Associations Between Mothers’ and Fathers’ Romantic Relationship Transitions and Children’s Later Romantic Relationship Outcomes During Young Adulthood

Forming stable and satisfying romantic relationships is a key developmental task for many young adults (YAs). Social learning theory suggests children who experience frequent parental relationship transitions may model having unstable relationships and reduced relationship satisfaction in young adulthood. Parent–child closeness might moderate or mediate these associations. To test these assertions, we used longitudinal data from 986 families from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing data set and a subsample of 334 families where YA children had a current romantic relationship. Mothers’ and fathers’ relationship transitions during the child’s childhood were hypothesized to be associated with their later romantic relationship outcomes in young adulthood, as mediated or moderated by parent–child closeness. The mediated models better represented the underlying associations than the moderated models. When biological parents were romantically involved with one another for more of the child’s childhood (child ages 1–9 years old) and when fathers experienced more relationship transitions, father–child relationships were reported to be closer at age 15; however, no predictors were associated with YA children’s number of relationships at age 22. Among YA who were currently in a romantic relationship, greater father relationship transitions were positively associated with relationship satisfaction at age 22.