Family-of-origin experiences and adjustment in married couples

Within this article a model is tested that examines the relationship between married individuals' experiences in their family of origin and patterns Of marital adjustment. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling procedures, making the couple the unit of analysis. This allowed for an exploration of how one partner's family-of-origin experience and the other partner's family-of-origin experience uniquely influence each of the. partner's experiences of the marriage. Two aspects of the results stand out. First, both husbands' and wives' family-of-origin experiences emerged as significant influences on marital adjustment. Second, the data suggest that wives' experiences within their family of origin are more strongly related to both their own accounts of their marriages and their husbands' accounts of their marriages than are husbands' family-of-origin experiences.