), engaged (n = 1), or married (n = 14). Fewer than half of participants grew up in continuously married families (n = 14). Most participants experienced either parental divorce (n = 15) or the separation of their unmarried parents (n = 5). Notably, four participants’ parents divorced when they were adults (i.e., 18 or older). Most divorced or separated parents re-partnered, but only five participants experienced multiple transitions in household composition. Two participants transitioned to other caregivers during childhood, one to a grandparent and one to a foster family. We considered any individuals who served as parental figures as “parents.”
Data analysis
We analyzed the data using Applied Thematic Analysis (ATA), which is a set of coding strategies based on grounded theory and phenomenology (Guest et al., 2012). Similar to grounded theory, ATA focuses on lived experience and emphasizes supporting claims with specific examples from the data. We chose ATA because it provides a useful procedure called “bounding the analysis” for identifying only the information which potentially answers the research question. To bound the analysis, we searched for keywords related to the research questions in each interview transcript (i.e., family, mother, mom, father, dad, marriage, parent). Once relevant text was identified, the coding was inductive, drawing meaning directly from the raw data. We assigned code labels to capture concepts related to parental influence on participants’ romantic relationships and wrote descriptions to indicate the meaning of each code. We repeated this open coding process through all transcripts, adding codes as new ideas were identified in the data and categorizing other ideas into existing codes. During open coding, we created 24 codes (e.g., rules of dating, quality of parents’ relationship, your beliefs about relationships, direct family influence).
In order to enhance the trustworthiness of the secondary analysis, we made efforts to reduce researcher bias by coding collaboratively (Morse, 2015). Having already coded content related to family influence, the first author had greater awareness of relevant themes than the second author, who was reading the data for the first time. To neutralize this potential bias, the second author led the open coding process and identified and defined key concepts related to the research questions. The authors met weekly to go over new codes and discuss the emerging themes. Through this process, we refined the descriptions of each code to accommodate our growing understanding of the data. When we had difficulty coding a passage of text, we returned to the raw data to gain context for the passage. By returning to the interviews, we were able to come to a consensus on all codes.
After coding several interviews, we transferred codes created in MAXQDA into a codebook in Microsoft word with code labels and descriptions. This process allowed us to create an ongoing discussion of how codes related to the research questions and to each other. When open coding was complete, we created a theoretical memo explaining emerging findings and inserting participant quotes to demonstrate data support. By identifying the codes with the most data support (i.e., numerous quotes from across a variety of interviews) and eliminating others, we were able to establish the consistency of our findings (Morse, 2015). In the final stage of the analysis, we explored the connection between experiences in the family of origin and what young adults reported doing in response to those observations. In doing so, we moved beyond describing parental influences to an investigation of the actions young adults took in response to parental examples. Finally, we explored the variation within each of the main themes, in order to explain how parents’ influences evolved as participants got older and gained more relationship experience.
Results
We identified two broad themes to organize much of the data about parental influence on romantic development: role modeling and parenting. Under role modeling, we described how participants who felt their parents were good role models tended to internalize parents’ lessons about relationships. Participants whose parents were not good examples attempted to avoid their parents’ mistakes through trial and error or by making early commitments to partners who seemed sufficiently different from their parents. In terms of parenting, participants who perceived a lack of parental warmth and support sought what they were missing in romantic relationships: support, love, and affirmation. Adult children also turned to their parents for approval and advice as they made important relationship decisions.
Role modeling
Participants translated what they observed in their families differently depending on whether they perceived their parents to be good role models or poor role models. When parents had happy and stable romantic relationships, or they overcame challenges to stay together, adult children saw their parents as good examples. When parents had volatile conflict, issues with infidelity, or frequent relationship transitions, they were generally considered poor examples by their children. Based on what they observed growing up, participants tried to emulate or avoid their parents’ relational patterns in their own romantic lives.
