The objective of this application is to understand the factors responsible for the intergenerational transmission of divorce. This information is of crucial importance to our society because divorce has many negative consequences not only for the divorcing couple but also for any children involved. Furthermore, due to currently high rates of divorce, many more children will be affected by their parents' divorce. A recent meta-analysis of longitudinal studies of marital outcomes shows that, not surprisingly, marital dissatisfaction is one of the best predictors of divorce. Surprisingly, adult children of divorce do not differ significantly in marital satisfaction from children from intact families. Children of divorce do, however, have significantly more negative expectations about the success of future relationships and marriage. The proposed project is a longitudinal follow-up survey of a large sample of children from divorced and intact families. The strength of the current project lies in its theoretical orientation and use of a longitudinal design capitalizing on the fact that participants were surveyed by the principal investigator when they were 18 years old in 1992-93. Karney and Bradbury's (1995a) Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation model will be tested; this model says that vulnerability factors interact with stress to affect marital adaptations. Marital adaptations, in turn, are expected to predict marital satisfaction and stability. A modification of Karney and Bradbury's model will allow a test of an expanded set of vulnerabilities (parental divorce, perceptions of parental relationships, attachment style), two kinds of stress (relationship-specific vs. non-specific), and emotional distress (conceptualized as """"""""attachment-system activation"""""""") in predicting adaptive processes. Adaptive processes (conflict styles, provision/acceptance of partner support) are expected to affect adult children's subsequent marital stability via their appraisals of relationship quality. The design is an eight-wave longitudinal survey, with self-report assessments of adult children's vulnerability factors, current stresses, emotional distress, and adaptive processes at Phase 1. Phases 11-VIII entail surveys to track changes in relationship satisfaction and stability as a function of Phase I vulnerability factors' interaction with current stresses. Vulnerability factors are expected to lead to poor marital outcomes only when stress-induced emotional distress results in inadequate partner support. This model should account for the differential relationship/marital stability of children from divorced families compared with children from intact families. The trajectory of marital satisfaction is expected to decline more steeply for children from divorced families compared with children from intact families.
