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Marriage & Family Review

ISSN: 0149-4929 (Print) 1540-9635 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wmfr20

Parental Divorce and Romantic Attachment in Young Adulthood: Important Role of Problematic Beliefs

Rosemary Bernstein , Dacher Keltner & Heidemarie Laurent

To cite this article: Rosemary Bernstein , Dacher Keltner & Heidemarie Laurent (2012) Parental Divorce and Romantic Attachment in Young Adulthood: Important Role of Problematic Beliefs, Marriage & Family Review, 48:8, 711-731, DOI: 10.1080/01494929.2012.700910

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01494929.2012.700910

Published online: 26 Nov 2012.

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711

Parental Divorce and Romantic Attachment in Young Adulthood: Important Role of

Problematic Beliefs

ROSEMARY BERNSTEIN Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA

DACHER KELTNER Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA

HEIDEMARIE LAURENT Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA

In the current study 45 university students with either divorced or continuously married parents were surveyed about their romantic attachment, positive emotionality, depressive symptomology, self- esteem, and, when applicable, their retrospective beliefs about their parents’ marital dissolution. Findings revealed that parental divorce did not predict attachment insecurity, depression, or low self-esteem. In fact, adult children of divorced parents (ACDP) reported increased compassion, awe, enthusiasm, and perspective taking. Among ACDP, a composite factor representing increased fear of abandonment, peer rejection, and maternal blame was positively associated with adult attachment anxiety, even while controlling for parental conflict and divorce-related socioenviron- mental disruption. Results are discussed in terms of their support of a complex understanding of the long-term effects of parental divorce, and in their inconsistency with a purely pathogenic model of parental divorce.

KEYWORDS parental divorce, positive outcomes, romantic attachment

Address correspondence to Rosemary Bernstein, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, 1227 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Marriage & Family Review, 48:711–731, 2012 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0149-4929 print/1540-9635 online DOI: 10.1080/01494929.2012.700910

712 R. Bernstein et al.

INTRODUCTION

A large body of research suggests children of divorced parents are at greater risk for a variety of behavioral, psychological, and educational problems when compared with children of continuously married parents. In general, adult children of divorced parents (ACDP) earn less income and complete fewer years of schooling (e.g., Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 1999), report more conflict with and looser ties to their parents (e.g., Ruschena, Prior, Sanson, & Smart, 2005), endorse more psychological distress (e.g., Amato & Cheadle, 2005; McIntyre, Heron, McIntyre, Burton, & Engler, 2003), and are more often classified as having dismissing or preoccupied (i.e. insecure) states of mind with regard to attachment as measured by the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan & Main, 1984)—classifications highly predictive of their own infant’s insecure attachment (e.g., Lewis, Feiring, & Rosenthal, 2000).

Within their own romantic relationships, ACDP tend to become sexu- ally active and marry at an earlier age (Christensen & Brooks, 2001; Heifetz, Connolly, Pepler, & Craig, 2010), endorse a lack of trust in intimate relation- ships and marriage (King, 2002), have lower expectations for a successful marriage (Amato, 1988; Franklin, Janoff-Bulman, & Roberts, 1990), and are approximately two times as likely to divorce their own spouses at some point over the course of their marriages (Amato & DeBoer, 2001; Teachman, 2002; Wolfinger, 2000), a phenomenon known as the intergenerational trans- mission of divorce.

Though these general trends are well replicated, the strengths of these effects tell us that negative outcomes of divorce are far from inevitable. Meta- analyses demonstrate that most differences between those with divorced and continuously married parents are quite modest, with a mean effect size of 0.14 standard deviations (Amato and Keith, 1991). Most ADCP do not develop lasting problems; in the 25-year-long Unexpected Legacy of Divorce project, 70% of ACDP scored within the “average” or “very well to outstanding” ranges of adjustment (Wallerstein, Lewis, & Blakeslee, 2000). In fact, there may be some positive outcomes linked to parental divorce. Gately and Schwebel (1992) reviewed many of the early studies in the field and high- lighted several areas in which adolescents of divorced parents showed an advantage, including maturity, self-esteem, empathy, and androgyny.

More recently, Sever and colleagues (2007) found that over time, almost 50% of ACDP reported more positive than negative outcomes, whereas less than 25% thought negative outcomes outweighed the positive. Positive reported outcomes included empowerment, empathy, and relationship savvy. Given the heterogeneity of response to parental divorce, researchers must look beyond weak main effects to consider features of both the indi- vidual (e.g., their perceptions and attributions) and of the parental divorce (e.g., its associated socioenvironmental impacts) that may potentiate, dilute, or even reverse negative outcomes (see Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980).

