Childhood interpersonal antecedents of adult romantic relationship adjustment: Prospective evidence from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.

Abstract

This report leveraged the subsample of romantically involved participants in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development at the most recent assessment of the cohort (n = 505; M_age = 28.6 years; 58.1% female; 81.7% White/non-Hispanic) to study the role of three theoretically salient childhood interpersonal experiences as potential antecedents of self-reported romantic relationship adjustment in early adulthood. Predictors were measured multiple times prospectively in childhood through adolescence and included (a) direct observations of maternal sensitivity in dyadic interactions with participants from age 1 month through 15 years, (b) participants' reports of the quality of their best friendships from Grade 3 to age 15 years, and (c) participants' primary caregivers' reports about the quality of their own romantic relationships when target participants were being reared. Composite assessments of these three childhood interpersonal exposures were each uniquely predictive of participants' romantic relationship adjustment in young adulthood after accounting for demographic covariates, though the overall effect size was modest (ΔR² = .05). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).