Marital Relationships and Parenting: Intimate relations and their correlates

Focusing on intimate relationships, between couples and between parents and their children, this book explores themes including the influence of parental relationships on children, adolescents, and college students; how humour may influence and improve relationships; how children’s loneliness may be affected by their relationship with their parents; and how culture may affect romantic loneliness. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Psychology.

Romantic relationships, especially good ones, are desired of almost all humans. However, what makes such relationships good and nourishing? For the most part, it is the support and intimacy that exists within the couple, and their ability to experience life and face difficulties together.

This book is divided into two sections, one focusing on the couple and their intimate relationship, and the other on how that relationship influences their offspring. Part one examines whether sacrificing in an intimate relationship is always beneficial and whether it help strengthen the marital/couple unit? Attachment theory has had a significant influence on how we view relationships in childhood as well as in adulthood. The book sheds light on the mechanisms that mediate attachment style and the quality of the intimate relationships, exploring the relationship between one’s ability to express empathy and that person’s ability to offer social support to his/her partner.

The second part of the book explores what young adults think about marriage, influenced by their parental relationship; how parental relationships affect children’s social experience in school; how parental approaches to children affect their sibling relationship; the parental role in childhood eating disturbances; and how the family climate affects children’s loneliness.

All in all, the book affords a thorough review not only of what marital/couple intimacy is and what can affect it, but how significant it is in affecting their children, in and out of the house. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Psychology.