Halos vs. stigmas: long-term effects of parent's death or divorce on college students' concepts of the family.
College students from families of divorce, of death of a parent, and of intact families rated the meaning of six concepts of the family: mother, father, I myself, marriage, family, and divorce. The Semantic Differential was used to assess four dimensions of meaning of family concepts: evaluation, potency, activity, and general cultural favorability. Children of divorce rated father less favorably than did children of death of a parent or of intact families; however, children of divorce rated divorce more favorably than the remaining two groups. Also, children of divorce evaluated the family concepts that were rated here more negatively than, but equally as potent and active as, children of death of a parent and of intact families. Thus, several long-term stigmas attach to family among children of divorce, but no evidence was found of a halo effect for children of death of a parent.
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D002648:Child; D004243:Divorce; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008426:Maternal Deprivation; D010333:Paternal Deprivation; D012659:Semantic Differential