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Socioenvironmental Divorce Stressors: Disruption and Conflict

Parental divorce often involves multiple environmental disruptions, includ- ing increased conflict between parents, exposure to parental distress, changes in residence and schools, and loss of time with family members, that impact children’s post-divorce adjustment (e.g., Greeff & van der Merwe, 2004; Laumann-Billings & Emery, 2000; Sandler, Wolchik, Braver, & Fogas, 1986; Wolchik, Wilcox, Tein, & Sandler, 2000). Parental conflict seems to have particularly pernicious effects on later romantic functioning, prospectively predicting ACDP’s intimate relationship behaviors and satisfaction (Conger, Cui, Bryant, & Elder, 2000) and adult attachment security (e.g., Feeney, 2006; Henry & Holmes, 1998; Mikulincer & Florian, 1999).

However, some sequelae of parental divorce cannot be better explained by parental conflict. For example, Amato and DeBoer (2001) reported that parental divorce, rather than conflict or discord, is associated with divorce in the next generation. Indeed, recent research has argued that parental divorce and parental conflict influence young adults’ romantic relationships via sepa- rate pathways: while parental divorce appears to relate to ACDP’s poor romantic relationship quality by promoting more favorable attitudes toward divorce and lower relationship commitment, parental conflict seems to relate to ACDP’s poor relationship quality via its associations with increased romantic partner conflict (Cui & Fincham, 2010).

Psychological Stressors: Problematic Beliefs

Perceptions of major life events are also hugely important in influencing long- term adjustment. Kurdek and Berg (1987) have reasoned that children who cannot “make personal sense” of their parents’ divorce are less able to take control over their emotions and behavior in its aftermath, placing them at higher risk for maladjustment. However, not all painful or negative beliefs appear to be problematic, and though it is typical for ACDP across socioeco- nomic strata to report painful memories and ideas about their parents’ divorce (e.g., Kalter, 1987; Wallerstein, 1991), most of them are not associated with sustained maladjustment. For example, although 75% of one ACDP sample believed on the whole that their childhoods were less happy or otherwise curtailed by their parents’ divorce, they endorsed equal levels of anxiety and depression as children of continuously married parents (Laumann-Billings & Emery, 2000).

Distinct from these painful yet normative beliefs, researchers have iden- tified more “problematic” beliefs that are related to maladjustment in off- spring of divorced parents. These include thinking they caused their parents’ divorce (i.e., self-blame), maintaining unrealistic expectations that their par- ents will reunite (i.e., hope of reunification), placing a preponderance of blame on one parent over the other (i.e., maternal or paternal blame),

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harboring excessive fears of peer rejection and/or ridicule, and experiencing a chronic fear of abandonment (e.g., DeLucia-Waack, 2001; Kurdek & Berg, 1987). Of these problematic beliefs, existing work has highlighted fear of abandonment, defined as excessive worries about the stability of relation- ships with one’s parents and continuity of living arrangements, as being especially predictive of adjustment problems in both upper class White and inner-city minority samples (Wolchik et al., 1993; Wolchik, Tein, Sandler, & Doyle, 2002).

PROBLEMATIC BELIEFS AND INTERNAL WORKING MODELS OF ATTACHMENT

Attachment theory provides an explanatory framework for how early rela- tionships with caregivers and the quality of the child-rearing environment set the stage for future relationship behavior and cognitions (e.g., Crowell, Treboux, & Brockmeyer, 2009; Ijzendoorn & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 1996; Roisman, 2007; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994; Treboux, Crowell, & Waters, 2004). Attachment theorists suggest these early experiences and observations coalesce into a working model of attachment (e.g., Sperling, Berman, & Fagen, 1992) that includes both the automatic, largely unconscious appraisal processes activating the attachment system and the conscious beliefs and expectations a person holds about the self and others.

Within the domain of romantic attachment, adults who have positive working models of their own desirability and worthiness as a romantic part- ner, as well as of others’ trustworthiness and support, are considered “securely” attached. Those who instead doubt their own value relative to their partner are considered to be “anxiously” attached. These individuals tend to become over-dependent on their partners—persistently seeking reas- surance and remaining vigilant for signs of betrayal or abandonment. Lastly, those who doubt the value of intimate relationships and avoid getting close to others are considered to be either “dismissive-avoidant” when they have positive sense of self-worth (i.e., negative model of other and positive model of self) or “fearful-avoidant” when they experience a simultaneous distrust of others and strong fear of rejection (i.e., negative models of self and other; Bartholomew, 1990; Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). These working models, in turn, organize one’s emotional responsivity to interpersonal events and have far-reaching implications for well-being (e.g., Fraley & Shaver, 2000; Hankin, Kassel, & Abela, 2005; Simpson, 1990).

