Relations among Perceived Intimate Partner Acceptance, Remembered Parental Acceptance, and Psychological Adjustment among Young Adults in India

Abstract

The principal goal of this study was to explore the way in which remembered childhood experiences of maternal and paternal acceptance mediated or moderated the relation between perceived intimate‐partner acceptance and the psychological adjustment of 79 young adults in India. Results of simple correlations showed a positive relationship between parental (mothers' and fathers') acceptance and psychological adjustment, and similarly between intimate partner acceptance and psychological adjustment. However, results of multiple regression analyses showed that remembered maternal acceptance no longer made a significant contribution to the psychological adjustment of either men or women when the influence of paternal and partner acceptance was partialed out. Perceived partner acceptance was the strongest single predictor of psychological adjustment for men, although this relation was partially mediated by remembered paternal (but not maternal) acceptance in childhood. For women, on the other hand, both perceived partner acceptance and remembered paternal acceptance were about coequal as predictors of psychological adjustment. The influence of remembered paternal acceptance in childhood also moderated the relation between perceived partner acceptance and respondents' psychological adjustment.