Family-of-Origin Triangulation and Marital Quality of Chinese Couples: The Mediating Role of In-Law Relationships

Triangulation is an important subject in marriage and family therapy. Chinese family culture emphasizes consanguinity, which means that adult children have great difficulty separating from their original families and establishing clear boundaries. This results in the unique problem of family-of-origin triangulation in Chinese marriages. The current study explored the relationship between family-of-origin triangulation and the marital quality of Chinese couples, and examined the mediating role of in-law relationships. A total of 341 Chinese couples, ranging from newlyweds to those with school-aged children, participated in the survey. The results demonstrate that family-of-origin triangulation of both husbands and wives negatively predicted wives' marital quality, whereas husbands' marital quality was only predicted by their own family-of-origin triangulation. Moreover, family-of-origin triangulation not only predicted marital quality directly, but also indirectly by damaging the relationships with in-laws. The actor effects of family-of-origin triangulation were partially mediated by in-law relationships, whereas the partner effects of husbands' triangulation on wives' marital quality was fully mediated by in-law relationships. Family therapists in China should pay more attention to intergenerational relationships and reestablishing the sub-system boundaries of husband and wife, and at the same time, focus on repairing the couple's relationships with the in-laws.