As an organizing heuristic, these four different romantic adult attach- ment styles are often conceptualized as comprising two orthogonal dimen- sions: anxiety and avoidance (e.g., Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998). Attachment anxiety, which describes a chronic tendency to seek approval and fear abandonment in intimate relationships, is theoretically presumed to be cultivated in part by early relationships with an inconsistently responsive caregiver and in part by the child’s early exposure to anxiety within the

Important Role of Problematic Beliefs 715

interparental relationship. Attachment avoidance, which refers to a tendency to avoid closeness and intimacy with others, is presumed to be due to both past caregiver withdrawal and to childhood observations of an interparental union characterized by an avoidance of emotional intimacy.

Parental Divorce and the Development of Adult Attachment

Cognitive theorists have proposed that vulnerability to psychological malad- justment stems from dysfunctional information-processing structures born of disrupted early caregiving relationships (Beck & Clark, 1997). Childhood events such as a parental divorce are believed to promote the development of “latent mental structures” (i.e., the negative cognitive schemas and exag- gerated threat appraisals that could easily be described as elements of an internal working model) that go on to guide future social-information pro- cessing (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Repetti, Taylor, & Seeman, 2002). Indeed, research has demonstrated that ACDP were more hypervigilant to loss stim- uli (which activate the attachment system) than were individuals from intact families or those who had experienced a parental death (Luecken & Appelhans, 2005).

Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Bretherton, 1995) posits that interpersonal loss is a key mechanism in the development of attachment insecurity and that fear of being abandoned by one’s primary caregivers leads to problems in subsequent relationships. Several studies have in fact demonstrated direct associations between parental divorce and adult roman- tic attachment insecurity (Henry & Holmes, 1998; Lopez, Melendez, & Rice, 2000; Shaver & Mikulincer, 2004). Other studies, however, have failed to replicate this association (e.g., Brennan & Shaver, 1993; Hayashi & Strickland, 1998; Hill, Young, & Nord, 1994; Tayler, Parker, & Roy, 1995). These mixed results are often attributed to the confounding socioenvironmental influ- ences of parental conflict and remarriage (e.g., Brennan & Shaver, 1993), though they are undoubtedly also partly explained by significant heteroge- neity across children’s internal experience of parental divorce. For example, whereas one child may have become triangulated into her parents’ battles, another may have been neglected as his parents became increasingly absorbed in conflict, and yet another may have assumed the role of caretaker as her parent withdrew in despair. What any one of these children is likely to have learned about the self and others from their parents’ divorce is likely quite distinct for each of these scenarios. In this way, the specific details related to childhood experience and perception are equally if not more important than are more generally defined risk factors. In other words, although parental marital status alone may not predict insecure attachment, a child with many problematic beliefs about a parental divorce, including high levels of fear of abandonment, may be at greater risk (Rothbard & Shaver, 1994; Easterbrooks & Goldberg, 1990).

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Current Study

The foregoing research suggests that individual differences in both (1) the social-environmental characteristics of the parental divorce itself (i.e., paren- tal conflict and other divorce stressors) and (2) children’s internal percep- tions of and reactions to the divorce (i.e., problematic beliefs) are important in understanding the wide variability in ACDP outcomes. However, few stud- ies have examined these constructs simultaneously. In the current study we used these two classes of predictors to gain a more nuanced understanding of the relation between parental divorce and insecure romantic attachment in young adulthood. To ascertain the domain specificity of effects of parental divorce on adult functioning, we included measures not only of romantic attachment insecurity, but also of non–attachment-specific maladjustment, including those to assess self-esteem, positive emotionality, symptoms of depression, and interpersonal sensitivity and social relatedness.

Based on the above research, we hypothesized that (1) parental divorce would not predict adult maladjustment, and might even predict better adjust- ment in some domains, and (2) for ACDP, problematic beliefs held in child- hood about their parents’ divorce would be more predictive of romantic relationship insecurity (i.e., anxiety and avoidance) than of more general indices of maladjustment (i.e., depression and self esteem). We further hypothesized that these associations would exist even while controlling for other socioenvironmental risk factors. Given the centrality of fear of aban- donment in working models of attachment, we expected this problematic belief about parental divorce would be most highly related to attachment insecurity.

