PRC Working Paper Series 2003-2004

Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003

We use data from two national surveys of married individuals-one from 1980 and the other from 2000-to understand how three dimensions of marital quality changed during this period. Marital happiness and divorce proneness changed little between 1980 and 2000, but marital interaction declined significantly. A decomposition analysis suggested that offsetting trends affected marital quality. Increases in marital heterogamy, premarital cohabitation, wives' extended hours of employment, and wives' job demands were associated with declines in multiple dimensions of marital quality. In contrast, increases in economic resources, decision-making equality, nontraditional attitudes toward gender, and support for the norm of lifelong marriage were associated with improvements in multiple dimensions of marital quality. Increases in husbands' share of housework appeared to depress marital quality among husbands but to improve marital quality among wives.

Psychological Science, 2008

To address the need for longitudinal marital research that takes contextual factors into account, we investigated change in women's marital satisfaction over 18 years of middle age. We examined not only whether marital satisfaction changed, but also why and how it changed. Marital satisfaction increased in middle age, and increased marital, but not life, satisfaction was linked to the transition to an empty nest. More specifically, the transition to an empty nest increased marital satisfaction via an increase in women's enjoyment of time with their partners, but not via an increase in the quantity of that time with partners. Also, increasing marital satisfaction was not attributable to changing partners. Taken together, these findings support the utility of applying a contextualized approach focused on major life transitions to the study of long-term change in marital satisfaction.

Lifestyles, 1984

A secondary analysis of four samples from earlier studies was used to test two hypotheses concerning long-term marriages. First, it was hypothesized that couples from marriages of 30 years or more duration would be characterized by higher levels of relationship quality, with the overall pattern between duration of marriage and relationship quality being curvilinear; across four samples of husbands and wives, only weak support was found for this hypothesis. A second hypothesis, that elements of intrinsic communication including positive regard, empathy, and congruence would be less important for couples from older marriages, received no support. Thus, it appears that relatively intrinsic components of the marital relationship are just as important currently for older couples as they are for younger couples, in spite of popular opinion to the contrary. Rice (1983: 7-9) has echoed the Maces' observations {Mace, 1972; Mace & Mace, 1974), that marriages have become more intrinsic than in the past, with greater emphasis on love, open communication, and companionship. In recent research (Wampler and Powell, 1982), the latter concepts have been approximated more formally by the concepts of positive regard, congruence, and empathy (Barrett-Lennard, 1962). If Rice and the Maces are correct in their assumption that older marriages are less intrinsic, then we would expect that relatively intrinsic variables such as regard, congruence, and empathy would be weaker predictors of overall marital satisfaction among older marriages as compared to marriages contracted more recently. At the same time, research (Anderson et al., 1983) often has found a curvilinear relationship between marital quality and stage in the family life cycle with the very youngest and the very oldest couples reporting higher marital quality. In most cases, such research has used only marital adjustment as the dependent variable without evaluating the effect of duration of marriage upon more specific aspects of marital communication such as regard, congruence, and empathy. Therefore, The preparation of this paper was supported in part by the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, Contribution No. 84-516-J.

Journal of Marriage and Family, 2005

We work from a stress and life course perspective to consider how stress affects trajectories of change in marital quality over time. Specifically, we ask whether stress is more likely to undermine the quality of marital experiences at different points in the life course. In addition, we ask whether the effects of adult stress on marital quality depend on childhood family stress experiences. Growth curve analysis of data from a national longitudinal survey (Americans' Changing Lives, N = 1,059 married individuals) reveals no evidence of age differences in the effects of adult stress on subsequent trajectories of change in marital experiences. Our results, however, suggest that the effects of adult stress on marital quality may depend on childhood stress exposure. Stress in adulthood appears to take a cumulative toll on marriage over time-but this toll is paid primarily by individuals who report a more stressful childhood. This toll does not depend on the timing of stress in the adult life course.

Family Process, 2005

One of the most frequently reported changes across the transition to parenthood is a decline in marital quality after the birth of a first baby. Experiences in the family of origin may influence the trajectory of marital quality. Our study aimed to investigate the impact of recollections of family-of-origin marriage on marital quality (self-reports and clinical evaluation) from pregnancy to 1 year after the birth of a first child. A total of 62 first-time parents completed questionnaires (self-reported marital satisfaction) and clinical interviews (clinical evaluation of couples' dialogue quality). Although selfreported marital satisfaction and observed dialogue quality were highly associated, only self-reported marital satisfaction declined from pregnancy to 1 year after birth. This decrease was partly due to very high marital satisfaction during pregnancy. Different trajectories for self-reported marital satisfaction and observed dialogue quality were found for participants with recollections of low-, average-, and highquality family-of-origin marriage. A structural equation model showed that participants who recollected a negative quality in their parents' relationship reported more negative changes in the quality of their own marriages. There seems to be an intergenerational transmission of marital quality that comes to light when couples are challenged by the birth and rearing of a baby.

