Attitudes Toward Marriage

This article contains both a review and an expansion of the research regarding the effects of perceived parental conflict, gender, and family structure on the attitudes toward marriage of young adults. From a randomly selected list of 1000 college freshmen, 340 respondents ages 18-22, 273 from intact and 67 from divorced families, met the inclusion criteria of the study. The Hil Favorableness of Attitudes Toward Marriage Scale (FAMS) and measures of the presence and degree of parental conflict were used. A three-way ANOVA indicated that young adults from homes with parental conflict had lower FAMS scores than those from homes without conflict, males had lower scores than females, and subjects from divorced families had lower scores than those from intact families. A Pearson Correlation indicated that the greater the parental conflict, the lower the FAMS score. Recommendations include the importance of including additional variables in future research in this area.