METHODS

Procedure

Participants were assessed individually in a campus laboratory. All were informed that the present study was interested in the relationships between an individual’s disposition, emotions, and life histories, and each participant gave his or her informed written consent. Participants first completed self- report questionnaires related to personality, emotionality, attachment, depres- sion, and self-esteem. Only those who had divorced parents then completed a measure to assess the divorce-related problematic beliefs they had as chil- dren. After completing these questionnaires, participants completed a com- puterized lexical decision-making task (not discussed here), wherein they were asked to identify strings of letters as words or nonwords after sublimi- nal priming (<20 ms) with a threat or neutral word (see Mikulincer, Birnbaum, Woddis, & Nachmias, 2000). Participants’ reaction times and physiological measurements (electrodermal response, heart rate, respiration) during the

Important Role of Problematic Beliefs 717

task were recorded. The first author or a research assistant was present at each session but remained in an adjacent hallway to allow participants maxi- mum privacy. The study protocol was approved by the host university’s Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects.

Participants

The current study included 45 college students (60% ACDP) from a large public university in California. Participants (37 women; mean age = 20.6, standard deviation [SD] = 2.3) were recruited through the university’s research participant pool and awarded course credit for participation. Twenty-nine participants (64.4%) identified as White, 10 as Asian American (22.2%), 4 as Chicano (8.9%), and 2 as African American (4.4%). Two participants (4.4%) self-identified as lower class, 5 (11.1%) as lower middle class, 15 (33.3%) as middle class, 22 (48.9%) as upper middle class, and none as upper class.

Measures

Participants completed the following questionnaires:

• Rosenberg’s Self Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965): Participants rate their agreement with each of 10 items tapping general self-esteem on a four- point Likert scale.

• Big Five Personality Inventory ( John, Donahue & Kentle, 1991): Participants rate their agreement with each of 44 statements on a five-point Likert scale. Items represent prototypical traits defining extraversion (8 items), agree- ableness (9 items), conscientiousness (9 items), neuroticism (8 items), and openness to experience (10 items).

• Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980, 1983): Participants indi- cate their agreement with each of 28 items assessing dispositional empathy on a five-point Likert scale. Subscales measure (1) perspective-taking, (2) fantasy, (3) empathic concern, and (4) personal distress.

• Dispositional Positive Emotion Scale (DPES-r; Shiota, Keltner & John, 2006): This 28-item questionnaire assesses enthusiasm (e.g., “I get great pleasure from pursuing my goals”), contentment (e.g., “I feel satisfied more often than most people”), pride (e.g., “It feels good to know that people look up to me”), love (e.g., “I enjoy forming emotionally intimate relationships”), compassion (e.g., “Nurturing others gives me a warm feeling inside”), amusement (e.g., “I laugh about something almost every day”), and awe (e.g., “The world’s beauty is awe-inspiring to me”). Participants rate their agreement with each item on a seven-point Likert scale.

• Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Scale (ECR-R; Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000): This 36-item instrument includes two subscales to

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measure attachment anxiety (e.g., “I worry that romantic partners won’t care about me as much as I care about them”) and avoidance (e.g., “I prefer not to be too close to romantic partners”) in romantic relationships. Participants rate their agreement with each item on a seven-point Likert scale.

• Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II; Beck et al., 1961): This 21-item inven- tory measures current depressive symptoms in both clinical and nonclini- cal populations. Participants select the rating that best describes their experience over the past 2 weeks, from 0 (no symptomology; e.g., “I don’t feel particularly guilty”) to 3 (highest symptomology; e.g., “I feel guilty all the time”).

• Children’s Beliefs about Parental Separation Scale (CBAPS; Kurdek & Berg, 1987): This 36-item scale assesses children’s problematic beliefs about the nature of their parents’ divorce and their role in the divorce. Subscales (6 items each) include peer ridicule and avoidance (PR), paternal blame (PB), maternal blame (MB), fear of abandonment (FoA), hope of reunification (HoR), and self-blame (SB).

We modified the CBAPS in two ways. First, because the scale was written for children to answer soon after their parents’ divorce, we altered the wording to make it retrospective, for example, by inserting the phrase “right after the divorce …” before an item and by adding an “I don’t remember” response option for all items. Second, we added 10 items designed to capture other empirically supported moderators of children’s post-divorce adjustment, including parental conflict before and after the divorce, environmental insta- bility related to the divorce (e.g., having to move, discontinuity of extracur- ricular activities), loss of contact with nonresidential parent, social connectivity (including continued access to extended family), and how well the partici- pant had been informed by their parent/s about the divorce.

