Early Attachments predicts competence skills and self-worth in romantic relationships
Introduction
Competence is extremely vital in a romantic relationship as it is the set of behaviors that enables a person to form a romantic relationship that lasts and that is mutually satisfying to each of the partners. However, family relationships have a major influence on the life of a person. A persons siblings and parents can teach a person how to relate with other people, how to deal with situations like jealousy, how to love, how to share and so forth. Distinctive family perceptions and experiences, for instance, birth order, shape a persons character and cultivate certain qualities more than others cultivate. When individuals seek romantic relationships, there is a likelihood that they will apply what they have learned in their family relationship to the romantic relationship that they are involved. Therefore, will a persons early family experiences predict competence skills and self-worth in romantic relationships This research will attempt to answer this question.
Do early family relationships influence later romantic relationships
The marital relationships of parents are the first romantic relationships that a person first monitors and which a person is more personally connected. According to (Ashford, LeCroy Lortie, 2009) adolescents study the way their parents handle and manage conflict and anger in their marital relationships and use their behavior as a way of how they will handle quarrels or disagreements in their romantic relationships. For instance, the violence witnessed in a parent relationship by children may lead them to be physically aggressive towards their partners in their romantic relationships (Bylsma, Cozzarelli Summer, 1997). Additionally, marital conflicts witnessed by adolescents may contribute to clashes later in romantic relationships. Nevertheless, adolescent boys who grew in a violent home, are more likely to be aggressive, hostile and abusive in a romantic relationship and might even view it as justifiable. Therefore, adolescents experiences of disputes with their parents are more likely to be depicted in their future romantic relationships. The attitude of a child towards violent behavior, affect dispute resolution skills and this develops within the parent-child relationship and this may in the future contribute to hostility in a romantic relationship (Bylsma, Cozzarelli Summer, 1997).
Another factor that may influence the way a person behaves in a romantic relationship is the birth order in a family. For instance, children who are firstborns in a family are frequently viewed as leaders who follow the rules (Bouchey, 2007). Firstborns in families are typically more compliant, enterprising people, have a closer recognition with the parents authority and are inclined to have a higher self-esteem than the children who are later born in a family. People born in the middle birth order situation could feel out of place, slighted, and may take a longer period to find their position in the family. These people may attempt for equality in their effort to be ahead of their younger siblings and compete with the older siblings. Usually, people born in the middle birth position are harmony makers in the family. The people born in the last birth order are often viewed as spoilt. They are inclined to be more social, accommodating than the firstborns, free-spirited than the people who are firstborns. People who are the only children are out looked as spoilt because they tend to be the only focus in the family. In some cases, the lastborns may imitate some firstborns and middleborns character traits. Therefore, a persons birth order position and its related personality characteristic and the attention from the family may influence the way a person thinks and behaves in a romantic relationship.
The birth order of an individual may be vital in comprehending the development of attitudes toward love, attachment, love styles, similarity and jealousy in romantic relationships. For instance, when jealousy is applied to a romantic relationship, entails the fear of losing a person who is valued and cared about. Initially, jealousy starts to occur family relationships and friendships. Some behavior traits acquired from childhood can make individuals more inclined to jealousy, for instance, low self-esteem, emotional dependency and attachment style. According to Engels et al (2001), people who are middleborns, are more likely to be more jealous in a romantic relationship, followed by the lastborns. The people who are the only children would be the least jealous in a romantic relationship.
Review on past research
Previous research proposes that infant attachment theory (Simpson, et al, 2007) provides a vital framework from which to comprehend many dynamics of adult romantic relationships. The infant attachment theory focuses on the nature of an attachment bond between a baby and its parents. The parents responsiveness and accessibility to the baby is a critical element of the relationship. As the babys interaction with the mother proceeds, the baby develops secure expectations and beliefs concerning the parents accessibility and responsiveness and about them been unworthy or unworthy of love (Harvey Wenzel, 2001). Therefore, secure children may view their parents as dependable and trustworthy and the self as laudable of care, while the insecure children may expect their parents to be untrustworthy or unavailable and this may lead them to think that they are not worthy at all of love.
As a result, Ohannessian (1998) recommend that a persons behavior, thoughts and feelings in romantic relationships ought to be administered by attachment developments and might be related to those distinguishing their attachment developments to their parents during childhood. As a child experiences the availability of its parents or their unavailability, this can affect the child and his self-image is likely to develop in ways similar to its parents behavior. Thus, a child can feel later in his life that he or she justifies what he or she gets from the parents and that he or she may provoke the reactions of the parents. Therefore, this child may think that his or her security in a romantic relationship depends on this way of being in a relationship and any facts that contradict this belief may be discounted (Laursen et al, 2006). This mechanism is known as defensive exclusion.