Family Process, 1999

were compared for their ability to predict Time-2 dysfunctional marital interaction (a set of reliable predictors of marital dissolution). These four models were: (1) baseline physiology at interaction physiology at (3) a balance model based on the ratio of positivity to negativity at and, cognitions about the relationship operationalized from our coding of the Oral History Interview. All four models predicted Time-2 dysfunctional marital interaction. All four models were also able to predict change, operationalized as predicting Time-2 interaction, controlling for Time-1 interaction, that is, using a covariance regression analysis. The most powerful model in predicting change was the balance ratio model.

Marriage & family review, 2014

Previous work on marital quality has compared average levels of marital quality by demographic characteristics, such as cohabitation, divorce, or race-ethnicity. Less work has examined whether such differences persist over time. To begin to answer this question, this paper uses multigroup latent growth curves to examine changes in marital quality over time in addition to measuring differences in levels of reported marital quality among cohabitors vs. non-cohabitors, divorced vs. stably married women, and members of different racial-ethnic groups. Although many of the differences are small and statistically insignificant, the results show that non-normative and traditionally disadvantaged groups experience not only lower levels of marital quality but that these differences also persist throughout the life course. I also show that using marital instead of relationship duration for cohabitors has substantive implications when interpreting the results.

2006

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Social Psychiatry, 1983

Journal of Marriage and Family, 2010

We work from a life-course perspective to explore how relationships with parents affect adult children's marital quality. We further ask whether the effects of parents on adult children's marital quality depend on the adult child's gender, age, marital duration, and childhood family experiences. Growth-curve analysis of national, longitudinal data (Americans' Changing Lives) indicated that relationships with fathers (n = 336) and mothers (n = 520) differentially affected the marital quality of adult children over time. Findings suggest that the effects of the parent - adult child relationship on adult children's marriages depend on age, marital duration, and levels of family stress experienced in childhood.

Technium Social Sciences Journal

Humanity’s history, with its biological, psychological, social, cultural, economic and political dimensions, belongs to the coexistence of man and woman, to the relationships between them and their children. In time, family has become one of the oldest community forms, which ensures the evolution and continuity of the human species. Family influences the most the human being. Many studies made by researchers in this field, have proved the importance of the family for people, emphasizing that family is a real laboratory for the development of a person. In contemporary society, family suffered a lot of important transformations, like female empowerment for example, which, in turn, has determined many other changes in the family life. Due to these changes, the marital couple is currently more interested in satisfying its own interests and minimizes the tasks that society assigns to the family. A sample of 30 married couples, residing in Constanta County, has been assessed with Kansas M...

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 1991

I am very honored to receive this award from the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. I wish to acknowledge those students and colleagues who have contributed to my work through the years. In particular I want to mention Cliff Notari-ous, Howard Markman, ...

Demography, 1987

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012

Although commitment is theoretically distinct from relationship satisfaction, empirical associations between the concepts are high. After drawing from classic definitions of commitment to distinguish between commitment as the desire for a relationship to persist versus the behavioral inclination to maintain the relationship, we predicted that the former component would function much like satisfaction, whereas the latter component would operate independently of satisfaction to stabilize couple relationships. Using satisfaction and commitment data collected over the first 4 years of marriage (N ϭ 172 couples), we demonstrate that only behavioral inclinations to maintain the marriage are related to observed marital interaction behaviors, to reported steps taken toward dissolution, and to 11-year divorce rates, independent of satisfaction. Consistent with dyadic "weak-link"' conceptions of commitment, likelihood of divorce was found to increase as a function of the lower of the 2 partners' inclination to maintain the relationship. Commitment may stabilize declining intimate partnerships, particularly when it is conceptualized as the inclination to maintain the relationship.

Clinical Psychology Review, 1993

Psychological research on marr;aSe is undergoing an important shift from the use of crosssectional, descriptive studies of marital contict to longitudinal studies that have the potential to explain how marital contict and marital qualip are interrelated over time. This article reviews longitudinal research on marital con$'ict and concludes that, while there is some evrderue to suggest that behavior exhibited during contict (e.g. , wives'resignation and sadness) foreshadows marital deterioration, many important issues must be addressed before the longitudinal association between contict and marital satisfaction is well understood.