A social learning analysis of couples during the second postnatal month

Abstract

This study examined the marital satisfaction and behaviors of 32 couples at one and two months following the births of their first children. Self-report measures of daily satisfaction and daily spouse-observed behaviors were analyzed for patterns approximating those associated with distressed marital interaction identified through earlier social learning studies. Over the time period from 30 to 60 days postnatally, increases were found in spouses' tendency to reciprocate one another's behavior. Except for helpful behaviors involved with care of the infant, spouses at two months postnatally were more likely to reciprocate both irritating and rewarding behaviors than at one month. Nonsignificant decreases in marital satisfaction were accompanied by a mixed pattern of change for spouse-observed behaviors. Predicted changes over time in the proportions of pleasing and displeasing behaviors were evident in only half the comparisons. Increases over time were found for the predictability from spouse-reported daily behaviors to marital satisfaction, but an expected increase in the importance of negative behaviors to the multiple correlation with satisfaction was not obtained. Cross-lagged panel correlation analysis indicated that, for wives, increases in satisfaction at 30 days preceded a parallel increase in their reports of rewarding behaviors and a decrease in aversive behaviors from their husbands at 60 days postnatally. Implications of these findings for identification of couple risk factors for later clinical problems and for early family intervention are discussed.     

Don't interrupt! A good rule for marriage?

In a study investigating the relationship between conversational interrupting and marital satisfaction, 78 couples were videotaped while discussing a conflictual issue. Coders counted total interruptions and also categorized each interruption by its function: agreement, disagreement, clarification, or tangentialization. Agreement interruptions were positively correlated, and disagreement interruptions negatively correlated, with both the couple's affective response to the conversation and their concurrent marital satisfaction. Tangentialization (mocking) interruptions were not correlated with concurrent satisfaction, but husbands’tangentializations were correlated with a decline in couples’marital satisfaction over the 2 years following the conversation. Results are shown to be consistent with several features of marital interaction observed by researchers and clinicians, including the tendency of wives to pursue and of husbands to withdraw. It is hypothesized that tangentialization interruptions may be a specific withdrawal strategy. Overall, the results represent a challenge to the assumption that all interruptions have the same interpersonal meaning (e.g., dominance).     

Marital interaction: physiological linkage and affective exchange

Thirty married couples were studied during naturalistic interactions to determine the extent to which variation in marital satisfaction could be accounted for by physiological and affective patterns between and within spouses. The authors hypothesized that (a) compared to nondistressed couples' interactions, distressed couples' interactions would show greater physiological interrelatedness or "linkage," more negative affect, and more reciprocity of negative affect and (b) these differences would be more pronounced when the interaction was high in conflict (discussing a marital problem) as opposed to low in conflict (discussing the events of the day). Heart rate, skin conductance, pulse transmission time, and somatic activity from both spouses were analyzed using bivariate time-series techniques to derive a measure of physiological linkage. Self-report affective data (obtained using a video-recall procedure) were analyzed using sequential analyses to derive a measure of affect reciprocity. The hypotheses were strongly supported; 60% of the variance in marital satisfaction was accounted for using measures of physiological linkage alone. Additional nonredundant variance was accounted for by the other physiological and affective measures.     

Husbands' and wives' alcohol use disorders and marital interactions as longitudinal predictors of marital adjustment

