Association Between Parental Care and Levels of Expression in Ideal Romantic Relationships

Live Poster Session: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/98617689515

Diana Q. Tran

Diana Tran is a freshman at Wesleyan University. She plans to major in College of Letters and minor in Data Analysis. She publishes stories on various websites and is also a beta-reader for many freelance authors. In her free time, she enjoy watching CinemaSins while scrolling through Wikipedia for the plot summary to optimize movie watching. Rather than eat popcorn and drink soda, she snacks on the meal plan chips she hoards from WesShop and chews strawberry milk frozen into ice cubes for a truly invigorating experience.

Abstract:

Parents are the first “relationship” a child is exposed to: the romantic relationship of the parents along with the familial relationship with the child. That exposure may affect the relationships a child may develops as an adolescent, in particular relating to their romantic relationships. Data was drawn from the first wave of The U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, which represents adolescents from grades 7-12 in the United States who were interviewed during the 1994-95 school year, as well as April through December of 1995. They were asked separately about whether they believe their mother or father cared about them. Additionally, there was another interview asking what they would do in an ideal romantic relationship using pre-determined actions as potential answers. In this project, we explored whether there is a relationship between parental care and the levels of expression an adolescent has in their ideal romantic relationship. A correlation was found to exist wherein if the adolescent believes one or both of their parents care about them, they are more likely to have high levels of expression than those who do not believe either of their parents care.

DQT-QAC201