The Psychology of Child Timing: A Measurement Instrument and a Model1

The timing of children during individuals' lives has many important macro level and micro level effects. This paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding an important psychological sequence that affects the timing of childbearing by individuals. In the first step of this sequence, child-timing attitudes and beliefs affect child-timing desires; in the second step, child-timing desires affect child-timing intentions. The Child-Timing Questionnaire is a data collection instrument designed to measure attitudes and beliefs relevant to child timing. Using this instrument, we constructed four child-timing indices and tested the two-step framework with data from 187 husbands and 188 wives with no children and 182 husbands and 184 wives with one child. The results provide support for the framework and indicate some important sex and parity differences in the psychology of child timing. The Child-Timing Questionnaire appears to be a reliable, valid instrument; it is readily adaptable for use with any population in which the timing of children is an important research or service issue.     

Behavioral Intentions: Which Ones Predict Fertility Behavior in Married Couples?1

The published literature on the relationship between behavioral intentions and fertility behavior exhibits four major problems: inconsistent and confusing use of theoretical constructs, limited use of different types of intentions, use of nonbehavioral outcomes, and failure to explore adequately the couple aspects of the intentions/behavior relationship. The study reported here addresses these problems by using a theoretical framework that characterizes the psychological/behavioral sequence leading to a planned conception, three different types of fertility intentions, a behavioral outcome variable, and data from 196 married couples with no children and 185 married couples with one child. Data analysis results in a simultaneous equation, constrained regression model which indicates that child-timing intentions are the most important predictors of proceptive behavior over a 3-1/2 year period and that childbearing intentions are next in importance; that behavioral intentions are the final common pathway through which fertility motivations, attitudes, beliefs, and desires affect behavior; that the use of proceptive behavior as an outcome variable improves the explanatory power of our models; and that the interaction of couple intentions do not demonstrate greater husband or wife influence over couple proceptive behavior but do demonstrate that disagreement has a delaying effect on the onset of that behavior.     

A pilot evaluation of the efficacy of a couple-tailored print intervention on colorectal cancer screening practices among non-adherent couples

The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a couple-tailored print (CTP) intervention on colorectal cancer screening (CRCS), CRCS intentions, and on knowledge and attitudes among couples in which neither partner is on schedule with regard to CRCS. A total of 168 married couples with both members non-adherent with CRCS were randomly assigned to receive either a CTP pamphlet accompanied by a generic print (GP) pamphlet or a GP pamphlet only. Couples completed measures of CRCS, intentions, relational perspective on CRCS, discussions about CRCS, spouse support for CRCS, spouse influence strategies, CRC knowledge, perceived CRC risk, and CRCS benefits and barriers. Results indicated there was no significant benefit of CTP vs. GP on CRCS, but there was a significant increase in CRCS intentions in CTP compared with GP. There was also a significant increase in relationship perspective on CRCS, a significant increase in husbands’ support of their wives’ CRCS, and a significant increase in CRCS benefits in CTP. In summary, CTP did not increase CRCS practices but increased intentions and perceived benefits of CRCS as well as improving couples’ ability to view CRCS as having benefit for the marital relationship.     

Negative representations of the self/spouse and marital distress

The link between marital distress and negative representations of both the self and the spouse was examined with data from an initial sample of 538 married couples studied over the first four years of marriage (Study 1) and 98 of these couples studied in their tenth year of marriage (Study 2). Findings from Study 1 indicated that, for both husbands and wives, representations of the self and representations of the spouse accounted for unique variability in distress. Across spouses, representations of the spouse accounted for more of the variability in distress than did representations of the self. Cross–spouse effects were especially pronounced for husbands such that their distress was linked to wives’ representations. Findings from Study 2 with self/spouse measures anchored to the marital context replicated this pattern. Findings support the view that marital distress is uniquely influenced by models of both the self and the spouse, that representations of the self and the spouse are dynamic relationship schemas, that models of the self and the spouse can be meaningfully assessed within the marital context, and that negative representations of the spouse—particularly those of wives—are especially diagnostic of marital distress.     

Identifying Causes of Disagreement Between Self-Reports and Spouse Ratings of Personality

Self-reports and spouse ratings of personality traits typically show less-than-perfect agreement, but powerful moderators of agreement have not yet been identified. In Study 1, 47 married couples completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory to describe themselves and their spouses. Extent of agreement was not consistently moderated by response sets; the age, intelligence, or education of the respondent; or the length or quality of the relationship. In Study 2 these couples were interviewed about reasons for substantial disagreements, and an audiotape was content-analyzed. Sixteen reasons were reliably coded, including idiosyncratic understanding of items, reference to different time frames or roles, and unavailability of covert experience to the spouse. Faking good, assumed similarity, and other variables prominent in the psychometric literature were relatively unimportant. Findings (1) suggest that attempts to improve the validity of self-reports and ratings may need to be refocused and (2) underscore the desirability of routinely obtaining multiple sources of information on personality.     

