Perception of university students about their parents' relationship as a couple

When a couple starts a new family, both members share expectations based on what they have learned from their experience in their respective families of origin, in such a way that their offspring will repeat the same patterns in the future. If children perceive a healthy appropriate relationship between their parents, chances are that they too will have a good relationship when they start their own families. However, children will have a different perception when their parents go through a separation or divorce. Based on these facts, the aim of this article was to analyze university students' perception regarding their parents' relationship as a couple within their family environment, taking into consideration whether their parents lived together or separately. A target group comprised of 566 university students of which 345 were women and 221 were men participated in the study. The instrument used was the measurement questionnaire "Dinamica de la Familia Nuclear Mexicana" [The Mexican Family Dynamics] (Vasquez, et al., 2003). In this study the only area addressed was " Parents and their relationship as a couple". The statistical difference between groups was obtained using the Mann-Whitney U test. The results showed significant statistical differences between university students' perception of their parents depending on whether they live together or separately. A conclusion was reached on the existence of different factors that affect the family environment, which has a differential influence on each family member's perception.