Our Parents' Relationship Instability Predicts Our Own

If your parents divorced, will you?

On one hand, the idea that relationship stability is linked across generations seems odd. You are not your parents; your relationship takes place at a different point in time and it operates with different pressures at play.

On the other hand, people's past experiences and beliefs can shape any given relationship's trajectory. If people lived through their parents' divorce, it may change how they see and interact with the world. The beliefs we internalize by witnessing our parents' relationships may make our own relationships more vulnerable to dissolution.

Pathways for Intergenerational Transmission

A growing body of evidence links people's own relationship experiences to their parents' experiences. Amato and Patterson (2017) synthesized existing literature on the intergenerational transmission of relationship instability, suggesting that a few factors may help explain why parents' relationship challenges predict those of their adult children. These include:

• Relationship skill deficits. If people learn through observation and their parents' relationship is marked by avoidance, conflict, a lack of affection, or limited support, these individuals are unlikely to have as strong a set of relationship skills as people who, throughout their childhood, observed how healthy relationships operate.
• Non-traditional relationship attitudes. Witnessing parents divorce and seeing firsthand how their lives change may broaden people's beliefs about relationships. Whereas some families may strictly adhere to the cultural norm that people stay married, models of divorce can expand how people think about relationships. Children of divorce may see breaking up as a viable option more readily and more easily than children whose parents remain in an intact relationship.
• Emotional insecurity. For some people, witnessing their parents break up introduces fundamental uncertainty about trust and love. This type of emotional insecurity can undermine healthy patterns. If seeing parents' relationship problems leads to questions about one's own worth, trust issues, and/or beliefs that being vulnerable will make people leave, these insecurities can make it harder to create long-lasting relationships.
• Stress. Parents' divorcing can add stress to the everyday life of their children. Maybe it's short-term distress, but the longer-term arrangements for a newly organized family can also be stressful for some children. If they're the go-between for their parents, if they have to keep secrets or manage their parents' emotions, if they have to shuttle between homes in a burdensome way, any number of challenges originating from their parents' separation can add stress. If this carries into adulthood, it might also carry into the adult child's romantic relationships, adding to their vulnerability.
• Risky life choices. When children find themselves with divorcing parents, they might also find themselves less well-supervised, more distressed, and perhaps inclined to engage in risky behaviors (e.g., substance abuse). They might also form intimate relationships early, which itself is associated with relationship instability.

Keep in mind that the story of intergenerational transmission for relationship instability is one of transmission, not of determination. The evidence linking parents' and adult children's relationship instability is correlational and based on group data; it's not causal nor does it suggest each adult child will have relationship experiences that mirror that of their parents. What it does offer is a story of possible vulnerabilities for a subset of adults that might be rooted in a shared childhood experience.

Disrupting Cross-Generational Patterns

Parents with relationship difficulties may benefit from thinking about how their relationship patterns might be experienced by their children, and they can introduce a wide array of supports (e.g., open dialog, therapy) to care for their children's emotional well-being. Making sure children have access to healthy relationship models and working to reduce children's stress before, during, and after a parent's relationship transition can be ways to disrupt some of the negative pathways linking parents' experiences to their children's adult relationships.

In some cases, the end of their parents' relationship can be an important and healthy step for children (particularly in the context of abuse). Separating may be a critical step in helping them, as adults, have a clearer understanding of what healthy love looks like.

This research also inspires the potential benefits for adult children of divorce of thinking about their own relationship patterns and how they experienced their parents' relationships. Giving attention to your assumptions about love and relationship stability, possibly in the context of therapy, may be a helpful step towards breaking unhealthy patterns and doubling down on healthy ones.

To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.