RESULTS

Descriptives

Of the 45 participants, 18 (40%) had continuously married parents and 27 (60%) had divorced parents. Individuals from divorced families who could not endorse numerical responses for least 75% of the CBAPS questions were clas- sified into a “divorce, no recall” (DNR) group. Of the 27 participants with divorced parents, 8 were classified as DNR (mean age at parental divorce = 1.57 years, SD = 1.27). Nineteen participants whose parents had divorced did remember the experience (average age at parental divorce = 9.95 years, SD = 5.86) and reported confidence in their recollection of past feelings and beliefs (mean = 5.26, SD = 1.54 on a 7-point Likert scale). DNR participants

Important Role of Problematic Beliefs 719

were not omitted from between-group (i.e., participants with vs. without divorced parents) analyses because even though they were too young to recall the event itself, they grew up living through its continued repercussions.

Sample means are presented in Table 1. Psychological adjustment and romantic attachment variables were correlated in expected directions: attach- ment anxiety and avoidance (r = 0.47, p < .001); attachment anxiety and con- tentment (r = –.37, p < .05), BDI (r = .51, p < .001), and self-esteem (r = –.47, p < .001); attachment avoidance and BDI (r = .46, p < .001), self-esteem (r = –.35, p < .001), and personal distress (r = .35, p < .05). To ensure that attachment effects would not be confounded with personality, correlations between Big Five dimensions and both attachment anxiety and avoidance were tested and found nonsignificant.

Preliminary Analyses and Data Reduction

Preliminary two-sample t-tests revealed that men and women did not differ on any outcome measures except DPES awe, which men in our sample

TABLE 1 Means and Distributions of Participants According to Parental Marital Status

No divorce (n = 18) Divorce (n = 27)

Cohen’s dMean SD Mean SD

Age 20.50 2.31 20.42 1.96 –.04 Big Five Openness 36.94 5.55 36.42 7.49 –.08 Conscientiousness 32.56 6.10 34.19 5.66 .28 Extraversion 28.78 5.98 27.04 7.41 –.26 Agreeableness 32.94 4.95 35.19 5.77 .42 Neuroticism 24.17 6.46 24.65 6.79 .07 DPES Enthusiasm 21.89 2.91 23.78 2.74 .67 Contentment 19.39 3.85 20.15 4.94 .27 Pride 23.94 3.49 25.37 2.44 .48 Love 22.78 3.70 23.74 3.29 .27 Compassion 21.17 4.00 24.37 2.80 .93 Amusement 23.61 4.35 22.48 4.41 –.26 Awe 18.50 4.26 21.23 3.73 .68 IRI Perspective taking 23.89 4.96 27.22 4.49 .70 Fantasy 24.39 4.46 25.63 5.68 .24 Empathic concern 25.17 4.11 25.78 4.60 .14 Personal distress 19.11 6.31 19.70 4.21 .11 ECR-R Attachment anxiety 55.83 21.31 62.89 21.45 .33 Attachment avoidance 51.00 16.54 49.15 18.13 –.11 BDI depression 7.11 5.70 10.04 10.35 .35 Rosenberg self-esteem 22.56 4.73 21.44 4.77 –.24

720 R. Bernstein et al.

(mean = 19.48, SD = 3.87) endorsed to a greater extent than women (mean = 23.13 SD = 4.22, p < .05). This increased our confidence that any subsequently found effects were not driven by gender differences. A second set of t-tests revealed no differences between those in the DR (n = 19) and DNR (n = 8) groups on any of these variables, so the two subsamples were collapsed into one “divorce” group (n = 27).

Bivariate correlations revealed that several of the original CBAPS sub- scales were highly intercorrelated. In the interest of having distinct predictors for subsequent analyses, these six variables were reduced to a smaller number of underlying factors. A principle components analysis with varimax rotation produced three composite factors: SB and HoR loaded onto the first compos- ite factor (A); FoA, MB, and PR onto a second (B); and PB onto a third (C).

A second principle components analysis reduced the 10 nonoriginal items added to the CBAPS into four meaningful variables that together explained 76.72% of the item variance. Having to move residences, discon- tinuing extracurricular activities after the divorce, and high levels of predi- vorce parental conflict loaded on the first factor, which we call “peridivorce disruption” (PDD). Post-divorce decreased involvement with and lack of regular contact with the noncustodial parent loaded on the second factor, “estrangement” (E). Loss of contact with extended family, not having anyone during the divorce with whom one felt comfortable talking about their feel- ings, and not being well informed by one’s parent about the divorce loaded on the third factor, “isolation” (I). A continued post-divorce lack of coopera- tion between parents, and child triangulation into parental conflict loaded on the final factor, “parental conflict” (PC).

