Why Your Number Of Romantic Partners Mirrors Your Mother

Moms.com

By Kelli Catana

Published Nov 20, 2018

New study is proving that mothers don't just influence parenting styles of personalities, but they may also influence how many partners you had.

Have you heard from people your whole life that you're just like your mother? Do people tell you look alike, or sound alike, or even act alike? It's not surprising that women tend to have a lot in common with their mothers since we know that mothers have a huge impact on our lives. Now a new study is proving that mothers don't just influence parenting styles of personalities, but they may also influence how many partners you've had!

A new study out of Ohio State University shows that a mothers behavior and relationship skills actually influencing how many people their children have romantic relationships with, and the results are really not that surprising.

"Our results suggest that mothers may have certain characteristics that make them more or less desirable on the marriage market and better or worse at relationships," Claire Kamp Dush, lead author of the study and associate professor of human sciences at The Ohio State University stated. "Children inherit and learn those skills and behaviors and may take them into their own relationships." The study looked at 7,000 mothers and their biological children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Child and Young Adult, both of which followed the same subjects for 24 years. The study specifically focused on how the mothers relationships affected her children.

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The study showed that how a mother acts in a relationship, and how many relationships she has, has an effect on her children. "What our results suggest is that mothers may pass on their marriageable characteristics and relationship skills to their children - for better or worse," Kamp Dush said. "It could be that mothers who have more partners don't have great relationship skills, or don't deal with conflict well, or have mental health problems, each of which can undermine relationships and lead to instability," Kamp Dush noted in the release. "Whatever the exact mechanisms, they may pass these characteristics on to their children, making their children's relationships less stable." The study found that the number of marriages or live in partners a mother had was often mirrored by their children. Kamp Dush told the Daily Mail that it's natural for children to mirror their mother's behavior, especially when it comes to relationships.

"I think some of these basic things that drive our satisfaction never change,' she said. "If you observe your mom being very critical to her partner or to you, then you take that into your own intimate relationship. We are learning similar ways of being in relationships from our mothers."