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Marital well-being and parental position at families with adult children
The relationships between adult children and their parents remain an important social and emotional resource for both, but can also cause a range of difficulties. The marital and parental subsystems are interrelated, but these interrelations nature changes throughout the family life cycle. Most studies examine the consequences of leaving the parental home for young people, but - for parents - to a lesser extent. Some studies show that postponing leaving the “parental nest” can be detrimental to the well-being of the marital relationship and the parents’ relationships with their adult children.
Our study aim was to examine the nature of the relationship between marital relationships and the parental position of parents of adult children at different stages of the family life cycle. The main attention was focused on the “empty nest” stage, when there is a radical redistribution of marital and parental functions. There were parents, who lived separately from their adult children aged 22 to 35 years (30 respondents). The groups of comparison included parents at the previous stage - with older adolescents (39 persons), as well as parents with adult children, who still lived with their parents, i.e. with a protracted separation (26 respondents). The whole study sample consisted of 95 people (30 men and 65 women) aged 41 to 64 years.
The following methods were used in this study: "Family Communication" by Yu. Alyoshina et al., "Triangular Love Scale" by R. Stenberg, "Relationship Assessment Scale" by S. Hendrick, "Parental Position in Relation to Adult Children" by R. Egorov & I. Shapovalenko.
We came to the following conclusions. The well-being of marital relations is associated with the parental position at different stages of the family life cycle differently. In general, at the empty nest stage, there is a deeper closeness both between spouses and with children. The interactions with children are based more on mutual understanding. At this stage, parents are less focused on children and are more focused on marital relations.
In spouses, living together with adult children, marital relationships are not interconnected with the level of acceptance of the child, but are associated with control over the child. In families with adolescents, no correlations were found between marital relations and the parental position, which may indicate a greater concentration of spouses on the parental function.
These results allow us to determine the foci of psychotherapeutic influence in psychological assistance to families with adult children more accurately.