Internalizing parents’ lessons about relationships
Many examples of parents’ positive role modeling referred to commitment and conflict resolution. For example, Charlie (age 36, married), described himself as commitment-oriented from the time he was a teenager. His parents were in a stable, long-term marriage, and he considered this to be the reason he pursued long-term relationships rather than casual ones. My parents have been married for a really long time. I always found myself to be a long-term relationship-type of a person. [I’m] unwilling to, like, let a relationship just dissipate for small reasons and kind of focused on trying to make things work. I don’t remember having any one conversation with my dad or my mom about this. (…) But when I was in high school, my parents went through that spat where they almost got divorced. I remember commitment, or not commitment but staying together for the sake of the family was a big piece.
Participants also learned through watching parents’ daily interactions with each other. Elizabeth (age 36, married) explained how the good communication she saw between her parents was a template she used in her own marriage. “My parents [have] been married almost 40 years. And they’re both very healthy and open communicators. They were separated for a while when I was four, but they have always been open about the fact that marriage is work.” Despite their struggles, Elizabeth credited their example for the health of her relationships, “I really think the reason I have a good relationship history and the healthy relationships that I do is because I have this excellent example.” When participants had good role models, is was evident throughout their relationship histories how it helped them build and maintain positive romantic relationships for themselves.
Even when parents were divorced, some participants were able to internalize positive beliefs about relationships. Brian (age 25, single) explained how his parents’ amicable divorce impacted him. “I’m always really hopeful that [my relationships] will work out and there’ll be peace. I think that’s totally a response to my parents, them getting divorced but still being able to be peaceful. (…) There’s no need for bad blood.” Parents did not need to be continuously married or have what appeared to be easy relationships in order to provide beneficial lessons about relationships for their children. As adults who faced their own relationship challenges, having observed effective problem-solving or peaceful separation was also informative.
Avoiding parents’ mistakes
Children who viewed their parents as having problematic relationships were determined to do things differently with their own partners. Yet, they sometimes struggled to work through how to do things differently. Trial and error helped some participants to discover what kinds of partners would create a healthier dynamic than their parents demonstrated. Making early commitments such as marriage also served as a way to lock down partners who seemed to offer a different type of relationship from their parents. These strategies were sometimes used together (e.g., see Sammy’s story) and other times one dominated as the primary strategy for avoiding the negative situations participants observed in their families.
Alvin and Sammy each observed the consequences of infidelity in their parents’ marriages, and both became focused on finding partners they could trust. Despite the similarity in their circumstances, they used different strategies to avoid their parents’ mistakes. Alvin (age 37, married) explained:
I saw [my parents’ situation] and I said, ‘I don’t want to ever feel this way again. I don’t want to feel betrayed. I want to be able to trust the other person.’ So that’s how I gauged my relationships after that happened. (…) I don’t want the blatant yelling and trying to tear the other person down. And I sure as hell don’t want the physical abuse.
Alvin dated a series of women in his late teens and twenties, and nearly all of them were long-distance. By keeping some distance, he reduced the amount of potential conflict he would encounter. These relationships also gave him a chance to see what kind of partner would be different enough from his parents to meet his need for honesty and lower conflict. During his interview, he compared his wife to another relationship he considered serious (Lana): [My wife] in many ways was very 180 degrees in the positive direction compared to a lot of the previous relationships that I had. For example, she’s always been responsible, financially responsible. One person that I think of in my past that was extremely irresponsible was Lana. And my mom, that’s a lot of problems with my parents, all the fighting and stuff came from my mom being financially irresponsible. So when I ended up with Lana, that kind of came back to me and I said, “Ugh, I can’t be having this.” I feel like in the beginning of our relationship, I did things on purpose to push his buttons, and I do remember telling him that I was afraid I was going to be like my dad, to be someone who can’t be faithful. (…) So we just had a lot of jealous feelings.