According to Reis Rusbult (2004), there are two situations that may give rise to this defensive exclusion. One situation is where the child might be ridiculed, or maybe punished by a parent. The second situation is when a child learns something about the parents that he is not supposed to know, and the parent might punish him or her for example a situation like sexual abuse. On the other hand, attachment bonds that are established through this type of exclusion are only secure for the parent and not for a child. Therefore, defensive patterns and attitudes of insecure attachment in childhood continue to be apparent in later romantic relationships. Such children might show others exaggerated care or may attempt to hide their bond needs in certain ways, and they will be very susceptible at a time when someone may notice this particular needs (Ashford, LeCroy Lortie, 2009). Thus, a goal of an adult romantic relationship is to eradicate the early forms of insecure bonding in ways that loosens up the restraint on reality testing.
According to Hazan Shaver (1987), the enhancement of an intimate romantic relationship tests whether falling in love will result in a mutual rejection or acceptance, in where in the rejection case, the partners in the relationship give up on their unconscious effort to use their affiliation to heal a negative self image. However, this conversion can prove to be tricky if the two partners in the relationship are both insecure. This is because it requires innovative ways of regulating behaviors linked with negative experiences such as deception and betrayal, suffered by people whose parents were not able to reshape the relationships with their own guardians, whereby they were also victims of betrayal, abandonment and betrayal (Donellan et al, 2005)
Therefore, when children leave such parents, they may feel as if they are been betrayed and abandoned and they make their children feel as if they are wrong and that they are unthankful to their parents (Columbus, 2006). As a result, when these children are old enough to be involved in a romantic relationship, they are often compelled with the notion that if I commit to you, I am betraying my parents (Dinero, et al, 2008). So when they are encountered with their own needs in this new bond, they are often inclined to feel blameworthy. For example, these people might tend to feel too difficult and demanding, just like their parents, who were not attentive towards them in their childhood. For this reason, these people may hide feelings of inadequacy, betrayal and unworthiness behind a mask of conceited exaggerated control and insensitivity to their partners in a romantic relationship.
Hypothesis
Early family attachment and competence skills can influence better competence in adult romantic relationships and self worth
The nature of the relationship between a child and its parents may influence the romantic relationship of that child. This is because, the interactions between a child and its parents are linked with attachment security throughout childhood and these interactions may predict bonding security in children, adolescents and adults (Erzar, 2008). Therefore, I predict that the virtues derived from a good upbringing and early competence skills can influence better competence in adult romantic relationship as well as self worth.
Data collection methods
The methods used for data collection in this research were the use of questionnaires, focus group interviews and observation. The participants of this research were given some questionnaires to fill out. There were group interviews where the participants actively participated and they were also observed for this research.
The questionnaires asked the participants of the study several questions. These were like
Age of the participant
Gender of the participant
If the participant had any girlfriend or boyfriend
If the participant possessed social skills
If the participant was athletic
If the participant had a happy or gloomy early childhood
If the participant had a happy or gloomy middle adolescence
If the participant was either a firstborn, middle born or lastborn
If the participant related well with the parents Alternatively, were there conflicts with the parents
If the participant related well with any siblings
What time did the participant have the first romantic relationship
If the participant has ever been involved in a romantic relationship break-up.
How many relationship break-ups has the participant been involved in
What were the reasons for the break-up
The frequency of the romantic break-ups
If there were other parties involved in the relationship for it to break-up
If the participant is in good terms with the parents
In the focus group interviews, the participants were then put in groups of ten with five men and five women in each group. They were each asked several questions varying from the kind of people they were attracted to. For instance, if they were attracted to persons of the opposite sex, because of their looks or personality traits.
Participants of the research
The participants of the research were one hundred undergraduate psychology students from the Chico State University. Fifty of them will be females and fifty others would be male students. They were both middle class and upper class students in the University. To be eligible to participate in this research, a student had to be involved in a serious romantic relationship at point in their life. Most of the participants were Caucasian, and the rest were Hispanics, blacks and 3 Chinese Americans. The age bracket of most of them ranged from twenty to twenty-seven years old. In the study, 3 were married, 47 were currently in a serious romantic relationship and 47 were single though they had been involved in a romantic relationship earlier.
Longitudinal study
This study examined longitudinal predictors of traits such as jealousy and hostility in romantic relationships. The target participants were 100 psychology students who were going to be studied for a period of four years. An adult attachment style model was used to test the participants on the scales of avoidance and anxiety.
Procedure of the study
The procedure of the research study would entail the participants to congregate in one lecture room, read and sign an informed consent form. They would then need to sign an agreement contract in which they shall promise to stay actively participating in the study for a period of four years. The participants will then be issued with the packet of questionnaires in which they will the necessary information. After completing filling out the questionnaires, the participants would give back the questionnaires, as well as give out their personal information like phone number, e-mail address, physical address and full names. This personal information is for the sole purpose of staying in contact with the participant during the duration of the study and making sure that they are serious about participating during the whole duration of the study, which will be four months.
