Attributions in marriage: review and critique

The prevailing behavioral account of marriage must be expanded to include covert processes. This article therefore examines the attributions or explanations that spouses make for marital events. A review indicates that dissatisfied spouses, compared with satisfied spouses, make attributions for the partner's behavior that cast it in a negative light. Experimental, clinical outcome, and longitudinal data suggest further that attributions may influence marital satisfaction. Rival hypotheses for these findings are examined. Because continued empirical development in this domain depends on conceptual progress, a framework is presented that integrates attributions, behavior, and marital satisfaction. This framework points to several topics that require systematic study, and specific hypotheses are offered for research on these topics. It is concluded that the promising start made toward understanding marital attributions holds considerable potential for enriching behavioral conceptions of marriage.     

The different effects of family on objective career success across gender: A test of alternative explanations

Gender gaps in achieved rank and salary, common indicators of objective success, often are attributed to the different family roles and responsibilities of men and women. This study tested three explanations for the different effects of family on careers: that is, choice, performance, and signaling explanations. In a sample of American doctoral graduates, the impact of family on career outcomes was felt at entry, early, and middle career stages and support was provided for arguments of all explanations. At the time of graduation, two family variables, the presence of a young child, and not having a non-employed spouse, were associated with women favoring work-family balance in jobs that in turn predicted geographic restrictions on employment. For men, family structure was not associated with job preferences. At later career stages, women did not experience the performance benefits from having a non-employed spouse that men did. In addition, women were at a career disadvantage because they were far less likely to have non-employed spouses who were associated with achieving high ranks by middle career for both genders.     

Spousal influence on employees’ career paths in dual ladder systems: a dyadic model

ABSTRACT

This cross-sectional field study examines the influence of employee and spousal characteristics on employees’ career-related motivations in dual ladder systems. We go beyond “constraints-based” explanations of spousal influence and focus on the degree to which the spouse has aspirations for the focal employee’s career – referred to as spousal career aspirations. Using a dyadic study design, we tested a model that specifies the influence of both partners’ career salience and materialism on an employee’s motivation for a particular career path: as manager or technical specialist. According to survey responses from a matched sample of 207 employees and their spouses, the spouse’s career salience and materialism (the latter only for women) were associated with higher levels of spousal career aspirations. In turn, those employees whose spouses aspired for them to have a career were less motivated to obtain a specialist position. Employees’ own career salience was positively associated with their motivation for a managerial position and, in combination with high levels of spousal career aspirations, pulled employees away from a career on the technical ladder. Our results shed light on the family-relatedness of career decisions and have notable implications for dual ladder organizations.     

Confident,valued and supported: Examining the benefits of employment support for military spouses

ABSTRACT

Military spouses face numerous challenges in obtaining employment as a result of their connection to the military. Previous research has linked military spouses underemployment to reduced well-being and satisfaction with military life, which in turn impacts on retention of the service person. In response to this the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) trialed a 2 year programme of employment support for spouses in 2015. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative evaluation of this programme and its impact on spouses. Interviews were carried out with 30 spouses and 23 of their serving partners to examine the benefits and impact of the support provided. The majority of spouses and their serving partners perceived the employment support as providing a positive contribution from the military to help spouses get back into employment or improve their employability. Additionally, spouses felt invested in by the military and valued as constituents in their own right. No impact of employment support for spouses on the intention to remain or leave the Armed Forces was identified. Longitudinal follow up will be required to determine any long-term impact of employment support on employment outcomes and retention.     

Pornography Use and Religious Bonding Among Heterosexually Married Americans: A Longitudinal Examination

Research suggests that frequent pornography use holds consequences both for the marital experiences of devoutly-religious Americans and religious commitment itself. Extending this line of research, this study considers how pornography viewing influences the religious bonding of heterosexually married Americans by affecting the frequency with which they pray with their spouses. Longitudinal data are taken from two waves of the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study. Multivariate findings show the net effect of earlier porn viewing on the frequency with which married Americans pray with their spouses is curvilinear. Married Americans who never viewed pornography report praying with their spouses more often than the average; those who used pornography at moderate levels report praying with their spouses below the average; and a small minority of respondents who used pornography at the highest frequencies report praying with their spouses more than the average. These effects are robust to controls for respondents’ religious characteristics, moral beliefs about pornography, marital happiness, and sociodemographic factors. The study concludes by outlining the limitations and implications of these findings for research on religion, pornography use, and families.     

