Parental Divorce and Premarital Couple Communication

On the basis of a social learning analysis, it was hypothesized that a history of parental divorce would predispose partners to difficulties in managing conflict. Ninety-three engaged couples were videotaped while they discussed two areas of conflict. Each partner then completed a video-mediated recall procedure, an assessment of cognition during the interactions, which was then coded and analyzed. As predicted, couples in which the woman's parents had divorced showed more negative communication and cognitions during conflict discussions than did couples in which neither partner's parents had divorced. Contrary to predictions, couples in which the man's parents had divorced did not differ from couples in which neither partner's parents had divorced. The current research shows that, at least for women, a history of parental divorce is associated with more negative couple communication before marriage. Many researchers and couple therapists hypothesize that family-of-origin experiences impact in a significant manner on adult couple relationships (Fraenkel, 1997; Widom, 1989). Testing this hypothesis is difficult. Prospective studies that assess family-of-origi