Participants explained how problems in their parents’ relationships, such as conflict, yelling, or abusive behaviors, had an impact on conflict management in their relationships. Jason (age 27, married) explained, “My dad, stepdad, he was a complete a-hole to my mom, not very nice person. And my mom in turn took it out on me. So, I definitely learned just to be a nicer person.” After he got married, his childhood experiences surfaced during conflict with his wife. “So now that I’m married, I realize that when my wife and I get into an argument or fight, I become very aware of how I’m acting and my inflection, and I realize I’m acting like my [step]dad right now.” Although Jason’s first reaction was to lose his temper with his wife, he was deliberately trying to develop strategies for helping him to calm down during conflicts. And so a couple weeks ago my wife and I got into a fight over something really dumb and I remember we were just yelling at each other and I caught myself and so I just went and sat at the dinner table and just, like to decompress and, “Okay, let’s not even put ourselves in that situation. (…) There’s no reason to ever get that angry.”
Trial and error and early commitment did not always produce positive outcomes for children looking to avoid their parents’ mistakes. For example, Claudia’s (age 40, divorced) expected she would end up in a high-conflict relationship similar to her parents, so she chose a partner who tended to avoid conflict. “I had always expected to be in a relationship where I was treated horribly and maybe abused, so the fact that he never yelled at me, he never argued with me, that we got along well together, [I thought] that I did okay.” Claudia did not engage in a lot of trial and error in her relationships. She married the first person she seriously dated because he seemed to be laid back in a way her parents were not. This early commitment helped her get out of her family home, but it presented a new set of problems that ultimately led to divorce. After 16 years of marriage, she concluded she had, “no emotional connection” with her husband and their relationship was, “completely not satisfying.” She reported that she was not interested in pursuing romantic relationships in the future. She enjoyed the freedom of taking care of herself and her son, and no one else. Although Claudia was not able to avoid her parents’ mistakes by building a stable, happy relationship with another person, she embraced singlehood as a positive and empowering outcome of her romantic life.
Like Claudia, new problems arose when Danielle (age 36, married) over-corrected for her mother’s poor example. Danielle’s mother had a series of husbands and cohabiting partners during her childhood, and she knew she did not want the same for herself. Yet, the lack of positive relationship examples left her with little guidance about how to do things differently. Consequently, Danielle had only one partner other than her husband. Despite being friends first, their romantic relationship was brief before they decided to get married. At the time of the interview, they were struggling with ongoing conflict and mismatched expectations. She said, It’s been difficult [because] my mom never really had any successful relationships. So for me, sort of constantly questioning, like, “Is this normal in a marriage?” (…) All I know is what not to do, you know. I just don’t know exactly what to do.
Parenting
The perceived quality of parent–child relationships, combined with developmental stage, shaped how participants integrated parental influences in their romantic lives. For example, a perceived lack of parental support, love, and affirmation, were particularly influential in shaping romantic development during adolescence. Participants with negative perceptions of their relationships with their parents actively sought what they felt they were not getting from their families of origin from romantic partners. Thus, the data examples related to parenting disproportionately reflect adults’ negative perceptions of their relationships with their parents and how those played out in their early relationship histories. Once participants became adults, this pattern shifted. Young adults with both positive and negative parent–child relationships sought their parents’ approval for their choices and/or advice about their romantic lives.
Seeking support
During childhood and adolescence, parents are an important source of emotional and instrumental support. Too little or too much parental involvement influenced participants’ behaviors in their romantic relationships. When parents were not present or involved, participants became more attached to their romantic partners and their partners’ families, particularly during adolescence. Jessica (age 27, single) became very attached to her first serious boyfriend and his family during high school. She said, “I really valued that relationship. He stayed at my house because my mom was never around.” Her boyfriend’s parents served as parental figures for her, which was one of the attractive qualities about her partner. “He’s really funny and easy-going. He had a nice smile. And a good family. That’s really important to me because I didn’t have the best family growing up, so it’s nice to have my partner have one.” As her relationship history progressed into early adulthood, she spent several years in two relationships which felt safe and secure even though they were unsatisfying. Only in her mid-twenties did she begin seeking relationships to fit what she genuinely wanted in a partner.
