The relationship between university students' retrospectively perceptions of parental acceptance-rejection about childhood and their psychological adjustments in adulthood

The purpose of this study was to develop a structural equation model that examining the mediating roles of rumination, forgiveness and perceived social support in the relationship between university students' retrospectively perceptions of parental acceptance-rejection about childhood and their psychological adjustments in adulthood, and also to examine the moderating role of gender on the developed structural equation model. The sample of this study was composed of 588 (51.7 % female, 48.3 % male) university students attending four different faculties of Pamukkale University. Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire, Personality Assessment Questionnaire, Ruminative Response Scale, Heartland Forgiveness Scale and The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support were used in data collection. The structural equation model results indicated that rumination, forgiveness and perceived social support variables full mediated the relationship between the perceived parental acceptance-rejection and psychological adjustment. Multi-group analyses about the moderation role of gender on the structural equation model also showed that the mediating roles of rumination, forgiveness and perceived social support were verified at both woman and man samples. The results were discussed in the light of relevant literature and some suggestions were submitted for the following studies. Keywords: Parental Acceptance-Rejection, Psychological Adjustment, Rumination, Forgiveness, Perceived Social Support, Structural Equation Modeling.