After four years, another set of data will be collected over the internet. Each participant will log in to a particular website that has been put up for the research to complete some more questionnaires. The website would be strictly confidential and no one will be able to access any filled questionnaires apart from the administrators of the website, who are involved in this research.
Measures taken during the study
ADULT ATTACHMENT STYLE
The multiple-item measure of adult romantic attachment (MIMARA, cite) is a two dimensional, four category adult attachment measure that is based on the self-model (Donellan et al, 2005) and is made up of 18-item subscales, anxiety and avoidance. The subscale of anxiety reflects fear of abandonment, jealousy and dread of rejection. The subscale of avoidance reflects levels of discomfort with closeness, avoidance of intimacy and self-reliance (Donellan et al, 2005). In this study, cluster analysis was applied using the two dimensions that is avoidance and anxiety too describe the clusters. The solution was limited four clusters and the effect was constant with the four-category model of (Donellan et al, 2005). This category comprised of fearful (high on anxiety and avoidance) secure (low on anxiety and high on avoidance) preoccupied (high on anxiety and low on avoidance and dismissing (low on anxiety and high on avoidance). Therefore, the cluster investigation categorized 30 participants falling into the secure category, 29 participants were put in the fearful category, 30 of them fell into the preoccupied category and 11 participants fell into the dismissing category
The participants were then asked how they felt in their current romantic relationships or how they considered their previous romantic relationships, for the ones who were not currently involved in a romantic relationship. They were then asked to put the relationship in center of attention when responding the questionnaires.
Discussion
Quarrels in romantic relationships affect a persons well being and this might have a long-term proposition for functioning as well as adjustment in future romantic relationships and even in marriage. The objective of this research was to find out if hostility in family relationships as well as friendships forecasted hostility later in a persons romantic relationships. Aggression in the marital relationship of a person was linked with later aggression in a persons romantic relationship. This is because of the fact that parents marital relationships are the first romantic relationships that most people are familiar with, therefore, it stands to reason that they might use these relationships as models of their future romantic relationships that they will be involved in.
The study found out that the quality of parental bonding is not really related to things like financial support or the regularity of communication. Although the participants of this study tended to communicate well with their parents, the study found out that the frequency of contact with the parents is not a first-rate pointer of the value of the bond between the parent and the child. In this study, the participants observation of parental bond was linked positively with professed self -esteem and negatively with stages of depressive symptoms. Additionally, it was found out that parental bond leads indirectly to depressive symptoms through negative self-esteem. It shows how young adults feel regarding themselves, though in relation to their perception of bond, is more crucial in determining if they will experience misery signs than their current opinions of the parental bonding relationship. The findings of this study insinuate that parental bonding is important further than childhood as they it may be indirect through the internal self-working model rather than through mechanisms like financial support (Reis Rusbult, 2004).
To the level that self-esteem imitates, as percept ionized for this study, it is true that emerging peoples view of the attachment relationship would contribute to a persons self-esteem as reliance on the origin of a family as a source of defense that weakens with maturity (Engels et al, 2001).
Limitations of the study
Although the participants of the study were from several cultures, they were not enough to study specific cultures. This study was limited by the inclusion of only psychology students of a certain age group.
How future researchers could improve the study
Despite some limitations, this study provided an overwhelming support for the role of parental bonding as it led to depressive signs, intervening the relationship linking depressive symptoms as well as parental bonding. The evidence from this study showed that the adults perception of the parental bonding also supports the use of insight-oriented involvement that aims to amend the understanding of the parental relationship. According to this study, the advantages of secure parental bonding are not obtained from nearness to parents of monetary support, though some proof for the advantages of regular communication with parents was discovered. Therefore, research that aims to identify some more factors that contribute to the defensive value of parental bonding could additionally inform counseling and preventive involvements.
Additionally, future research may also aim to methodically observe the immense array of causes of security that may diminish a persons reliance on his or her parents as a resource of self-esteem or aim to reimburse for insecure parental bonding relationships among the budding adults. The kind of research that evaluates the characteristics and value of parental bonding across the life track for specific cultural groups is required to enable fully understanding of the functions of parental bonding in various contexts such as multicultural ones.
Future research may be vital in methodically examining the situations whereby parents are used by their children as a way of promoting adoptive development among emerging adult and when financial assistance and parental contact are developmentally counterproductive (Laursen et al, 2006). Future research may also try to look out for family-based involvement if they are warranted for the treatment and prevention of depression during the adult period of a person. Throughout the current study, the function and role of parental bonding has been identified as the next challenging steps in meeting long-term procedural drawbacks and increasing the theoretical model in ways that update the counseling practice.
Categories:
0 comments:
Post a Comment