Coorientation of body image among older married couples

This study examined how older husbands and wives perceived their bodies and appearance in the framework of coorientation effect. Data were collected via a mail survey of older married couples residing in three metropolitan areas in Florida. A total of 94 married couples who were 60 years older participated in this study. Results indicated that older husbands’ self-assessment of appearance was positively correlated with wives’ self-assessment of appearance. Husbands’ evaluation of their wives’ appearance was positively associated with wives’ self-assessment of their own appearance (self-other agreement), and wives’ evaluation of their husbands’ appearance was also positively correlated with husbands’ self-assessment of their own appearance (self-other agreement). In addition, husbands’ evaluation of their wives’ appearance corresponded to wives’ evaluation of their husbands’ appearance (reciprocity). These results indicated that the agreement in two spouses’ self-assessment of appearance can be explained by the two coorientation effects (self-other agreement and reciprocity) occurred in two partners of married couples.     

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).     

Spouse criticism and support: their association with coping and psychological adjustment among women with rheumatoid arthritis

Examined whether psychological adjustment of women with rheumatoid arthritis would be related to the support and criticism the patient received from the husband. Interviews were conducted with the husbands of 103 women with rheumatoid arthritis. Spouse interviews were content coded for critical remarks. Wives completed a revised version of the Ways of Coping Scale and a scale of the perceived supportiveness of the spouse. Husbands completed rating scales assessing their perceived vulnerability to illness and the degree of burden they experienced in providing assistance to their wives. Path analyses revealed that patient adjustment was significantly related to the attitude of the spouse. Patients with a highly critical spouse engaged in more maladaptive coping behaviors and reported a poorer psychological adjustment. Independent of spousal criticism, patients who perceived their spouse as being supportive engaged in more adaptive coping. A path model was fit to the data that suggested that the spouse may affect adjustment indirectly through influencing the patient's selection of adaptive or maladaptive coping responses.     

Marital interaction of agoraphobic women: a controlled,behavioral observation study

Married couples with a female agoraphobic spouse (n = 22) were compared with demographically similar community control couples (n = 21) on self-report and observational measures of marital interaction. Consistent with hypotheses, husbands of agoraphobic women were more critical of their wives than were control husbands, and clinical couples were less likely to engage in positive problem solution than control couples. Contrary to hypothesis, clinical husbands were not less supportive than control husbands. Where general measures of marital distress were concerned, clinical couples, relative to control couples, evinced more distress by self-report, by their higher rate of negative nonverbal behavior, and by their longer sequences of negative exchanges.     

On the home front: stress for recently deployed Army couples

Military couples who have experienced deployment and reintegration in current U.S. military operations frequently experience stress regarding the dangers and effects of such experiences. The current study evaluated a sample of 300 couples with an active duty Army husband and civilian spouse who experienced a deployment within the year before the survey (conducted in 2007). Wives generally reported greater levels of emotional stress compared with husbands. Overall, higher levels of stress were found for couples who reported lower income and greater economic strain, perceive the need for more support and are unsure about how to get support, have more marital conflict, and are generally less satisfied with the Army and the current mission. Husband combat exposure was also associated with more stress for husbands and wives. Additionally, for wives, stress was related to greater child behavior problems and a sense of less Army concern for families. The results suggest areas of intervention with military couples to help them cope with the challenges of military life and deployment.     

His and Her Perspectives: Gender Ideology, Work-to-Family Conflict, and Marital Satisfaction

This study examines the relationships between gender ideology, work-to-family conflict, and marital satisfaction. We hypothesize that gender ideology will moderate relationships between both the respondent’s work-to-family conflict and their spouse’s work-to-family conflict in predicting marital satisfaction, and that spouses’ gender ideologies will interact in predicting marital satisfaction. The hypotheses are addressed using data from a random sample of U.S. dual-earner couples (N?=?156) in a western state. The findings indicate that the more egalitarian women’s gender ideologies, the stronger the negative relationship between women’s marital satisfaction and women’s work-to-family conflict. The results also indicate that the dependence of men’s marital satisfaction on wives’ gender ideologies varies according to men’s own gender ideologies. Implications of the study are discussed.     

Sex differences in household labor time a comparison of rural and urban couples

A sample of 440 full-time employed couples from 11 states was examined to determine the differences between time spent on housework by husbands and wives in rural and urban areas. More time is spent in housework in rural families than in urban families because time spent in housework is greater for rural women than for urban women, while rural and urban husbands' times do not differ. Education of spouses, job status differentials, and age of the younger child do not significantly interact with rural-urban residence and sex of the spouse. However, family income does significantly influence the relationship between time spent on housework for rural and urban husbands and wives.     

Sex of child preferences among college students

In both 1985 and 1988, college student preferences for the sex of an only child were examined using social surveys. For both years, it was found that male students strongly prefer a male child, but that female students moderately prefer a female child. Gender of respondent accounted for most of the sex preference difference. The sex role attitude of agreement with having the wife retain her own name was the only other variable significantly related to sex preference. It is argued that differing male-female role expectations for women as wives and mothers partly explained the gender differences in sex preference for a child.     

