Parental divorce and premarital couples: Commitment and other relationshipcharacteristics

Parental divorce is thought to affect the romantic relationships of young a dults, especially with respect to their certainty about the relationship an d perceptions of problems in it. We examined these connections with a rando m sample of 464 coupled partners. Compared with women from intact families, women from divorced families reported less trust and satisfaction, but mor e ambivalence and conflict. For men, perceptions of relationships were cont ingent on the marital status of their partners' parents, although men from intact and divorced families did differ on structural constraints that affe ct commitment. Young adults who were casually dating showed the strongest e ffects of parental divorce, suggesting that the repercussions of parental d ivorce may be in place before the young adults form their own romantic rela tionships.