Relationships Across The Lifespan:Born into Intimacy: The Effects of Adults’ Relationships on Children
The Week 7 assignment is a research paper on a topic you select using any topic presented in your primary textbook, Intimate Relationships.

Please note that your paper must conform to APA guidelines for research papers. This means that you should pick a topic that will allow you to gather enough references; a minimum of five scholarly source references are required for this assignment.

Your paper is required to be submitted in the APA format and must be a minimum of five pages in Times New Roman, double spaced, using one-inch margins on all sides–no extra. The required title and reference pages DO NOT count toward the minimum number of pages of content that are required.

The goal of the assignment is to allow you to gain greater insight on a given topic and provide an opportunity for self-enrichment. APA guidelines limit the number of direct quotes that can be used in a research paper to only two or three brief quotes. You should express ideas in your own words, paraphrasing and summarizing accurately. All quotes, paraphrases, and summaries must be properly documented. This website will help you to understand how to quote and paraphrase effectively: http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QuotingSources.html

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Relationships Across The Lifespan
Chapter Summary
Born into Intimacy: The Effects of Adults’ Relationships on Children
•Parental discord is related to negative outcomes for children. These include depression, behavior problems, and difficulties in their relationships with peers.
•Children are skilled observers of behavior. When shown videotapes of adults engaged in different types of conflicts (e.g., negative message spoken in a positive tone of voice), children were able to detect the conflict.
•Children’s responses to their parents’ disagreements depend on their appraisals. The first step of these appraisals is primary appraisals, in which children notice the conflict. The second step is secondary appraisals, in which children try to figure out why the conflict is happening and what they should do. As part of this secondary appraisal, children may develop self-blame.
•Children’s later relationship behavior is affected by their response to their parents’ conflict. If children are somehow reinforced for engaging in behaviors such as attempting to intervene in their parents’ argument, distancing themselves from it, or other behaviors, they are likely to repeat these behaviors in the future.
•Children’s later relationship behavior is modeled after their parents’ relationship behavior. Children tend to behave in ways that are similar to their parents’ behavior. Experimental studies suggest that children’s behavior is the result of parents’ behavior.
•Children tend to become sensitized, rather than desensitized. Rather than becoming accustomed to and ignoring frequent conflict, children become more aggressive in response to seeing more conflict behavior of adults.
The Expanding Social World of Childhood
•Children’s relationships with their siblings can be filled with rivalry. This rivalry stems, in part, from competition for parental attention and sensitivity to differential parental treatment.
•The presence of siblings speeds up children’s development of theories of mind. This refers to an understanding of other people’s perceptions, and it is frequently assessed by the false belief test.
•Relationships with siblings are positively related to relationships with peers. Children with closer relationships to their siblings tend to have closer relationships with their friends as well.
•Friendships differ from family relationships in several important ways. They are reciprocal and voluntary, and each person has an equal status. Friendships appear to be even more important than sibling relationships, because good friendships can help make up for poor sibling relationships, but good sibling relationships cannot help make up for poor friendships.
•One important aspect of friendship is shared imaginative play. In this type of play, children together create an imaginary world and decide on the rules and regulations of that world.
•Children’s friendship patterns are related to their later behavior. Using sociometric testing, researchers can determine whether children are popular among their peers, rejected, controversial, or neglected. Children who are rejected tend to later display externalizing behavior, while children who are neglected tend to later display internalizing behavior.
•The role of gender in children’s friendships is overestimated. Although there are some differences in friendship behaviors of males and females, there is also substantial overlap. The differences in behaviors such as aggression and nurturing appear to be due largely to the different circumstances that males and females may encounter with their friends. When in the same circumstances, the behaviors of males and females are similar.
Adolescence and the Initial Steps into Intimacy
•Adolescents develop ideas of what romantic relationships mean as they grow older. There is a great deal of similarity across adolescents in terms of their perceptions of what romantic relationships mean and in terms of the scripts they have for these relationships. These scripts become more complicated and detailed as adolescents get older.
•Many adolescents have experienced a romantic relationship. In one survey, over 80 percent of adolescents reported being in a relationship. These relationships tend to last a relatively long time, with average lengths of anywhere from 12 to 24 months. Because of lower levels of interdependence in these relationships, adolescents may sometimes disagree over whether they are, in fact, in a relationship.
•There is consistency in relationships across the life span. People who have more positive and supportive relationships with their parents tend to also have more positive and supportive relationships with their romantic partners. This can be seen in longitudinal studies that have followed people from infancy into adulthood.
•Adolescent relationships are learning experiences. People’s experiences in their adolescent relationships have consequences for their well-being (e.g., with emotional breakups being related to depression) and their later relationships (e.g., with those who come to see violence as a part of relationships being more likely to have subsequent violent relationships).
•Trust and communication has different relationships with contraceptive use. During early stages of relationships, partners who report more trust and communication are more likely to use contraception. During later stages of relationships, partners who report more satisfaction are less likely to use contraception. This may be due, in part, to perceptions that the use of contraception indicates a lack of trust in the partner.
Major Transitions in Intimate Relationships during Adulthood
•Increasingly, people are cohabiting. Cohabitation may be seen as a precursor to marriage, as an alternative to marriage, or it may be seen as completely separate from marriage. There is a large degree of variability in terms of how cohabiters view cohabitation.
•People who cohabit before marriage tend to have higher rates of divorce and lower levels of satisfaction. Part of this pattern is due to selection effects, in terms of who chooses to cohabit. However, the pattern is not entirely explained by this. Factors such as social views of cohabitation may also contribute to this pattern.
•When couples have a child, they experience the transition to parenthood. This brings many changes to their relationship, including more traditional gender role patterns of chore division, and steeper declines in satisfaction (particularly if the pregnancy was a surprise). However, the presence of children is related to lower rates of divorce.
•When children leave home, partners experience another transition. For some, satisfaction increases when this happens. However, for those who are relatively dissatisfied, the likelihood of divorce increases when their children leave home.
•Over time, relationships change. On average, people report lower levels of satisfaction and higher levels of negativity. This could be due, in part, to partners habituating to their relationship. It has been suggested that couples may be able to boost their satisfaction by engaging in novel activities together.
•Although couples endure a lot of negative experiences before divorce, divorce is related to negative outcomes. These include higher levels of depression, financial problems, and physical problems.
•After divorce, people continue to value marriage. Most people who have divorced report a desire to marry again. However, second marriages are more likely than first marriages to end in divorce.
Intimate Relationships in Later Life
•Marital experience is related to quality of life in old age. The more times people are married, the lower level of financial well-being they tend to have. Controlling for number of marriage, people who have spent more of their lives married tend to be healthier.
•Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that older people are choosier about their experiences. As people age, their mortality is likely to be more salient, and they are more likely to spend their time seeking positive, rather than negative, experiences.
•Older couples tend to report that they are happy in their relationships. This is due, in part, to the ending of unhappy marriages. This makes it more likely that older people who are still married are in a happy marriage. Older couples seem to be more adept at handling conflict, and they seem to be less likely to initiate negative behaviors.
•Retirement is a mixed blessing. It can bring the loss of a loved job or a reprieve from a hated job. It can bring more financial stress. It can bring the opportunity to spend more time with a partner, or it can bring the necessity of spending more time with a partner.
•The death of a partner is difficult. This is true regardless of the circumstances of that death (i.e., whether it is sudden or the result of a long illness). Although the death of a partner is related to a greater risk of depression, widows and widowers who had a more positive relationship with their partner and lower levels of emotional dependence on their partner tend to have lower levels of depression.

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