Search results

This study assessed the marital quality of older men and women in first marriages and remarriages, examining gender differences within first marriages and remarriages, and marriage order differences for men and women separately.

The study employed nationally representative survey data for 1,243 married adults, aged 62–91, from Wave II of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), conducted in 2010–2011. Marital quality was assessed with six positive relationship dimensions and two negative ones.

Descriptive data revealed mean ratings above scale midpoints on all positive dimensions of marital quality, and mean ratings generally below the midpoints on the negative dimensions for men and women in both first marriages and remarriages. Multivariate analyses indicated an overall stronger influence of gender than marriage order on marital quality for this sample of older adults. In both first marriages and remarriages, men reported more favorable perceptions of marriage across several positive dimensions (e.g., emotional satisfaction, physical pleasure), though they also reported more spousal criticism than did women. Within gender groups, marriage order was not associated with any of the dimensions of marital quality that were assessed.

This study demonstrates that marriage order does not have a significant influence on the marital quality of older adults today, but that long-standing gender differences in marital quality hold across marriage order. These findings are critical given the increasingly diverse marital histories of individuals entering old age in the early 21st century, and the importance of a positive, supportive marriage for older adults’ well-being.

Research has shown that for young adults, marital attitudes (e.g., desire, importance, and expectation) are associated with relationship quality. However, how this association plays out for young adults of color is less known. Additionally, the influence of skin tone perception on the relationship between marital attitudes and relationship quality remains understudied. To explore these associations, the authors examined African American and Latinx young adults (N = 57, M_age = 20.71 years, SD = 1.28; 75.4% female) attending a Midwestern university. Exploratory results indicated that marital expectations were positively associated with relationship quality in that young adults who expected to marry one day, reported greater relationship satisfaction, commitment, and intimacy in their current relationships. Additionally, skin tone perception moderated the association between marital attitudes and relationship quality in two ways (i.e., between expectations and satisfaction and between importance and intimacy). Collectively, findings suggest that differing levels of marital attitudes and skin tone perception contributes to young adults’ perceptions of relationship quality. Considering these psychological factors of attitudes, skin tone perception, and relationship quality, together with systemic racial/ethnic discrimination, the authors discuss future research and practice considerations.

This chapter aims to verify predictors of marital quality in Croatia. As a theoretical starting point, the Huston Socio-ecological model was used. Huston’s so-called “wide-angle and close range” variables were included in to study as predictors of marital quality. A two-level hypothetical model was created consisting of Six groups of predictor variables: Level 1 predictors included Partners’ demographic variables, Partners’ personality, Partners’ value system, Marital processes or dynamics, and Partners’ wellbeing. Level 2 predictors included four Marriage characteristics. Altogether at both levels, 42 variables represented predictors. Marital quality in the marriage was a dependent variable. Eight hundred and eighty-four marital couples from 14 counties in various parts of Croatia and from Zagreb, the country’s capital, were included in the study. Factor analysis, Maximum likelihood with Promax rotation was used to extract factors. Eight factors were extracted: Marital harmony, Distress, Partners’ personality, Negative spillover from work, Traditionalism, Engagement in child care, Participation in decision-making, and Economic hardship. Multilevel analysis using the Mix model in Statistical Package for Social scientist, version 20 was used in data analysis. Predictive on Marital quality in a marriage turned out variables: Marital harmony, Distress, Partners’ personality, Traditionalism, Engagement in child care, and Participation in decision-making as level 1 and Marriage duration (Marriage stages) as a level 2 variable. Huston’s Ecological model proved to be adequate and useful in explaining marital quality.

Purpose – This chapter presents research on determinants of economic hardship and the effect of economic hardship on marital quality in two social contexts in Croatia: postwar recovery period (Study 1) and economic recession starting in 2009 to present (Study 2).

Methodology/approach – In Study 1 the sample consisted of 505 married couples (quota sample of Zagreb and neighboring villages). In Study 2 the sample consisted of 850 married couples (quota sample of Zagreb and 14 regions in Croatia). We have used the SPSS 18 Mixed Linear Model approach for data analysis. A number of variables representing individual characteristics of marital partners were entered as level 1. A number of variables representing marital dyad (duration of marriage, size of the family) were entered as level 2.

Findings – The variables of education, employment status, and size of the family turned out to be most predictive for economic hardship in both studies. Also, in both studies economic hardship turned out to be a very important predictor of marital quality.

Research limitations – The limitations of the studies are the absence of longitudinal approach and a probability sample.

Social implications – The studies carry important social implications showing that in the absence of government or community social support, partners’ social support could moderate negative effect of economic hardship on marital quality. We assume that this conclusion could be generalized to other social contexts as well.

Originality/value of chapter – The strength and originality of the studies was in multilevel approach in data analysis and treating marital partners as a dyad.

Purpose: This study examines the relationship between marital satisfaction and sexual satisfaction, as well as other contributing factors, in the lives of older American adults.

Design/methodology/approach: Data from a restricted sample (N = 1,278) from the second wave of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) was analyzed. Regression models were used to examine associations with marital satisfaction.

Findings: Within ordinary least squares regression gender, education level, mental health, self-rated happiness, the absence of sexual quality, physical satisfaction, and emotional satisfaction were each statistically significant. Females reported higher marital satisfaction than males. Higher educated individuals expressed less satisfaction within their marriages than those with less formal education. Those that rated their mental health, happiness, and physical and emotional satisfaction high also reported higher marital satisfaction. Participants that reported an absence of sexual quality generally rated their marital satisfaction lower.