Paths and Pitfalls

SUMMARY

In up to two million couples ever married, one spouse has disclosed or may disclose being gay, lesbian, or bisexual. An increasing number of spouses are coming out, yet the phenomenon remains little known. Disclosing spouses generally find supporting organizations, while their heterosexual spouses find little support or understanding of their issues. Isolated, most cope alone. Dealing with sexual rejection, the challenge to the marriage, and, if they have children, spouse/parent conflicts is followed by handling questions about their own identity, integrity, and belief system. This piece describes issues that heterosexual spouses typically face and stages through which they move from survival to reconfiguring their lives whether or not they stay married. Peer support helps this process that lasts several years or more. Knowledge about spouse's concerns assists therapists working with spouses to help them resolve potentially paralyzing pain, anger, grief, or fear.     

The marital and family functioning of adults with ADHD and their spouses

Little is known about the family relationships of adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Thus, the marital adjustment and family functioning of 33 married adults with ADHD and their spouses was compared to 26 non-ADHD control participants and their spouses. Results revealed that married adults with ADHD reported poorer overall marital adjustment on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS; Spanier, 1989) and more family dysfunction on the Family Assessment Device (FAD; Eptein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1983) than control adults. The spouses of adults with ADHD did not differ from control spouses in reports of overall marital adjustment and family dysfunction. A greater proportion of their marital adjustment scores, however, fell within the maladjusted range. The ADHD adults' perceptions of the health of their marriages and families were more negative than their spouses' perceptions. The way in which spouses of ADHD adults compensated for their partners' difficulties were explored through clinical interviews. The findings in this study underscore the need for assessments and treatments to address marital and family functioning of adults with ADHD.     

Life With a Partner with ADHD: The Moderating Role of Intimacy

Adult attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) manifests itself through a variety of symptoms, some of which affect not only occupational and recreational activities but also intimate relationships. Previous findings have focused on the effects of adult ADHD on intimacy and relationships from the ADHD diagnosed person’s point of view. However, spouses of people with ADHD are a neglected population with regard to the effects that ADHD has on their romantic relationships. Our aim was to assess the effects of being married to a spouse with ADHD on marital relationships, and the moderating role of intimacy. We compared healthy spouses of people with ADHD to healthy spouses of healthy adults (M?=?38.23, SD?=?4.78) in their degree of self-reported intimacy and marital satisfaction. Our findings indicate that spouses of individuals with ADHD report significantly lower intimacy and lower marital satisfaction compared to spouses of individuals without ADHD. Moreover, our findings indicate that spousal reports about their degree of intimacy mediate the relationships between their spouses’ ADHD and their marital satisfaction. Results are discussed in relation to the broad implications that adult ADHD has for romantic intimacy. Our research addresses healthy partners married to a spouse with ADHD, suggesting that living with a partner with ADHD behaviors is challenging. ADHD symptoms negatively affect various qualities in the person experiencing them, but of equal importance is the damage occurring to his or her spouse. Implications for future research and recommendations for clinical work are suggested.     

Marital Processes Linking Gender Role Attitudes and Marital Satisfaction Among Mexican‐Origin Couples: Application of an Actor–Partner Interdependence Mediation Model

Informed by dyadic approaches and culturally informed, ecological perspectives of marriage, we applied an actor–partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) in a sample of 120 Mexican‐origin couples to examine (a) the associations linking Mexican immigrant husbands’ and wives’ gender role attitudes to marital satisfaction directly and indirectly through marital processes (i.e., warmth and negativity) and (b) whether the associations between spouses’ gender role attitudes and marital processes were moderated by wives’ employment. Although previous research has identified spouses’ gender role attitudes as potential predictors of spouses’ marital satisfaction, no study has examined these links in a dyadic model that elucidates how gender role attitudes may operate through processes to shape marital satisfaction and conditions under which associations may differ. We found that when spouses reported less sex‐typed attitudes, their partners reported feeling more connected to them and more satisfied with the marriage, regardless of whether wives were employed. Our results suggest that marital satisfaction was highest for those Mexican‐origin couples in which marital partners were less sex‐typed in their attitudes about marital roles to the extent that partners’ attitudinal role flexibility promoted spouses’ feelings of warmth and connection to their partner.     

