engleski

Adult children perceptions of parental divorce and relationship with parents before and after the divorce: a retrospective study with Croatian participants.

This paper presents the results of a preliminary study of adult children perceptions of parental divorce and the relationship with the parents before and after divorce. The study aim was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the instruments designed to assess the adult children evaluation of their experience of the divorce, their relationships with parents before and after the divorce, and the perceived support from family and friends. In addition, items pertaining to the core self-evaluations and sociodemographics were included in the questionnaire package. In total, 187 women and 42 men in the age 18-45 years took part in an online study. At the time of the parental divorce, most participants were of minor age and for most of them the custodial parent was mother. Two factors were found to underlie the reports of the divorce experience: the child emotional distress and resistance to the divorce. While the corresponding subscales correlated positively, only the distress subscale was found to correlate negatively with the self-evaluations scale as well as with the evaluation of mother subscales. Resistance to divorce was associated with the evaluation of father. Overall, the evaluation of the relationship with the parent measure showed a satisfactory measurement invariance accross the parent's identity and divorce period. While reported satisfaction with custodial parent was high, the relationship with mother was evaluated more positively, especially after the divorce. A more positive evaluation of both parents was associated with more positive self-evaluations. Social support was associated with lower divorce distress and resistance, with a somewhat different pattern for support from the two sources depending on the custodial person identity. The latter was also observed for the core self-evaluations and the evaluations of the parents.

Adult children of divorced parents, perception of parental divorce, perceived support from family and friends, core self-evaluations

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