Date of Award

2018

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

Abstract

Bernasha M. Anderson

Loyola University Chicago

PARENTAL RELATIONSHIP QUALITY AND STEREOTYPIC ROLE ENDORSEMENT AS PREDICTORS OF MARRIAGE ATTITUDES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS

As the marriage rate of African Americans continues to decline, concern has been expressed about the stability of the African American family system among members of the community. There is currently a dearth of studies examining marriage attitudes among African Americans in the counseling psychology literature. The current study sought to expand the existing scholarship by exploring parental relationship quality and stereotypic role endorsement as predictors of African American women and men's marriage attitudes. Additionally, gender was examined as a moderator.

Participants (n = 140) completed three measures including the Parental Marital Conflict Scale (Wang, 2004), the Marital Attitude Scale (Shi, 2009), and the Stereotypic Roles of Black Women Scale (Thomas, Witherspoon, & Speight, 2004). Findings indicated that parental conflict and stereotypic role endorsement do not predict marriage attitudes of African American women and men. Support for gender as a moderator was not found as the current sample contained a dearth of African American male-identified participants. Age emerged as a statistically significant predictor of marriage beliefs. As such, younger participants reported more favorable marriage attitudes compared to older participants who reported less favorable marital beliefs. Gender differences were also found. Women reported greater endorsement of the Mammy and Superwoman stereotypic roles compared to men. Implications for clinical practice, suggestions for future research, and study limitations are discussed.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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