Risks, Vulnerabilities, and Desires for Future Romantic Relationships and Relationship Education During Early Adulthood

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Author: Jeremy B. Kanter,Stacy Conner,Amber Vennum,Sharon L. Deitz,Loren Taylor
• Date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12489

J B. KUniversity of Tennessee Knoxville

S CWashburn University

A VKansas State University

S L. DIndependent Scholar

L TKansas State University

Risks, Vulnerabilities, and Desires for Future

Romantic Relationships and Relationship Education

During Early Adulthood

Objective: The purpose of this study was to

explore how vulnerabilities, stressors, and

adaptive processes inuenced early adults’

(N=1,073) future relational desires and topic

preferences in relationship education (RE).

Background: There is great diversity in path-

ways to relationship formation. Early adults

are exposed to risk factors from their past

and present relationship experiences that can

inuence their current and future relational

functioning. Thus, there is an increasing need

to provide individually relevant relationship

education services to ultimately help early

adults navigate these diverse relationship pro-

cesses and transitions. To ensure relevant and

successful programing, relationship educators

need to consider early adults’ future relational

preferences and variations in early adults’

interest in specic areas of RE content.

Department of Child and Family Studies, University of

Tennessee, Knoxville, 1215 W. Cumberland Avenue, 418

Jessie W. Harris Building, Knoxville, TN 37996 (jkan-

ter2@utk.edu).

Key Words: Early adulthood, FLE content areas, interven-

tion, interpersonal relationships, relationship education.

Methods: Combining data from a nationally

representative sample (N=436) and a snowball

sample (N=637), we collected information

on various risk factors for relationship distress

early adults had observed or experienced,

demographic information, and current relation-

ship status to identify not only future relational

desires but also interest in RE topics.

Results: Results indicated that early adults are

concurrently experiencing many risks that inu-

ence their future relational desires and interests

in specic RE topics.

Conclusion: Wedemonstrate how each risk fac-

tor independently inuences an early adult’s

future relational desires and interest in RE top-

ics, while also highlighting the cumulative effect

of risk factors on these outcomes.

Implications: Implications highlight tailoring

functions within RE to increase interest and

engagement and more precisely addressspecic

participant stressors and vulnerabilities.

Cultural and economic shifts in recent decades

have led to extended time in higher education,

the delaying of marriage, and the separation of

1012Family Relations 69 (December 2020): 1012–1027

DOI:10.1111/fare.12489

Relationship Education During Early Adulthood1013

childbearing from marriage (Cherlin, 2010;

Eckmeyer, 2018). Today’s dating culture

encompasses diverse, and often ambigu-

ous, paths toward relationship development

(Rhoades & Stanley, 2009) with rises in

relationship forms, such as premarital cohab-

itation (Eickmeyer, 2018), hooking up (Owen

et al., 2011), and friends with benets (Owen

& Fincham, 2012). These varying early rela-

tionship experiences are associated with poorer

current functioning (e.g., mental health) and

prospective functioning (e.g., relational and

well-being outcomes; Collins et al., 2009; Over-

beek et al., 2007). Therefore, early adulthood

(conceptualized here as individuals between

18 and 30years of age, similar to Fincham

et al., 2011; Hemez, 2018) is a tting time for

relationship education (RE; Rhoades & Stan-

ley, 2009) aimed at equipping individuals and

couples with principles and skills to prevent

or minimize factors that jeopardize the healthy

development of their current and future romantic

relationships (Braithwaite & Fincham, 2009).

According to the vulnerability–stress–

adaptation (VSA) model (Karney & Brad-

bury, 1995), relationships do not develop or

evolve in a vacuum. How people cope with

relationship difculties, that is, adaptive pro-

cesses, are inuenced by personality and

experiential factors, such as enduring vulner-

abilities, that people bring to relationships,

in addition to stressful circumstances people

experience that exert pressure on personal and

relational resources. Thus, given the various

paths into romantic relationships (e.g., breakup

and renewals of a relationship, hook-ups) and

the diverse contexts in which relationships

form (e.g., variation in cultural expectations), a

one-size-ts-all approach to RE might be insuf-

cient (Vennum et al., 2020). Taken together,

although early adulthood is an opportune time

to provide RE, paradoxically, giventhe variation

in relational experiences, it is a difcult time to

provide a broad RE program.

As a result, scholars have suggested that RE

must account for specic risk factors to ensure

relevancy of materials (Vennum et al., 2017),

a key moderator of program engagement

(Heath, 2012). Scholars have advocated for cre-

ating “risk proles,” such that preassessment of

risks would dictate what type of intervention an

individual or couple would receive (Williamson

et al., 2015). In other words, similar to how indi-

viduals must adapt to numerous risks to ensure

optimal relational functioning (Karney & Brad-

bury,1995), interventions would need to adapt to

successfully meet the needs of participants. The

goal of this study was to examine how a variety

of relational and contextual vulnerabilities and

stressors experienced by early adults inuence

their future relational preferences and interest in

specic areas of RE content. Implications will

inform RE adaptations with diverse early adults.

R  M  RE

In the therapeutic literature, alignment between

clients’ relevancy, that is, t or interest of treat-

ment in therapy is critical for successful inter-

vention (Crane et al., 1986). Ensuring relevancy

of RE with current early adults is challenging for

several reasons. First, before age 30 years, con-

temporary early adults experience more diverse

relational formation patterns compared with

prior generations (e.g., cohabitation, childrear-

ing; Hemez, 2018), which make certain topics

more or less relevant for those in attendance.

For example, compared with marital unions,

nonmarital unions are more likely to experi-

ence relational transitions, which in turn may

increase distress and relational uncertainty in the

current relationship (Vennum & Johnson, 2014)

and future relationships (Rhoades et al., 2011).

Compared with those who have had one stable

dating partner whom they plan to marry in the

near future, individuals who experience more

transitions may need a different dosage of RE

or more content on how to reduce the negative

impact of past distressing relationship events

on future relationship stability. Second, univer-

sal RE targeting all early adults (Hawkins &

Ooms, 2010) as they are displaying risk factors

for later distress (e.g., high conict, physi-

cal aggression, sexual risk-taking; Fincham

et al., 2011) requires RE programs to meet the

needs of early adults with diverse levels of dis-

tress, including screening to adapt to the needs

of participants (Bradford et al., 2015). Third,

in line with the previous point, while RE pro-

grams allow for some exibility,they are largely

delivered as standardized curricula, whereas

practices in education (Almirall et al., 2018) and

psychotherapy (Beutler et al., 2016) increasingly

use adaptive intervention models to increase the

effectiveness and cost savings of interventions

with heterogeneous populations. Therefore,

from a prevention perspective, understand-

ing how specic relationship experiences and