Jay (age 27, casually dating) also perceived a lack of parental support because his mother was busy caring for his disabled brother. Jay lived most of the time with his grandmother, and generally did not feel close to his family. He explained, “Um, well I think that I had always looked at settling down sooner rather than later and I think it had to do with like having a really crappy upbringing with my family.” Jay was married with a child in his early twenties. As adults reflecting back on their early relationships, participants reported that having parents who were uninvolved or unsupportive encouraged them to seek a sense of security and connection from their romantic partners.
Having parents who were overly involved or controlling also had consequences for romantic development. Don (age 39, committed relationship) described his mother as a, “dominating, aggressive, over the top woman.” He said, “I always felt like I was really out of control of my life. Like, my mom was so in control of what happened and everything that I did.” As a consequence, he preferred romantic relationships that allowed him to be in control. “There’s definitely times in my life where I’ve been kind of a mess, emotionally and professionally and then I’ve entered a relationship with someone that is more dominant-submissive, and through that interaction, I’m able to get a handle on myself.” Don’s preference for dominant-submissive relationships was uncommon, but the connection he made between his mother’s control and what he looked for in his romantic life is similar to the experiences of other participants. He sought these relationships all through his twenties and thirties, but at the time of his follow-up interview he was in a more equal relationship for the first time in his life with a woman significantly younger than he was. He was shifting away from the need for dominance in this relationship, which perhaps demonstrates a release from needing to counter-balance his mother’s influence earlier in his romantic life.
Lilly (age 31, casually dating) shared a similar story about her controlling father, “My dad rules the roost. (…) Like, my family is a very old like farm family, so…the men are the king - that’s just how it is. Even if you don’t agree, too bad.” She went on to describe how this played out in her romantic life: When I got older in my relationships, I tried to change, but I always seem to go back to what I’m comfortable with and that’s being the one that cooks and cleans and serves and provides and then…The men I always end up dating are the men who are the breadwinner and the alpha male. They have to be in control.
Seeking love and affirmation
When participants felt a lack of love or affirmation from their parents, they tended to seek those things from their romantic partners, particularly during adolescence and early emerging adulthood. For example, Claire (age 35, divorced) reflected on how the lack of affection in her childhood shaped her romantic experiences. I grew up with nobody ever saying ‘I love you’, nobody ever being affectionate. I sort of craved a certain kind of attention and I usually would get it in a negative way. (…) I realized with [my ex-husband], I was constantly seeking his approval, but it wasn’t just with [him]. That was why I compromised myself. I just wanted certain approval. And I was willing to lose myself in order to get it. My dad was really hard on me. I found out from my mom that he believed it was his job to tell me everything that anybody else was going to think about me negatively. So, we had a lot of conversations about my weight and my acne. And, I just couldn’t ever live up to…I was constantly trying to find that approval somewhere.
Because they were seeking affirmation through partners, some participants engaged in relationships that were unsatisfying or in which they were mistreated. Claire’s ex-husband struggled with substance abuse and their relationship was volatile as a consequence. Ann was partnered almost continuously from her early teens until age 23 because she needed constant affirmation that she was a desirable partner. Andrew (age 31, committed relationship) looked for approval from romantic partners after his parents rejected him for being gay. His first serious relationship became abusive, but he stayed in it for two years. He explained how he thought his relationship with his mother contributed to staying for so long. I think that my need to have love and acceptance from my mother and always having to take care of her. I kind of ended up doing the same thing with [my partner], where I didn’t care how he was treating me as long as I felt attention, as long as I felt like I was cared for even if I wasn’t being cared for.
