From Family to Partnership: Intrusive Parenting and Couple Identity Through Dyadic Coping

To build a committed and stable couple relationship, young adults need to renegotiate ties with their family of origin; this is possible when parents refrain from intrusiveness. Intrusive parenting involves controlling and manipulative behaviors directed to children’s thoughts, feelings, and attachments, including mind-reading (i.e., presuming to know the child’s needs and thoughts), overreacting to events, and excessively interfering in problems. Prior research suggests that intrusive parenting is also negatively associated with young adult children’s capability to develop a couple identity. No evidence exists, nonetheless, regarding the association between intrusive parenting and young adults’ couple relational competences. A key competence, in this regard, is partners’ dyadic coping, that is, the way partners cope together against a stressor affecting one partner or the dyad. In the present study, using questionnaire data from 155 young adult newlywed couples or in transition to marriage, we examined the concurrent association between intrusive parenting and couple identity, and the mediating role of dyadic coping strategies. We relied on the actor–partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) for distinguishable dyads, after conducting the omnibus test of distinguishability. Results indicated an association between intrusive parenting and dyadic coping and supported the mediating role of dyadic coping between intrusive parenting and couple identity. Actor and partner effects were observed, especially concerning negative dyadic coping. These results have practical implications for interventions targeting young adult couples as they identify both distal and proximal factors shaping their couple identity.