Factors Associated with Engagement in Family Therapy

Thirty-eight families who continued in conjoint family therapy were compared on a variety of antecedent variables to 13 families who dropped out. Three potentially important predictors of continuance in family therapy were found: (a) which spouse initiated the search for treatment; (b) the level of authoritarianism in the spouses; and (c) family socioeconomic status. Families that dropped out of treatment tended to be of lower socioeconomic status and contained spouses who had more highly authoritarian attitudes as measured by the California F Scale ( 1 ). Families that contained a severly disturbed member had a poor rate of engagement in treatment, but if both spouses in such a family were low in authoritarianism, the engagement rate was 100 per cent. When both spouses initiated the search for treatment, engagement was also nearly perfect. The difficulty in engaging families from the lowest socio-economic class may be attributed partly to the authoritarian attitudes of the husband.     

Problem-solving variability in older spouses: how is it linked to problem-, person-, and couple-characteristics?

Problem-solving does not take place in isolation and often involves social others such as spouses. Using repeated daily life assessments from 98 older spouses (M age = 72 years; M marriage length = 42 years), the present study examined theoretical notions from social-contextual models of coping regarding (a) the origins of problem-solving variability and (b) associations between problem-solving and specific problem-, person-, and couple- characteristics. Multilevel models indicate that the lion's share of variability in everyday problem-solving is located at the level of the problem situation. Importantly, participants reported more proactive emotion regulation and collaborative problem-solving for social than nonsocial problems. We also found person-specific consistencies in problem-solving. That is, older spouses high in Neuroticism reported more problems across the study period as well as less instrumental problem-solving and more passive emotion regulation than older spouses low in Neuroticism. Contrary to expectations, relationship satisfaction was unrelated to problem-solving in the present sample. Results are in line with the stress and coping literature in demonstrating that everyday problem-solving is a dynamic process that has to be viewed in the broader context in which it occurs. Our findings also complement previous laboratory-based work on everyday problem-solving by underscoring the benefits of examining everyday problem-solving as it unfolds in spouses' own environment.     

Conflict in Married Couples: Personality Predictors of Anger and Upset

This research had two central goals: to examine the role of personality in (a) performing actions that anger spouses, and (b) eliciting anger-provoking actions from spouses. Personality data on a sample of married persons (N = 214) were obtained from three sources--self-report, spouse-observer report, and independent interviewers' reports. In a separate session, subjects recorded which of 147 upsetting actions their spouses had performed in the past year. A series of hierarchical multiple regressions revealed the effects of Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Intellect on evoking upset in spouses through condescension (e.g., treating spouse as stupid or inferior), possessiveness (demanding too much time and attention), abuse (slapping spouse), unfaithfulness (having sex with others), inconsiderateness (leaving toilet seat up), moodiness (crying a lot), alcohol abuse (drinking too much alcohol), emotional constriction (hiding emotions to act tough), and self-centeredness (acting selfishly). Discussion of this research focuses on the implications of personality for conflict in marital relationships.     

Marital Satisfaction: A Validation Approach

It was hypothesized that the desire for equity in relationships and the desire for validation from significant others are common human concerns which affect marital relationship satisfaction. Sixty married couples completed a series of questionnaires which assessed equity in 23 areas of the marital relationship, global equity in the marital relationship, relationship satisfaction, perceptions of relationship stability, understanding from spouse, validation from spouse, assistance from spouse in intellectual and emotional growth, frequency of stimulating conversations between the marital pair, frequency of affectionate touching from spouse, and sexual satisfaction in the marital relationship. Subjects who felt validated by their spouses reported more relationship satisfaction, greater relationship stability, more assistance from their spouses in intellectual and emotional growth, and greater sexual satisfaction than did subjects who did not feel validated by their spouses. Overall, equitably treated subjects reported more relationship satisfaction, greater relationship stability, more assistance from spouse in emotional growth, greater sexual satisfaction, and a greater frequency of affectionate touching from their spouses than did inequitably treated subjects. However, these differences between equitably treated and inequitably treated subjects applied primarily to non-validated subjects.     