To reduce the number of between-group comparisons necessary to test our first hypothesis, our 15 outcome variables were sorted into two “families” of related variables. Families were formed according to patterns of intercor- relation and then examined for conceptual validity. The first family (“dis- tress”) comprised seven distress-related outcome variables, including depression, self-esteem, attachment avoidance and anxiety, DPES content- ment (reversed), DPES amusement (reversed), and IRI personal distress (Fisher’s r-to-Z-to-r average = .369).  The second family (“positivity”) com- prised eight intrapersonal socioemotional resource outcome variables and included the remaining DPES subscales (enthusiasm, pride, love, compas- sion, awe), and IRI subscales (perspective taking, fantasy, and empathic con- cern; Fisher’s r-to-Z-to-r average = .333). 

Hypothesis Testing

HYPOTHESIS 1

Fifteen dependent variables were analyzed in a pair of one-way multivariate ANOVAs comparing individuals with and without divorced parents. Our first

Important Role of Problematic Beliefs 721

multivariate ANOVA with parent marital status (divorced, married) as an inde- pendent variable was computed with depression, self-esteem, attachment avoidance and anxiety, DPES contentment, DPES amusement, and IRI per- sonal distress as dependent variables to determine whether group differences in overall distress existed for ACDP compared with their peers with continu- ously married parents. Results indicated a nonsignificant multivariate effect of parental marital status, Pillai’s Trace = 0.17, F(7, 37) = 1.07, p = .42, ns.

A second MANOVA was computed with the remaining DPES subscales (enthusiasm, pride, love, compassion, awe), and IRI subscales (perspective taking, fantasy, and empathic concern) as dependent variables to determine variables to determine whether group differences in dispositional positivity and prosociality existed for ACDP compared with their peers with continu- ously married parents. Results indicated a significant multivariate effect of parental marital status, Pillai’s Trace = .997; F(15, 29) = 2.15, p < . 01, partial η2 = .53.

Univariate effects were examined to better understand the overall effect. They revealed that ACDP reported greater enthusiasm, F(1, 43) = 4.90, p = .032, partial η2 = .10; compassion, F(1, 43) = 10.00, p = .003, partial η2 = .19; awe, F(1, 43) = 5.13, p = .029, partial η2 = .11; and perspective-taking, F(1, 43) = 5.48, p = .024, partial η2 = .11. All other scores showed no significant effect (smallest p > .37). Canonical coefficient loadings are presented in Table 2. Compassion received the largest raw canonical coefficient (weight = –.46) and the largest correlation with the canonical variable (–.80).

HYPOTHESIS 2

To test our second hypothesis that problematic beliefs would better predict romantic attachment insecurity than more global indices of maladjustment (i.e., depression and self-esteem), four linear regressions were tested. Each

TABLE 2 MANOVA results (n = 45)

Raw canonical

coefficient Standardized

canonical coefficient Correlation with

canonical variable

DPES Enthusiasm –.16 –.46 –.49 Pride .04 .12 –.36 Love .10 .34 –.21 Compassion –.22 –.80 –.66 Awe –.05 –.19 –.50 IRI Perspective taking –.13 –.64 –.51 Fantasy –.03 –.12 –.18 Empathic concern .18 .79 –.11

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regression included a total of seven predictor variables, including the three composite factors (A, B, and C) derived from the original six CBAPS scales, along with the four additional divorce-stressor variables (PPD, E, I, and PC).

1. Collectively, these seven predictors explained 86% of the variance in attachment anxiety. Both B, β = .60, t = 2.89, p < .05, and PDD, β = .46, t = 2.49, p < .05, emerged as significant and positive predictors of attach- ment anxiety, whereas C and I were marginally significant (p = .06 and p = .05, respectively).

2. Collectively, the seven predictor variables explained 66% of the variance in attachment avoidance. No variable emerged as a significant predictor of attachment avoidance, and the null hypothesis that all model coefficients equaled zero could not be rejected: F(7,7) = 1.95, ns.

3. Collectively, these seven predictors explained 54% of the variance in BDI scores. No variables emerged as significant predictors of BDI, and the null hypothesis that all model coefficients equaled zero could not be rejected: F(7,7) = 1.16, ns.

4. Collectively, the seven predictor variables explained 74% of the variance in self-esteem. The composite variable I emerged as a significant predictor of self-esteem, β = .75, t = 3.19, p < .05, whereas C was marginally signifi- cant (p = .07).

