Forgiveness and Family Functioning among Young Adults from Divorced and Married Families

Forgiveness is a response strategy capable of countering the escalation of conflicts and it represents therefore a valuable resource for managing critical individual and family transitions. Among others, parental divorce is a stressful event that requires the reorganization of the entire family. This study, which involved 95 Italian young adults with divorced or married parents, analyzed the relationship between family functioning and forgiveness. Results showed significant associations between variables in divorced families, but not in the intact ones. Specifically, in the divorce context forgiveness was positively associated with family cohesion and flexibility and negatively with family disengagement and chaos.