In this longitudinal study, the relationships among wives' and husbands' lifetime alcoholism status, marital behaviors, and marital adjustment were tested. Participants were 105 couples from the Michigan Longitudinal Study (MLS), an ongoing multimethod investigation of substance use in a community-based sample of alcoholics, nonalcoholics, and their families. At baseline (T1), husbands and wives completed a series of diagnostic measures, and lifetime diagnosis of alcohol use disorder (AUD, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed.), was assessed. Couples completed a problem-solving marital interaction task 3 years later at T2, which was coded for the ratio of positive to negative behaviors. Couples also completed a measure of marital adjustment at T4 (9 years after T1 and 6 years after T2). Results showed that husbands' lifetime AUD predicted lower levels of their wife's positive marital behaviors 3 years later but was not related to their own or their wife's marital adjustment 9 years from baseline. By contrast, wives' lifetime AUD had direct negative associations with their own and their husband's marital satisfaction 9 years later, and wives' marital behaviors during the problem-solving task predicted their own and their husband's marital satisfaction 6 years later. Findings indicate that marital adjustment in alcoholic couples may be driven more by the wives' than the husbands' AUD and marital behavior. Implications for intervention with alcoholic couples were discussed.     

The Partners for Life Program: A Couples Approach to Cardiac Risk Reduction

Morbidity and mortality are reliably lower for the married compared with the unmarried across a variety of illnesses. What is less well understood is how a couple uses their relationship for recommended lifestyle changes associated with decreased risk for illness. Partners for Life compared a patient and partner approach to behavior change with a patient only approach on such factors as exercise, nutrition, and medication adherence. Ninety‐three patients and their spouses/partners consented to participate (26% of those eligible) and were randomized into either the individual or couples condition. However, only 80 couples, distributed across conditions, contributed data to the analyses, due to missing data and missing data points. For exercise, there was a significant effect of couples treatment on the increase in activity and a significant effect of couples treatment on the acceleration of treatment over time. In addition, there was an interaction between marital satisfaction and treatment condition such that patients who reported higher levels of marital distress in the individuals condition did not maintain their physical activity gains by the end of treatment, while both distressed and nondistressed patients in the couples treatment exhibited accelerating gains throughout treatment. In terms of medication adherence, patients in the couples treatment exhibited virtually no change in medication adherence over time, while patients in the individuals treatment showed a 9% relative decrease across time. There were no condition or time effects for nutritional outcomes. Finally, there was an interaction between baseline marital satisfaction and treatment condition such that patients in the individuals condition who reported lower levels of initial marital satisfaction showed deterioration in marital satisfaction, while non satisfied patients in the couples treatment showed improvement over time.     

Attachment, Marital Satisfaction, and Divorce During the First Fifteen Years of Parenthood

This study examines two overlapping longitudinal samples of U.S. couples with children, covering a period of 15 years after the first child's birth. The first sample extended from the pregnancy with a first child until that child was 5.5 years old; the second from ages 4.5 to 14.5. Growth curve analyses revealed that marital satisfaction declined over 15 years for both husbands and wives. Attachment security measured in the second sample was associated with greater marital satisfaction, but did not buffer against declines in marital satisfaction over time. Husbands' lower initial level of marital satisfaction measured around the first child's transition to school was the only significant predictor of marital dissolution. The discussion emphasizes theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

A longitudinal investigation of stress spillover in marriage: does spousal support adequacy buffer the effects?

Stress spillover in marriage was examined within a stress-buffering conceptual framework in a multiwave, longitudinal sample of newlywed husbands and wives (N = 101 couples). Spousal support, chronic role strain, and marital satisfaction were assessed 4 times over 3 years and analyzed via actor-partner interdependence model and growth curve analytic techniques. Greater escalation in husbands' role strain over the first 3 years of marriage was associated with steeper declines in their marital satisfaction regardless of the adequacy of spousal support provided by their wives. In contrast, greater escalation in husbands' and wives' role strain was associated with significantly less marital decline for wives, and these links were bolstered when husbands provided wives with more adequate support. The present study is one of the first to explicate the underlying processes through which role strain and spousal support facilitate and mitigate the developmental course of marital satisfaction.     

Intergenerational transmission of marital quality across the transition to parenthood

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 self-reported 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 high-quality 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.     

