Transmission of Marital and Family Quality Over the Generations:

Extending prior research on the intergenerational transmission process, we examine the influence of parental divorce and parental unhappiness on the marital and family relations of their adult offspring. Using interview data from a national sample of married persons, parental divorce, it is found, has little associaton with the various aspects of family relations examined. It does relate, however, to several dimensions of the adult offsprings' marriages. In contrast, marital unhappiness in the parental generation is strongly related to both the family and marital relations of their married children. The findings indicate that remaining in an unhappy marriage has many more adverse, and stonger, effects on the next generation than parental divorce does.