Seeking approval vs. seeking advice
As participants made important decisions about their love lives, younger adults and those with strained parent–child relationships sought parents’ approval for their choices. In some cases, seeking approval was an extension of negative patterns stemming from childhood. For example, Claudia (age 40, divorced) explained how her mother criticized her for living with her boyfriend, so she married him at age 19 to make peace with her family: My mother ostracized me and wouldn’t let my [younger] brothers speak to me because I was living in sin. So, I guess I had some guilt about that and sort of felt that, I love [my partner] and I didn’t want to end the relationship or separate physically. So in my mind the only alternative was to get married, which I never would have done now. But I also had this pressure because of my mom. She was like, ‘If you’re a lesbian, you’re going to be promiscuous and whatever.’ (…) So I felt, like, that pressure from [my girlfriend] and from my mom. It’s like, ‘Okay, you’re right.’ And I told my mom we’re going to get married.
Parents became a valued source of advice when participants were older and/or if they had supportive and loving relationships with their parents. In these roles, parents shared their experiences about romantic relationships or helped children to think through their current romantic relationship questions and concerns. For example, Kayla’s (age 33, married) mom helped her gain perspective about the problems she was having with her partner, whom she later married. I just told my mom that, there’s these little naggy things where we don’t get along. And my mom sort of laughed about that and she told me about some annoying things that my dad did. And she said you don’t have to share your values exactly, but you have to be able to compromise. I was calling [my mom] every day and just expressing to her that I’m feeling this kind of pressure where I love Liza, [but] sometimes I wonder how I lasted so long with somebody so different. And she always told me just don’t be pressured into it.
Discussion
The links between experiences in the family of origin and romantic development are well established in the existing literature. In particular, parents have an influence on the timing, quality, and nature of romantic involvements in their children’s lives that continue into adulthood (Conger et al., 2000; Shulman et al., 2012; Xia et al., 2018). The findings from the present study replicate some of these findings and they also contribute insight into the process by which parenting and parental role modeling influence romantic development into adulthood. Implicit and explicit messages from parents serve as the backdrop for children’s decision-making about their love lives (Johnson & Bradbury, 2015). This study provides insight into the action children take to replicate or remedy what they experienced in the family of origin through trial and error, early commitment, and seeking support, affirmation, love, and advice. Understanding more about both how and when adults translate information from their parents into their relationships is an important contribution of this study.
Exploration and commitment
Some participants viewed their parents as cautionary tales and actively avoided partners they thought would create similar dynamics, whereas others sought to emulate their parents’ stability or savvy problem-solving. Our findings suggest that accomplishing those goals occurred through two seemingly incompatible strategies: trial and error and commitment. Trying different partners and learning along the way is one way participants moved away from the negative dynamics they perceived in their families of origin and established different (though not always healthier) patterns in their own lives.
Although romantic exploration is considered a normative aspect of romantic development during young adulthood (Arnett, 2015; Shulman, 2017), it is rarely discussed as a response to the family of origin. This study demonstrates a link between what children observe before leaving home and their approach to romantic exploration during early adulthood. Our findings also provide some preliminary evidence that education-level or socioeconomic status may be relevant for how individuals respond to parental influences during the transition to adulthood. Participants who went to college were more likely to use trial and error (i.e., exploration) to find a partner that would help them avoid their parents’ mistakes. Those without a college degree were more likely to commit to a relationship at a young age or without a lot of romantic exploration as a way to counter problems they saw in their families. Additional research is needed to investigate these different pathways and how they impact the long-term health and stability of children’s romantic relationships. Specifically, building on Shulman’s (2017) work about the nature and impact of romantic exploration is critical for understanding which romantic trajectories lead to positive romantic outcomes and those that do not.
In addition to expected findings about how positive role models guided adult children’s relationships, we also identified nuance about how adults make meaning from their parents’ examples, particularly around commitment (see also Sibley et al., 2015). For participants whose parents were not positive role models, committing to a partner at a young age provided an opportunity to form their own families and try to do things differently. However, unions which initially seemed healthier than those from the family of origin were sometimes problematic. This may be attributable to the young ages that participants married, the skills they brought into those marriages, or their commitment to marriage itself (Amato & DeBoer, 2001; Amato & Patterson, 2017).
