Breakups: Moving On

Moving On

Laurie Purcell's eight-year marriage ended because she was in love
with the wrong man for the wrong reasons.

Her ex-husband had many of the same characteristics as her
father—a fact research shows might have benefitted Purcell's
marriage had her relationship with her father been stronger. "I felt I
didn't receive enough love from my dad, and therefore I felt for most of
my life that I didn't deserve it," the Milwaukee-area woman
realized with the help of counseling. "I put up with unhealthy
relationships, because I didn't think I deserved better."

Can children blame an early relationship with a parent for frayed
romantic and spousal relationships later in life? For The Unexpected
Legacy of Divorce (Hyperion, 2000), Judith Wallerstein, Julia Lewis and
Sandra Blakeslee tracked 100 children since the 1970s and found that they
suffered the effects of their parents' divorce well into adulthood.
However, other studies say that it's not the parents' marriage or
divorce that affects children's later relationships, but the parent-child
bond that is key to children's success in achieving their own satisfying
adult relationships.

One study was conducted by researchers at Iowa State University's
(ISU) Institute for Social and Behavioral Research. They used data from
the ongoing Iowa Youth and Family Project, which began monitoring the
emotional health of families in the 1980s.

Children with warm and supportive parents were more likely to have
satisfying relationships later in life, the ISU study found. "Even if an
effective parent is divorced or was never married, the kids should do as
well as kids from two-parent families in terms of their development of
romantic relationships as young adults," says study author Rand Conger,
Ph.D., an ISU professor of psychology and sociology.

The 11-year ISU study tracked nearly 200 children from adolescence,
interviewing them and their parents as well as videotaping and scoring
their interactions with one another. The same children were interviewed
again as young adults, videotaped alongside their romantic partners and
scored using the same formula.

Conger argues that the factor affecting kids' later relationships
the most is a disrupted parent-child relationship. But what might cause
that? "Parental discord," says Paul Amato, Ph.D., a Pennsylvania State
University professor whose research was published in the Journal of
Marriage and the Family. "In our study, it's more the direct exposure to
the parents' discord that causes the problem," he says.

The PSU study of nearly 700 children found that children of openly
hostile marriages fared better in later intimate relationships if their
parents divorced than did children whose parents rarely fought before
divorcing. The results led the researchers to conclude that, depending on
the quality of the parental relationship, some children might be better
off if their parents divorce, while other marriages should be saved if
possible.