AN EXPLORATORY INVESTIGATION OF MARITAL ROLE EXPECTATIONS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO PERCEIVED PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS AND PERCEIVED FAMILY INTEGRATION

I t-[ % Fifty-one male and 57 female college undergraduate stu-I ^ I | | dents enrolled in an introductory psychology course responded:-f to the Roe-Siegelman gCR Questionnaire, a modified form of Tharp's (1963b) Marital Role Expectation Form (MRE), and a Family Integration Scale as fulfillment of research partici-pation requirements. None of the students had ever been i married and all had had intact families at least until their y twelfth birthday. Previous research had indicated that gen-erally children who experienced love and warmth in their childhood home had marital role expectations of friendliness, spontaneity, adaptability, trust, responsibility, and leader-ship, while those who experienced rejecting and neglecting parental behaviors were more likely to have expectations of being seclusive, guilty, hostile, rigid, mistrustful, and irresponsible. Consistent with this research were the find-ings in the present study that males who experienced warm, loving parent-child relations are more likely to have expec-tations of friendliness, role sharing, intimacy, trust, and sexual and parental responsibility. Research had also pointe