This longitudinal study is one of the first to test the hypothesis that adult romantic relationship experiences alter the impact of prospectively measured early caregiving to predict anxious-depressed symptoms in adulthood. This research builds upon past work linking romantic relationships to persistence and desistance in externalizing behaviors (Laub & Sampson, 1993; Quinton et al., 1993; Roisman et al., 2004; Rutter et al., 1990; Sampson & Laub, 1990, 1993; Zoccolillo et al., 1992), and extends it to consider internalizing behavior. The perspective adopted here differs from past studies in that we tested for standard cross-sectional anxious-depressed symptom effects, as well as for whether these effects changed across early adulthood for individuals with certain configurations of early caregiving quality and later adult romantic quality.
