The impact of parental divorce and interparental conflict in intact families on heterosexual functioning of young Turkish women

Abstract

The present study investigates the heterosexual functioning of 309 young Turkish women, studying in Boğaziçi University, 272 from intact and 37 from divorced/separated families. With intact group divided into 2 groups, the heterosexual functioning of young Turkish women coming from high conflictual intact (N = 39), low conflictual intact (N = 34) and divorced/separated families (N = 37) was investigated. The Heterosexual Trust Scale, the Marital Attitudes Scale, the Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale and the Personal History Questionnaire were used. Compared to daughters from intact families, those from divorced/separated families held more negative attitudes toward marriage but did not differ on heterosexual trust. Subjects from divorced/separated families had higher negative marital attitudes than those coming from low conflict intact families. Subjects of high conflict intact families had the highest level of heterosexual mistrust and subjects of divorced/separated families had the lowest levels of heterosexual mistrust. For dating experiences, subjects from low conflictual intact group reported more satisfaction whereas others reported more indecisiveness and dissatisfaction in the current dating relationship. More subjects in divorced /separated group reported having started dating compared to others in high conflict and low conflict groups. The age at first dating was around 16 for those subjects who had started dating among 3 parental groups. But, the groups did not appear to be different from each other with respect to the quality and quantity of other dating experiences. For divorce /separation variables, subjects with both of the parents remarried reported the lowest levels of and subjects with only one remarried parent reported the highest levels of mistrust. While all of the subjects whose both parents were remarried were currently involved in a romantic relationship, nearly half of the subjects with none of their parents being remarried were not currently involved in a relation. Subjects with good relations with the noncustodial fathers reported lower levels of mistrust than those who have bad relations with their fathers. And, most of the subjects whose parents divorced /separated when they were in preschool or in late adolescence reported higher levels of satisfaction in current dating relationship among 3 groups. Subjects whose parents had good relations in the post-life have begun dating earlier, had more relations lasting longer than 2 months and more long lasting relationships than those whose parents had acrimonious relations in the post-divorce life. None of the analyses yielded statistically significant results for marital attitudes and dating history variables in terms of the divorce/separation variables.