PREDICTING ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP DECISIONS BASED ON ATTACHMENT STYLES AND THE CHILDHOOD FAMILY STRUCTURE
PREDICTING ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP DECISIONS BASED ON ATTACHMENT STYLES AND THE CHILDHOOD FAMILY STRUCTURE

Summary/Abstract: The study of sibling impact upon later-life decisions can expand family research by connecting it with intergenerational studies, with insights into cognitive structuring and into socializing by sibling dynamics, but also into lifelong individual development. In the present study the number of older siblings has been shown to be an effective positive predictor for the number of children with former romantic partners; and the number of younger siblings has been proven to add positive prediction power for the number of children with the current romantic partner; for the longest time that the person has stayed in a romantic relationship; and for the current romantic relationship duration; in each case adding their respective prediction power to either the person’s age(in the case of older siblings) or the different attachment style scores (in the case of younger siblings), which have been shown in previous studies to predict romantic decisions. The present paper aims to further show how two simple indicators of family structure, along with seven manners in which they can result in new nominal or numeric computed variables, can overcome the dominating view that family systems are hard to maneuver into research methodology. Two simple introductory questions regarding participants’ older and younger siblings have been used again, together with variables computed based on them, in order to significantly predict romantic relationship decisions above and beyond the classical predictors pertaining to attachment styles.

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