The transmission of relationship difficulties from one generation to the next

This study investigated how marital relationship difficulties might be transmitted from parents to their late adolescent children's romantic relationships. Measures of perceived interparent conflict, styles of subject-parent conflict behaviors, and styles of subject-boyfriend/girlfriend conflict behaviors as well as a measure of general relationship difficulties were obtained from samples of 144 female and 79 male 18-19-year old college students. Subjects tend to use the same styles of conflict behavior with their boyfriends/girlfriends as with their parents. Path analyses showed that perceived interparent conflict is associated with avoidant, verbally aggressive, and for females, physically aggressive styles of conflict behavior with parents, and that some of these subject-parent conflict behavior styles are related to general relationship difficulties. The avoidance style is especially important in mediating between interparent conflict and the son's or daughter's relationship difficulties.