In the master's degree paper the author has explored the perception of respect how a parental divorce in the family of origin affects an individual's life, and how is this experience connected with the respect in the current relationship. In the theory part she first stops at the term divorce, shows different point of views, and continues with how is a divorce connected to a child, how is the child affected by the divorce, how is the child experiencing the divorce, what are the consequences and how to prepare a child for a divorce of his or her parents. The author then visits the topic of respect, what is respect, what is self-respect and respect of others. She also touches the respect in the family and the respect in a relationship, which is the core of this master’s degree paper.
In the empirical part, a quality research with 11 participants, aged between 23 and 35, is presented. All participants have divorced parents and are, or were in the past, in a relationship. For the research, a semi-structured interview with the following areas was prepared: respect in the family of origin before and after the divorce, emotional experience in the family before and after the divorce, self-respect and respect in a relationship today, and emotional experience of oneself and in a relationship today.
Results have shown mutual respect in a partner relationship, even though the parents in the family of origin had a bad partner relationship, or there was a low presence of respect, or it was absent altogether. In a partner relationship, the participants used expressions that mostly reflected characteristics of respect, in female participants some intolerance toward a partner was noticed which could be connected with divorce of the parents in the family of origin. They try to have better relations in their own partner relationship than their parents had. On the other hand, participants also talk about the understanding of their partner, which is very important to them. After the parental divorce there were some changes in participants’ relationship with their parents. An improvement in relationship with their fathers, and consequently increase in talk of respect toward their fathers, was noted. A minor decrease of respect in a relationship with the mother occurred, but participants kept expressing a very positive and respectful relationship. The relationship between parents was bad before the divorce, there was a lot of fighting, in some cases there was even a presence of violence and absence of communication between the parents. Participants have experienced a lot of fear, chaos, anger and sadness. After the divorce, the relationship between the parents either improved, or in the cases of the opposite extreme, terminated. The disrespect demonstrated at the time of divorce can be attributed to the adolescence period, which is in line with the results.
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