Childhood emotional maltreatment and coping with romantic relationship conflicts in women during early adulthood: The protective role of feminist identity

Feminism has shown a protective effect on women's mental health and well-being. However, there exists a prevailing perception that feminism is incompatible with heterosexual romance. Despite this perspective, emerging research suggests that identifying with feminism can have positive implications for women's romantic relationships. The authors seek to contribute to existing literature by exploring the beneficial effects of feminist identity on women's romantic relationships. A total of 328 Chinese female undergraduates who were currently in romantic relationships completed the measurement of childhood emotional maltreatment (i.e. childhood emotional abuse and neglect), feminist identity, and coping strategies in romantic relationship conflicts (i.e. compromise, avoidance, submission, separation, domination and interactional reactivity). Firstly, we examined correlations between all studied variables. According to the result, childhood emotional neglect was significantly negatively related to constructive coping strategy (i.e. compromise) in romantic relationship conflicts. Besides, feminist identity possessed a significant positive correlation with compromise, separation and domination in romantic relationship conflicts. Subsequently, we investigated the moderating effect of feminist identity in the relation between childhood emotional neglect and compromise in romantic relationship conflicts. As a result, the negative correlation between childhood emotional neglect and compromise in romantic relationship conflicts was found only among Chinese female undergraduates with low, but not high, feminist identity. Implications of these findings were discussed.