The Meta Marriage: Links Between Older Couples' Relationship Narratives and Marital Satisfaction

Drawing upon a relatively understudied population and a unique observational task, the current study sought to examine how older couples' interactional behaviors during a relationship narrative task were associated with marital satisfaction over time. Using observational data from a sample of 64 older, higher‐functioning married couples, we analyzed a series of Actor–Partner Independence Models (APIM) to explore how couples' interactional behaviors during a relationship narrative task were associated with spouses' marital satisfaction both concurrently and one year later. Analyses revealed that spouses' behaviors (e.g., expressions of positive affect, negative affect, communication skills, engagement) were associated with their self‐reported marital satisfaction both at the time of the narrative and with changes in marital satisfaction. We found particularly robust evidence for the role of husbands' negative affect during the narrative task in predicting changes in both spouses' marital satisfaction over time. Our results indicate that researchers and clinicians should carefully consider the influence of development on the associations between spouses' behaviors and marital satisfaction. Further, those seeking to improve marriages in later life may need to consider the meaningful role that gender appears to play in shaping the marital experiences of older couples.     

Mercurial Hearts: A Dyadic Perspective on the Role of Affect Spin in Work-Family Conflict and Marital Satisfaction

Affect spin, or the dispositional maladaptive tendency to experience qualitatively shifting affective states over time, has attracted growing interest in organizational scholarship. We take a first step to extend affect spin research to the work-family interface. Drawing on the theoretical framework of personality in the stress process and family systems theory, we examine affect spin as a novel predictor of marital satisfaction and as a boundary condition for the interpersonal crossover of work-family conflict (WFC) to marital satisfaction. A sample of 201 dual-earner couples (402 participants) provided 7,533 experience sampling responses of affective states at home over 7 days, based on which we compute affect spin. Results from dyadic multilevel modeling suggest that individuals’ own affect spin not only takes a toll on their marital satisfaction but also exacerbates the negative crossover of spouses’ WFC to individuals’ marital satisfaction. In contrast, spouses’ affect spin does not predict individuals’ marital satisfaction nor does it impact the crossover effect of spouses’ WFC, suggesting individuals’ own affect spin, compared to spouses’ affect spin, is more consequential for marital well-being. These findings underscore the challenge that affect spin presents for employees to tackle work-family stressors and secure marital well-being.     

Marital interaction and depression

In this article, patterns of marital interaction as a function of depression and marital satisfaction are examined. The purpose of the study was to separate dysfunctional marital interaction patterns that were unique to depression from those that were associated with marital distress. The presence or absence of a depressed wife was crossed with level of marital satisfaction (distressed or nondistressed) to produce four groups of subject couples. Couples in which the wife was depressed exhibited more depressive behavior than did nondepressed couples, but only during discussion of a high conflict (as opposed to neutral) topic. Sex X Depression Level X Marital Satisfaction interactions were found for aggressive behavior: Depressed women in nondistressed relationships exhibited behavior that was characteristic of maritally distressed couples (high rates of aggression). In contrast, the husbands of these women exhibited behavior that one would expect in happily married couples (low rates of aggression). We failed to replicate previous findings that depressive behavior served a coercive function, although distressed couples, regardless of depression status, exhibited all the usual signs of negative dysfunctional interaction. In general, the findings suggested that marital distress rather than depression per se may be responsible for the dysfunctional interaction patterns frequently observed in depressed couples.     

Depression and marital functioning: an examination of specificity and gender differences

Recent work has emphasized the importance of assessing the marital relationships of depressed persons. The present study was designed to examine the specificity to clinical depression of problematic marital functioning and to assess potential gender differences in the marital relationships and spousal interactions of depressed persons. Depressed psychiatric patients, nondepressed medical patients, and nondepressed community control subjects and their spouses completed measures of marital satisfaction and then participated in a 20-min marital interaction task. Subjects then completed measures assessing their postinteraction mood and perceptions of their spouses, and the interactions were scored with respect to the frequency of occurrence of a number of behaviors. The depressed couples differed from the community controls on virtually every measure of marital functioning. Furthermore, although the medical patients and their spouses also reported marital dissatisfaction and exhibited dysfunctional interactional behavior, only the depressed couples were characterized by negative affect following the interactions and by negative appraisals of their spouses' behaviors. This negative affect was particularly pronounced for the depressed women. Implications of these results are discussed and directions for further research are offered.     