DISCUSSION

As we had hypothesized, our results demonstrated that parental marital status was not associated with compromised well-being in young adulthood as indicated by higher depression, lower self-esteem, and romantic attachment insecurity. These findings are consistent with the large body of work finding no differences in the general well-being of individuals from divorced and intact families (e.g., Brennan & Shaver, 1993; Hazan & Shaver, 1987). In fact, the only difference that emerged in this comparison revealed ACDP possessed more social-emotional resources (i.e., compassion, enthusiasm, awe, and perspective taking) than did young adults with continuously married parents, a finding that is congruent with other research documenting positive outcomes associated with parental divorce (e.g., Ahrons, 2005; Hetherington, 2003). We found support for our hypotheses that problematic beliefs relate to parental divorce—and that fear of abandonment in particular would increase ACDP’s risk for insecure romantic attachment and not for other negative outcomes. Below, we consider the implications of both overall benefits and belief-specific costs of parental divorce.

Compassion, used interchangeably in the literature with “sympathy,” has been considered the emotional component of Bowlby’s (1969) “care- giving” system and is defined as feelings of concern for another’s

Important Role of Problematic Beliefs 723

well-being (Shiota et  al., 2006). Behaviorally, compassion stimulates approach and nurturing behavior toward others in need (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1989; Estrada, 1995; Hildebrandt & Fitzgerald, 1983). For some chil- dren of divorce, helping others may be part of an effective coping strategy, as was recently suggested by a qualitative study of resilience in ACDP (Thomas & Woodside, 2011). ACDP also reported higher levels of perspec- tive taking, which can help to stimulate and focus compassionate feelings toward others in need. In fact, some researchers have posed that “increased perspective-taking, necessitated among children of divorce by witnessing differences in opinions between their parents, is at the root of moral judg- ment development” (Kogos & Snarey, 1995, p.177).

Enthusiasm, which refers to intense feelings of enjoyment, interest, or approval is, like compassion, negatively associated with symptoms of depres- sion (Gruber & Johnson, 2009). Though it is not completely clear why ACDP experience more enthusiasm specifically, it may be that this major life stressor encourages a sense of personal drive and motivation. This also fits with Thomas and Woodside’s 2011 qualitative analysis, which found that well- adjusted and efficacious ACDP tended to be highly motivated by success and growth and were enthusiastic about their activities and career goals. Finally, awe—defined as the emotion experienced during rapid attempts at cognitive accommodation (Keltner & Haidt, 2003)—is most readily experienced when individuals are confronted with a novel or highly complex stimulus that cur- rent knowledge structures cannot fully assimilate. It may be that the painful experience of parental divorce predisposes ACDP to experience more wonder, humility, gratitude, inspiration, and appreciation toward that which is great and right in the universe.

Next, our hypothesis that problematic beliefs about divorce would be more predictive of domain-specific problems in romantic relationship security than they would more general indices of maladjustment, even while controlling for other empirically indicated socioenvironmental pre- dictors of negative outcomes, was partially supported. Regression analyses revealed that the CBAPS composite variable (B) representing FoA, MB, and PR was especially important in predicting attachment anxiety, as was PDD, which represented high levels of pre-divorce parental conflict and having to move residences and discontinue extracurricular activities after the separation.

Given the empirical and theoretical relationship between fear of aban- donment and attachment insecurity, we expected that it would relate to attach- ment anxiety. Though we did not explicitly predict that MB and PR would predict attachment anxiety, it is not hard to imagine why such a composite constellation of variables would. Like fear of abandonment, sensitivity to inter- personal rejection is a core feature of an anxious working model. Because children and adolescents often seek support outside of family relationships during their parents’ separation (e.g., Adams, 1982; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980),

724 R. Bernstein et al.

PR represents not only the absence of important protective relationships but also a particularly damaging and active form of interpersonal rejection.

Though the relationship between att achment anxiety and MB (as opposed to self- or paternal blame) may be less immediately obvious, it is plausible that as adults, our female participants (who comprised the majority of the sample) have taken on this template of the “bad” adult female partner in romantic relationships. Indeed, research has demonstrated that the self- concepts of children of divorced parents are significantly correlated with their mothers (who is usually their custodial parent) but show no such iden- tification with their fathers (Parish & Dostal, 1980). It may be that for those who blame their parents, this alignment results in an internal model of the self as incompetent and unworthy.

Alternatively, this association may be better explained as due to a strained relationship between children and their custodial parent, as approx- imately 84% of children in the United States reside with their mothers after parental divorce (Amato, 2001). Some have posited that children’s identifica- tion with their remaining parent represents an attempt to reestablish parent– child stability and as a defense against feelings of anxiety and uncertainty (e.g., Guttmann, 1993). When children blame their mothers for the family problems leading up to the divorce, it may be that this protective alignment is compromised or absent, leaving the child susceptible to the emotions of helplessness associated with an anxious internal working model.

