Relations among perceived spouse acceptance, remembered parental acceptance in childhood, and psychological adjustment among married adults in Kuwait

Parental acceptance-rejection theory postulates that adults' current level of psychological adjustment is affected by a combination of their perception of the love-related behaviors of their current intimate partners and by their mental representations of parents' love-related behaviors toward them in childhood. Accordingly, this research explored the way in which remembered childhood experiences of maternal and paternal acceptance might mediate the relation between perceived intimate-partner acceptance and the psychological adjustment of 389 married individuals in Kuwait. Results of simple correlations showed that the more accepting both men and women saw their spouses to be, the better was their psychological adjustment; similarly, the more accepting men and women remembered both their mothers and fathers to have been when the respondents were children, the better was their psychological adjustment. Finally, results of simple multiple-regression analyses showed that recollections of both maternal and paternal acceptance in respondents' childhoods partially mediated the relation between perceived spouse acceptance and respondents' psychological adjustment.