Several additional findings highlighted the specificity and uniqueness of our findings. For example, the model testing young adult romantic quality as a moderator of early caregiving in predicting anxious-depressed symptoms provided a much better fit to the data than did a competing model that treated young adult work competence as a moderator. Moreover, the early caregiving by young adult romantic quality interaction effect remained significant when several possible confounds were statistically controlled, including romantic relationship stability in adulthood. Thus, the quality of young adult romantic relationships may set into motion certain intrapersonal changes that are not lost, even if the relationship ends. Moreover, our findings are not solely attributable to major relationship-related life events such as getting married or having a child. This lends further support to the premise that romantic relationships may uniquely alter the consequences of early caregiving for anxious-depressed symptom outcomes (Bowlby, 1988; Erikson, 1963; Hazan & Shaver, 1994).