Originality/value: Most studies focus on the experiences of younger and middle-aged adults, often excluding older adults. Further, while there have been efforts to focus more research on the relationships of adults in midlife to late life, sexuality is still largely ignored.

Guided by a life course theoretical perspective, this study aimed to examine associations between providing caregiving for a young or adult son or daughter with special needs and multiple dimensions of physical health status among married midlife and older adults, as well as moderation of these associations by gender and marital quality (i.e., marital strain).

Regression models were estimated using data from 1,058 married adults aged 33–83 (National Survey of Midlife in the U.S. (MIDUS), 2005).

Parental caregiving for a young or adult child with special needs (in contrast to no caregiving) was linked to poorer global health and more physical symptoms among both fathers and mothers. Father caregivers reported slightly more chronic conditions than noncaregiving men, regardless of marital quality. By contrast, mother caregivers reported a much higher number of chronic conditions when they also reported a high level of marital strain, but not when they reported a low level of marital strain.

Overall, results provide evidence from a national sample that midlife and older parents providing caregiving for a child with special needs are at risk for poorer health outcomes, and further tentatively suggest that greater marital strain may exacerbate health risks, particularly among married mother caregivers.

Purpose – This study examined the impact of educational differences between married women and men on marital quality at the intersections of gender, race, and class.Methodology/approach – Guided by an intersectional perspective we analyzed data for 4,835 black and white married couples from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH; 1987–1988). Dyadic multigroup models were estimated using structural equation modeling to examine how status differences affected four latent dimensions of marital quality: happiness, stability, perceived fairness, and disagreement.Findings – Our findings highlight how multiple dimensions of marital quality vary according to intersections of gender, race, and class, and reveal how these intersections moderate the impact of status on marital quality.Research limitations/implications – To our knowledge, the NSFH is the most up-to-date, nationally representative dataset available with couple-level data; however, the data were collected in the late 1980s and are insufficient for extending our analysis to other race-ethnic groups. Our findings demonstrate a strong need for more comprehensive contemporary data collection that has adequate numbers of respondents/couples at the intersections of gender, race, and class to facilitate further quantitative studies using an intersectional perspective.Originality/value – Our study is innovative in using education, an arena where women are currently outpacing men, as an indicator of status, and in embracing an intersectional perspective. By doing so we advance literature on status discrepant marriages, and contribute to the fields of gender and family studies which seek to understand how the changing roles of women may be affecting marital quality.

The study was conducted to investigate the association between nonsexual predictors (personal, interpersonal, and dyad variables) and sexual satisfaction in the long-term marriages. The theoretical model was created according to the socio-ecological model proposed by Huston (2000), including 12 personal, 8 interpersonal, and 3 dyad variables as predictors. The model treated personal and interpersonal variables as level 1 variables, while dyad variables were defined as level 2. The research was performed in 14 counties of Croatia and in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. The sample included 315 marital couples. Marital partners were interviewed individually and separately, at their home. The analysis was performed using the MLM statistical procedure. Four models were tested: (1) personal, (2) interpersonal without gender variable as predictor, (3) interpersonal with gender variable, and (4) final model made up of all groups of predictors together. In Model 1, Self-esteem and Physical attraction turned out to be predictive of sexual satisfaction. In Model 2, Emotional and Recreational intimacy were positive, while Marriage duration proved to be negative predictor. Model 3 generated same predictive variables as Model 2 plus the variable Gender. Model 4 yielded Gender, Physical Attraction, Emotional Intimacy, Participation in key decision-making, and Marital Quality as positive predictors, while Anxiety and Depression proved to be negative predictors. Obtained results are showing that in long-term marriages not only sexual variables are good predictors of marital sexual satisfaction but some nonsexual variables such as emotional intimacy, recreational intimacy, physical attractiveness, participation in key decision-making, and marital quality are also important. The results are discussed and study limitations are emphasized at the end.

In this chapter, I investigated how challenges (life events) are negotiated within families according to gender roles and their effect on marriage quality, life satisfaction, and psychological resilience in a nonclinical sample of heterosexual couples (N=159), age 23–78 (M=45.4, SD=11.2), with children (n=127) or childfree (n=32). Specifically, I accounted for the individual’s ability to share “hurt feelings” and foster intimacy within the couple, thus strengthening resilience and improving life satisfaction and hypothesized that the impact of negative life events on both relationship quality and life satisfaction could depend on the resilience levels of each partner and their ratio according to gender roles. Results confirmed the hypothesis and showed significant gender differences in the impact of negative life events on relationship quality, life satisfaction, ability to share hurt feelings, fear of intimacy, and resilience levels. Moreover, the ratio of the partner’s individual resilience affected the dependent variables differently by gender, its level interacted with the age of the couple’s first child (range: 2–54, mean: 21.4, SD: 10.4) and strongly depended on the occupation of the parents.

The aim of this paper is to draw together within an evaluative framework British research‐based material concerning the impact of children, or the absence of children, on the quality and stability of the marriage relationship. The focus, therefore, is quite specific, and there is no attempt to review the whole corpus of literature on childbearing and child‐rearing. The relevant material is limited, fragmentary, and scattered across the literature of several disciplines. For such reasons it has been necessary in parts to draw upon American research both to indicate where the gaps and possibilities in indigenous research may lie and to show how far British findings supplement and support the American. Despite its thinness and incohesiveness, however, British material is adequate to test some common ideas about the relationship between children and marriage and, as will be seen, some of the conclusions to which it leads are counter‐intuitive, or at least contrary to beliefs which are widely found amongst relevant professionals as well as amongst the general public.