Marital Satisfaction,Negative Interaction,and Religiosity: A Comparison of Three Age Groups

This study compared marital satisfaction among three age groups and examined how negative interaction patterns and religiosity relate to marital satisfaction at each age using a sample of Protestants (N = 45,387) diverse in denominations, location, geography, and size. We performed a 1-way ANOVA to compare marital satisfaction among three age groups (younger than 40, 40–59, and 60 and older) and found a U-shape curve with marital satisfaction highest among the youngest group, lowest among middle-age couples, and high among older couples. ANCOVA analysis found negative interaction, age, religiosity, age*negative interaction, and age*religiosity to be predictors of marital satisfaction.     

夫妻依恋风格、婚姻归因与婚姻质量的关系

本研究采用主—客体互倚模型(actor-partner interdependence model,APIM)的方法深入探讨夫妻的依恋风格、婚姻归因与自身及配偶感知到的婚姻质量之间的关系。以方便取样的方式在北京地区选取155对夫妻,采用Brennan等(1998)编制的亲密关系经历量表(ECR),Stander编制的婚姻归因量表(MAQ)和Spanier编制的婚姻质量问卷(DAS),要求夫妻双方分别报告其依恋风格、婚姻归因方式和感知到的婚姻质量。通过配对t检验、相关分析和结构方程模型分析发现:(1)夫妻对婚姻质量的总体知觉较为一致,但丈夫的婚姻满意度显著高于妻子;(2)夫妻双方在回避依恋和焦虑依恋两个分量表上不存在显著差异,但在婚姻归因上,妻子比丈夫表现出了更多的消极归因;(3)妻子的消极依恋显著地负向预测自身感知到的婚姻质量,而丈夫的消极依恋对自身感知到的婚姻质量没有显著影响;(4)在控制了丈夫、妻子的依恋风格、归因方式对其自身婚姻质量的主体效应之后,丈夫的依恋风格不能显著预测妻子感受到的婚姻质量,但其归因方式可以显著地预测妻子感受到的婚姻质量;然而妻子的归因方式并不能显著预测丈夫的婚姻质量。     

The nature and predictors of the trajectory of change in marital quality for husbands and wives over the first 10 years of marriage.

Four parameters of the trajectory of change in marital quality (initial status as well as linear, quadratic, and cubic patterns of change) were estimated for husbands and wives over the first 10 years of marriage (n = 522 couples at Year 1 and 93 couples at Year 10). Both husbands and wives started their trajectories of change at fairly high levels of marital quality and showed a cubic pattern of change such that marital quality declined fairly rapidly in the early years of marriage, stabilized, and then declined again. Whereas individual-differences variables predicted the initial status of the trajectory, husbands and wives living with only their biological children showed a steeper decline in marital quality than husbands and wives living without children or stepchildren.     

A contextual analysis of the association between demand/withdraw and marital satisfaction

In spite of research connecting the demand/withdraw pattern of marital interaction to marital dissatisfaction, questions remain about its association with marital satisfaction when it is considered in the context of other interpersonal behaviors. We explore the possibility that the correlation between demand/withdraw and dissatisfaction merely reflects the ubiquitous finding that expressions of negative affect are associated with dissatisfaction. We also examine whether the association between demand/withdraw and satisfaction is less strong when spouses have a highly affectionate marriage. Based on the current investigation, the demand/withdraw pattern of communication appears to be empirically distinguishable from the extent to which partners express negativity in their everyday lives, and it seems to account for variation in marital satisfaction over and above partners’ affectionate behaviors and negativity. Moreover, the inverse association between demand/withdraw and marital satisfaction may be less strong when one partner frequently expresses affection in daily life. Together, these results imply potential advantages to further exploring the interdependence among behaviors within marital interaction systems.     