Previous research suggests that parents with unstable or unsatisfying relationships tend to have children who develop more negative beliefs about marriage and are less committed in their relationships (Conger et al., 2000; Cui, & Fincham, 2010; Cui et al., 2016). However, we found that parents did not have to display effortlessly happy and stable relationships in order to have a positive influence on their children’s romantic development. Even in the midst of challenges in the relationship between parents, adult children learned lessons about the nature of commitment and the value of working at a relationship. This was especially salient when participants were in their 30’s and facing normative challenges associated with long-term relationships.
Seeking and singlehood
Children’s experiences of family structure transitions, parental support, love, and affirmation in childhood is reflected in their adolescent (Tyrell et al., 2016) and adult intimate relationships (Cui et al., 2016; Einav, 2014). Participants with challenging parent–child relationships felt they were seeking something in their romantic relationships they lacked in their relationships with their parents. Participants with overbearing parents sought autonomy and control, whereas participants with parents who were absent or withheld love and affection sought connection and stability. We suggest parents have an impact on romantic development regardless of how they engage with their children, but at the extremes it seems children react against their parents as they seek connections outside of the family (Tyrell et al., 2016). This may be especially problematic if it leads to continuing unhealthy relationships or sliding into marriage because they provide some sense of love and acceptance (Jamison & Beckmeyer, 2020).
The relationship histories data allowed us to evaluate the transitions between relationships and participants’ thoughts and expectations about their future relational lives. In several cases, participants made a decision to stop dating in order to re-evaluate their romantic lives. In these cases, being voluntarily single provided opportunities for adults to seek partners to meet their specific needs and expectations rather than seeking a partner to fulfill something they lacked from their family of origin. This preliminary finding is ripe for future research about the role of singlehood in shaping romantic trajectories away from the influences of the family of origin and toward self-discovery in the context of romantic life.
Considerations and implications
The findings of this study suggest some of the mechanisms through which parents influence their children’s romantic relationships during adulthood. However, because these data were retrospective, they may lack key details about the decision-making processes in relationships and how they relate to the family of origin. In future studies, using a longitudinal design may provide more complete information about how parental influence on romantic relationships develops into adulthood. It is also important to consider that this research focused on parents’ influences on individuals’ romantic development. In future research, interviewing dyads would provide a different type of insight about how the combination of family of origin experiences converge within relationships. Understanding how each person’s experiences and expectations were shaped in the family of origin is especially important in the context of marriage or other committed unions.
Using data from the Relationship Histories Study was beneficial because it provided insight into how adults interpreted and responded to parental influences in their decisions about their romantic lives. Participants’ explanations for how they made sense of their parents’ influence is the primary contribution of this study. However, the RHS was not focused on the connections between parents and adult children’s romantic development. A study designed to address parents’ long-term influence on romantic development would provide data to explore variations based on family structure, gender, sexual orientation, and education status. Our results hint that some of these factors may play a role in how adults use information from their parents in their romantic relationships, but a lack of data meant we could not fully explore these ideas.
Conclusion
These findings demonstrate the importance of considering parental influence on romantic development as both dynamic and ongoing. Our findings suggest that parental influences can persist well into adulthood, particularly as individuals enter into and maintain their own committed relationships. However, there are also limits to parents’ influence as children exert more agency over their romantic choices and extract more nuanced meaning from the examples they observed in their parents’ relationships. As adults, participants moved away from seeking partners in reaction to parental deficits, and instead sought partners (or chose singlehood) based on their own romantic experiences and values. This has important implications for both theory and research, as it requires inquiry later into adult children’s experiences and greater attention to young adults’ interpretations of parental influence on their love lives.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Open research statement
As part of IARR’s encouragement of open research practices, the author(s) have provided the following information: This research was not pre-registered. The data used in the research cannot be shared with any person