Though our a priori hypotheses considered adult attachment insecurity more generally, that we isolated divorce related problematic cognitions and environmental stresses predictive of attachment anxiety but not avoidance is not entirely unprecedented. Previous research with ACDP has found that female children of divorced parents were high in attachment anxiety but not avoidance and were more likely than their peers to worry about abandon- ment and to crave reassurance (Henry & Holmes, 1998). It may be that chil- dren’s problematic interpretations of their parents’ divorce are more likely to strengthen fears of loss than it would aversions to intimacy—fears that then carry over into the way they approach future romantic relationships.

No problematic belief or environmental stress variable emerged as a significant predictor of depression, and isolation (representing loss of con- tact with extended family, not having anyone during the divorce with whom they felt comfortable confiding, and not being well informed by their parent about the divorce) emerged as the only significant predictor of self-esteem. It is not surprising why a factor capturing social and emotional isolation would relate to self-esteem (or the extent to which an individual possesses generalized feelings of worthiness and goodness; Rosenberg, 1965, 1979), as someone who feels forgotten, alone, and dismissed is likely someone who doubts his or her self worth.

Taken together, it appears that although some areas of adult functioning—namely, those of attachment anxiety and low self esteem—are

Important Role of Problematic Beliefs 725

more clearly related to specific early divorce-related problematic beliefs and social stressors, other domains, including attachment avoidance and depres- sion, appear less affected by such distal parental divorce factors. Thus, these risk factors seem not to be globally detrimental but instead relate more specifically to the child’s future anxiety toward intimate relationships and their latent concept, or internal model, of self-worth.

Limitations and Future Directions

It is important to acknowledge the limitations of the present findings. First, our sample was small and predominantly female. Future studies should examine the relationships described here using a larger sample (which would provide the power necessary to examine moderators such as age at the time of divorce) and one with a more even gender distribution. Although preliminary analyses revealed only that self-reported awe was significantly different between men and women, a larger sample would allow a more powerful probe of gender-specific divorce effects. Second, the present sample represents college students at a competitive and well-respected uni- versity who are likely to be quite resilient people. Evidence for divorce- related costs and benefits may differ in a community or clinical sample. Though future studies with more diverse samples would be important, this study remains valuable in its demonstration that even within a generally resilient population, children can and do have problematic beliefs about their parents’ separation and that retrospective measures of these beliefs, coupled with recalled levels of divorce-related disruption, relate to insecure attachment in young adulthood.

Measurement limitations suggest further directions for future study. Because our findings rely heavily on retrospective and self-reported recon- structions of past events, it might be argued that participants’ memories of early relationship experiences are filtered through cognitive-affective lenses altered by subsequent attachment experiences and current working models. Even though participants indicated they believed they had remembered their past beliefs accurately, further longitudinal research would be invaluable in advancing our understanding of the lasting developmental effects of parental divorce. Finally, because we did not measure other types of negative life events, we cannot claim that positive characteristics found in children of divorced parents are unique to the experience of divorce compared with other major life stressors. In the future we suggest that researchers consider assessing for a wider range of stressful life events (e.g., poverty, parental conflict, trauma, parental loss, etc.) and both intrapersonal and environmen- tal resilience factors in participants with and without divorced parents. This will help to discern whether the signs of social-emotional growth we found are unique to the parental divorce experience or whether these effects are generalizable to other early life stressors.

726 R. Bernstein et al.

Conclusions and Implications

Early divorce research was based on the fundamental belief that a two-par- ent family structure was necessary for healthy child development and that parental divorce was a trauma with ‘‘severe and enduring deleterious effects on children’s adjustment’’ (Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 1999, p. 130). In subsequent decades researchers began to recognize and assess heterogene- ity among children’s responses to parental divorce, and the field has slowly shifted from a pathogenic paradigm to one emphasizing positive character- istics and strengths (e.g., Greeff & Van Der Merwe, 2004). Consistent with this newer generation paradigm, our findings suggest that not only is paren- tal divorce not detrimental to children’s future well-being as young adults, but it may ultimately stimulate higher levels of positive and prosocial emotions.

At the same time, parental divorce is not without potential costs. Among young adults with divorced parents, fear of abandonment after the divorce stood out as an important correlate of later romantic attachment insecurity. As such, the present research points toward a policy goal that does not aim to decrease the rate of divorce, but helps make divorces less anxiety-provok- ing and more comprehensible to children. Psychoeducational materials directed at divorcing parents, for example, may help impart the value of having ongoing, diplomatic, and developmentally appropriate conversations with their children about the reasons for and implications of the divorce. These conversations may help to attenuate children’s fear of abandonment and other problematic beliefs fostering distress in future relationships. Given our nation’s high rate of marital dissolution, this should be an important social and political goal.

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