Impact of inter-parental character assassination on children post-divorce

<p>Divorce is a common phenomenon in the United States that constitutes as a crisis for many families (Esmaeili & Yaacob, 2011; Heatherington, 1979). Kelly (2003) estimates that about 8 to 15 percent of parents continue high conflict anywhere from 2 to 3 years post-divorce. Post-divorce parental conflict has been found to be more important in influencing the functioning of adolescents than parental divorce (Amato, 2001). The purpose of this study is to investigate if adult children will generally tend to join in coalition with a same sex primary custodial parent regardless of their parent’s role in character assassination. Eastern Washington University undergraduate students were recruited from the Psychology department to complete a survey made available to them through SONA Systems Department Recruiting system. Data was analyzed using a paired-sample t-test and an independent-sample t-test. The results indicated that female adult children from divorced families tended to assign significantly more positive attributes to their mothers and more negative attributes to their fathers even though they reported witnessing their mothers engaging in character assassination more often.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS) in Psychology: Clinical

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year

2017

Author dc:creator

• Keller, Holly

• Psychology

Statement dc:rights

• Access is available to all users

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dc.ewu.edu/theses/443

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dc.ewu.edu:theses-1443