The effects of childhood family disruptions, such as parental divorce, long-term separation from biological parents, parental abandonment and foster care, can reverberate into later life, a Cornell University sociologist says.

        Women, in particular, who experienced childhood family turmoil are more likely to report interpersonal conflict in later life than are other women or men.

        In a study on social support networks and family conflicts in adulthood,Elaine Wethington, associate professor of human development and sociology at Cornell, interviewed 481 adults ages 25 to 80 (average age 49).

        She found that men and women who reported a strong social network were more likely to report good physical health, feelings of cheerfulness and satisfaction most of the time, and suffered few, if any, periods of depression.

        And marriage is linked to more positive effects for both men and women.

        On the other hand, recently divorced men were more likely to report poor health than were married men, while recently divorced women who felt they had no close friends were more likely to report negative feelings than were other women.

        The study also found a person's perception of a strong social support network surpassed even marriage in having positive effects on health and mental health.

        “In general, we found that parental death had less of an effect in later life than parental divorce, long-term separation from parents, parental abandonment and foster care,” Dr. Wethington says. “These family disruptions are much more strongly related to feelings of fewer social supports and more negative moods and feelings in adulthood than parental death is.”

        Specifically, Dr. Wethington found that men who had a parent die in childhood tended to report less social support later in life than men whose parents survived (although, on average, married men reported more social support than unmarried or cohabiting men). Both men and women who had divorced parents, as well as other kinds of family disruptions during childhood, also reported less social support as adults.

        Comparing childhood family disruptions to adult family conflict, the study found that having divorced parents in childhood is related to more family conflict for both men and women later in life, regardless of current marital or parenting status. Married women with and without children, however, reported less conflict than unmarried women.

        “Our findings suggest that family history matters for perceptions of social support and conflict in adulthood,” Dr. Wethington says. “These findings indicate that childhood family disruptions could have long-lasting effects on the quality and formation of interpersonal relationships critical to well-being far into adulthood.” The study was presented at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting.

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