The Attitudes of Young Adults from Divorced and Intact Families toward Marriage, Divorce, and Cohabitation

The purpose of this study was to compare the relationship between the attitudes toward marriage, divorce, and cohabitation among Adult Children of Divorce (ACOD) and Adult Children from Intact Families (ACIF) using a correlational research design. The literature suggests that certain circumstances of parental divorce are associated with more negative attitudes toward marriage and that AOCD and ACIF differ in their approaches to their unions and the stability of these unions. Attitudes are a likely mechanism for the production of differing behaviors related to union formation and dissolution. The three areas of focus were investigated by analyzing responses to four instruments: a demographic questionnaire, Marital Attitude Scales (MAS; Braaten & Rosen, 1998), Divorce Attitude Scales (DAS), and Cohabitation Attitude Scales (CAS). A total of 196 individuals responded and after all the participants were checked for inclusion criteria, 169 individuals were included in the data analysis. The participants were divided into two approximately equal sized groups, ACIF (n = 88) whose parents were married/never divorced or not married/still together; and ACOD (n = 81) whose parents were divorced or separated. Ideally, the demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, and race) of the individuals in the ACIF and ACOD groups would have been equivalent; however, it was not possible to create matched pairs due to the low sample size. Analyses were conducted to determine whether the relationship between attitudes toward marriage, divorce, and cohabitation were moderated statistically by whether the participants were ACOD or ACIF. The main findings demonstrated that positive attitudes toward marriage were significantly higher for ACIF than for ACOD and that positive attitudes toward cohabitation were significantly greater for ACOD than for ACIF. The generalizability or external validity of the findings, despite the small scale of this study, offer valuable insight into the differences and relationships between the attitudes of ACOD and ACIF toward marriage, divorce, and cohabitation. Recommendations for future research include a larger scale study using randomly selected participants to replicate the results of this research, including international and intercultural boundaries, conducting a qualitative study to complement the quantitative study, and examining demographic correlations.