Randomized Controlled Trial of Imago Relationship Therapy: Exploring Statistical and Clinical Significance

For decades, couples around the world have used Imago relationship therapy (IRT) to improve their relationships. While anecdotal success stories abound, no randomized controlled trial of IRT's impact has been accomplished until now. The authors review the results of a randomized controlled trial of distressed, treatment-seeking couples who completed 12 sessions of IRT and the impact their involvement had on their marital satisfaction. Results showed that (a) individuals in the treatment condition experienced statistically significant increases in marital satisfaction, while couples in the control group did not; (b) levels of marital satisfaction did decrease significantly from posttreatment to follow-up but remained significantly higher than at pretreatment; (c) though statistically significant, the improvements experienced by the treatment group were not clinically significant improvements; and (d) while approximately one-third of participants achieved recovery during treatment, at the dyad level, only one couple achieved recovery. Further analysis and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Marital satisfaction in covenant versus standard marriages: Is there a difference?

After the rapid increase of the American divorce rate in the late 20th century, one of the most conspicuous efforts of the marriage movement in the 1990s that was used to increase marital stability was the legislation of the covenant marriage license, a more restricted marriage license issued in three different states of the U.S. To investigate the marital life of newlywed covenant versus standard couples, a large-scale 5-year couple study was conducted between 1998 and 2003 in Louisiana. The present study uses this large-sample, multiple-wave, multiple-group dyadic dataset to examine differences in co-development and divorce rates in 297 covenant and 380 standard mixed-sex couples using a multiple group growth curve modeling and survival analysis. We examined differences in marital trajectories between covenant and standard couples as well as between husbands and wives in each marital group. The results show (1) that the couples in both groups experienced, on average, declines in marital satisfaction, and such a decline was slower in covenant husbands than their wives as well as those in standard marriages, and (2) that co-development in marital satisfaction was more prominent in standard marriages than in covenant marriages, meaning standard couple's marital satisfaction declined at a more similar rate than that of covenant couples. We provide possible explanations and discuss practical implications.     

Personality and compatibility: a prospective analysis of marital stability and marital satisfaction

The antecedents of marital stability (divorce or remaining married) and marital satisfaction (within the group that remains married) were investigated with a panel of 300 couples who were followed from their engagements in the 1930s until 1980. Twenty-two of the couples broke their engagements; of the 278 couples who married, 50 got divorced at some time between 1935 and 1980. Personality characteristics (measured by acquaintance ratings made in the 1930s) were important predictors of both marital stability and marital satisfaction. The three aspects of personality most strongly related to marital outcome were the neuroticism of the husband, the neuroticism of the wife, and the impulse control of the husband. In combination, the 17 major antecedent variables were moderately predictive of a criterion variable composed of both marital stability and marital satisfaction (R = .49). The three major aspects of personality accounted for more than half of the predictable variance. The remaining variance was accounted for by attitudinal, social-environment, and sexual history variables.     

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Gender Factors Contributing to Long-Term Marital Satisfaction

Abstract

This article reports on the major findings of a cross-cultural study comparing long-term marital satisfaction between Caucasian couples and Chinese couples in Canada. The Dyadic Adjustment Scale was used to screen couples' marital satisfaction. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted individually and jointly with the screened couples to explore their meanings and experiences of marital satisfaction. With the use of narrative analysis, the study illuminates how couples constructed their gender relationships to achieve marital satisfaction over a long course of thirty to thirty-six years according to their sociocultural contexts. The similarities and differences in how the two cultural groups' respondents constructed their long-term marital satisfaction are discussed in terms of: (1) household division of labour, (2) decision-making, (3) conflict and compromise, and (4) mutuality.