The Impact of Parental Divorce on Marital Attitudes among Adolescents: A Quantitative Analysis Using Nationally Representative Survey Data

Abstract

This study examines how parental marital history influences ninth-grade students’ outlook on marriage. In Japan, young people’s views on marriage have diversified against the backdrop of rising lifetime singlehood and increasing divorce. However, existing research on the impact of parental divorce on children’s marriage-related attitudes has focused mainly on university students or adults. This study instead focuses on adolescents in junior high school, a period in which values remain relatively malleable and individuals begin to envision future intimate relationships.

The analysis uses microdata from the 2011 Cabinet Office Survey on the Life Attitudes of Parents and Children, covering 2,955 parent–child pairs. Family structure is classified into seven categories based on parental divorce timing, remarriage, and the presence of stepparent relationships, with continuously married first-marriage families as the reference group. The dependent variables are three indicators: expectations of being married by age 40, expectations of raising children by age 40, and a preference for early marriage. Binary logistic regression models are estimated, controlling for the child’s gender, perceived household economic conditions, family atmosphere, and gender role attitudes, and testing interactions between family structure and gender.

The results show that children who experienced parental divorce during school age (ages 7–15) have significantly lower expectations of being married and raising children by age 40. In contrast, no clear negative effects are observed for widowed mother households, father-only households, or remarried households. Although gender interactions are generally limited, boys in remarried households with stepparent relationships exhibit significantly weaker expectations regarding future childrearing than girls. These findings indicate that parental divorce can influence the formation of marriage-related outlooks even in early adolescence and highlight the importance of the timing and form of family transitions in shaping young people’s future expectations.