Role of perceived parental rejection and emotional warmth in marital adjustment

Pages: 855-858
Rashmi Rani, Lok Nath Singh and Arun Kumar Jaiswal (Department of Psychology, Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh)

Parental rearing behavior is a significant etiological factor in a vulnerability model of psychopathology and connected to child’s psycho-social development and social problems. As such, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between perceived parenting rearing styles and marital satisfaction in adult Indian married couples. Therefore, psychometrically validated Hindi version of instruments for the assessment of the perceived parental rearing styles (PPRSQ) and marital satisfaction scale (MAS) were administered on a sample of 300 married Indian Hindi speaking couples which included 50 % male and 50 % female persons with 10 to 20 years of married life. The instruments were filled out by the participants. MANOVA performed on the scores of marital adjustment (marital communication, affectional expression, marital satisfaction, marital cohesion and overall marital adjustment with ‘gender’ (men and women) and levels (low and high) of perceived parental rejection and perceived parental emotional warmth as independent factors and subsequent univariate analyses revealed: (i) significant main effect of levels of perceived parental rejection on all measures of marital adjustment, (ii) significant main effect of gender on marital communication and marital cohesion measures of marital adjustment foe perceived emotional warmth , and significant main effect of levels of perceived parental emotional warmth on all measures of marital adjustment. Post hoc mean comparisons revealed that low as compared to high scorer respondents on perceived parental rejection and emotional warmth respectively scored significantly low and high on measures of marital adjustment. Moreover, men as compared to women manifested more marital communication and marital cohesion. In summary, the findings indicated that recalled parental rejection and emotional warmth had significant effects on later marital adjustment in Indian married couples.