Extraconjugal Determinants of Spousal Communication About Family Planning in Kenya

Prior researchers have examined the influence of spousal communication on fertility behavior without looking at what causes spouses to start talking about family planning. This study bridges this gap in the literature by examining the extraconjugal (social networks) factors that influence spouses to start talking to each other about family planning. Data from a study conducted in Kenya between 1997 and 1998 show that interspousal communication about family planning is initiated as a result of the operation of the various social network variables. Interacting with others (neighbors, friends, and relatives) appears to encourage the respondents to talk to their spouses about family planning, perhaps because it decreases their fears by giving them adequate background information to introduce the topic to their spouses.     

Psychological symptoms and marital satisfaction in spouses of Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans: relationships with spouses' perceptions of veterans' experiences and symptoms

Much research has shown that spouses of combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have higher rates of psychological and marital distress than do spouses of veterans without PTSD; however, very few studies have examined potential mechanisms of this increased vulnerability. The current study examined spouses of National Guard soldiers recently returned from deployments in Iraq. In addition to documenting elevated levels of psychological symptoms in these spouses, the authors found that spouses experienced greater symptom severity when they perceived high levels of symptoms in soldiers but the soldiers endorsed low levels of symptoms. Furthermore, spouses' marital satisfaction was negatively linked to soldiers' self-reported symptom severity only when spouses perceived that soldiers had experienced low levels of combat activity while deployed. When spouses perceived high levels of such activity, soldiers' self-reported symptoms had no relationship with spouses' marital satisfaction. These findings highlight the importance of interpersonal perceptions in intimate relationships and are consistent with the notion that uncontrollable attributions for a relative's mental health problems may provide a buffer against relationship distress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

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.     

Socioemotional selectivity and psychological health in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients and caregivers: a longitudinal,dyadic analysis

Abstract

Objective: Socioemotional selectivity theory predicts that as the end of life approaches, goals and resources that provide immediate, hedonic reward become more important than those that provide delayed rewards. This study tested whether these goal domains differentially affected psychological health in the context of marital dyads in which one partner had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a life-limiting disease.

Design: ALS patients (N?=?102) being treated in three multidisciplinary clinics and their spouses (N?=?100) reported their loneliness, financial worry and psychological health every 3 months for up to 18 months.

Main Outcome Measure: Psychological health composite.

Results: In multilevel dyadic models, patients and spouses had similar levels of financial worry and loneliness. Both patients and spouses had worse psychological health with higher loneliness, but only spouses had worse psychological health with higher financial worry. Significant interactions with age and disease severity indicated that older spouses were more affected by loneliness than were younger spouses, and patients with less severe disease were more affected by financial worry than patients with more severe disease.

Conclusion: The results provide good support for socioemotional selectivity theory’s implications for psychological health in a strong test of the theory.     

The Protective Influence of Relationship Commitment on the Effects of Facebook Addiction on Marital Disaffection

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that Facebook use can lead to adverse romantic relationship outcomes due to interpersonal conflicts, interactions with potential romantic alternatives, and jealousy. However, these associations have been explored mainly with undergraduates, focusing primarily on conflict rather than emotional disengagement. The current study examined the associations between Facebook addiction and marital disaffection (e.g., loss of love, emotional disengagement) amongst 138 (95 females and 43 males) cohabiting married Facebook users residing in the United States. The results revealed that Facebook addiction and marital disaffection were positively related, even after controlling for relationship commitment. Additionally, greater relationship commitment weakened the association between Facebook addiction and marital disaffection. There are likely multiple explanations for the current findings; however, results suggest that higher levels of relationship commitment may protect spouses against the negative relationship outcomes associated with Facebook addiction. Future longitudinal work with couples is needed to clarify the directionality of the relationship between Facebook addiction and marital disaffection.     

Care For Pastors: Learning From Clergy and Their Spouses

Pastors and their spouses face unique challenges because of the nature of pastoral work, and yet most manage these challenges successfully. Five studies are presented which help distinguish between intrapersonal, family, and community forms of care. Pastors rely heavily on intrapersonal forms of coping such as spiritual devotion, hobbies, exercise, and taking time away from work. The marriage relationship is also quite important for most clergy and spouses. Relationships outside the immediate family are not commonly identified as coping resources. Implications are discussed.