Sharing of home responsibilities between professionally employed women and their husbands

A sample of 139 married couples with young children and with relatively equal status careers (wives were university professors or businesswomen) were interviewed about work and home life. Considerable, traditional inequity in the distribution of child-care tasks and chore responsibility was noted, but women were generally satisfied with their husbands' home involvement. In the academic sample, the longer hours each spouse worked, the more child care the other performed; in the business sample, child-care involvement was largely determined by the husband's work hours, income, and education. Overall, women were more self-critical than were men about their performance in home roles, and women's role performance was rated more highly by husbands than by themselves. Women professionals' continued use of traditional sex role standards and the importance of attending to both partners' perspectives in studies of married life are discussed.     

Age, marital satisfaction, and optimism as predictors of positive sentiment override in middle-aged and older married couples

This study examined whether positive sentiment override (greater positive appraisal of spouse's affiliative behavior than is warranted by observed behavior) occurred more frequently in older compared with middle-aged married couples and whether age differences were mediated by older adults' greater marital satisfaction when controlling for optimism. Participants included 270 middle-aged (40-50 years old) and older (60-70 years old) couples who discussed a marital disagreement and completed an errand task. Couples provided appraisals of their spouse's affiliation, and the authors coded affiliative interactions using the structural analysis of social behavior. Hierarchical multivariate linear modeling indicated that older husbands and wives viewed their spouse's behavior as more positive during disagreement interactions than did independent observers; in the errand task, only older wives demonstrated positive sentiment override. Age differences in positive sentiment override were mediated by marital satisfaction, even when controlling for optimism. The results are consistent with theories of emotion regulation, such as socioemotional selectivity theory, that suggest that older adults are biased toward the positive aspects of close relationships.     

Collaborative coping and daily mood in couples dealing with prostate cancer

Collaborative coping (i.e., spouses pooling resources and problem solving jointly) may be associated with better daily mood because of heightened perceptions of efficacy in coping with stressful events. The study examined the daily processes of collaborative coping (individuals' perceptions that the spouse collaborated), perceived coping effectiveness (ratings of how well they dealt with the event), and mood (i.e., Positive and Negative Affect Scale) across 14 days in 57 older couples coping with stressors involving the husband's prostate cancer and daily life in general. In hierarchical multivariate linear models, collaborative coping was associated with more positive same-day mood for both husbands and wives and less negative mood for wives only. These associations were partially mediated by heightened perceptions of coping effectiveness. Exploratory analyses revealed that collaborative coping was more frequent among wives who performed more poorly on cognitive tests and couples who reported greater marital satisfaction and more frequently using collaboration to make decisions. The results suggest that older couples may benefit from collaborative coping in dealing with problems surrounding illness.     

The importance of the organization of partner knowledge in understanding perceptions of relationship quality and conflict resolution behavior in married couples

This research investigated how the organization of partner knowledge was related to global relationship evaluations and specific interpersonal behaviors in a sample of 107 married couples. Spouses first completed several questionnaires and later participated in a 12-min videotaped conflict resolution task. As expected, wives in older relationships exhibited greater marital quality (self-reported and observed) when they had (a) an integrative knowledge structure and used many negative traits to describe their spouse or (b) a compartmentalized knowledge structure and used few negative traits to describe their spouse. Greater marital quality, however, was found for husbands when they were (a) in older relationships and possessed an integrative structure or (b) in newer relationships and possessed a compartmentalized structure. Exploratory analyses suggested that in some circumstances people may have greater marital quality when they share an organizational style with their spouse.     

Maternal employment and development of the father-infant relationship in the first year.

This study investigated links between maternal employment and fathers' parenting quality when their infants were 4 and 12 months old. Sixty-three fathers were videotaped interacting with their infants and completed questionnaires regarding their involvement in caregiving, parenting stress, and marital quality, and mothers reported on children's temperament. Fathers whose wives either did not work outside the home or worked part time were more sensitive and responsive to their children when they were more involved in caregiving; men whose wives worked full time exhibited more negative affect and behavior when they participated more in child care. Men whose wives were not employed also were more positive in their interactions when they were happier with their marriage, whereas men whose wives worked either part time or full time exhibited a negative relation between parenting behavior and marital quality. Maternal work circumstances were not related to fathers' parenting stress; rather, marital quality and child temperament predicted parenting stress at 4 and 12 months for all fathers.     

Excess disability and malignant social psychology: A case study of Alzheimer's disease

An in-depth case study was undertaken to assess the effects of what Kitwood has termed ‘malignant social psychology’ on the observed behaviour of an Alzheimer's disease sufferer. Interviews were conducted with the spouse and observations were made in an adult day-care centre, where staff members were also interviewed. Abilities that the spouse reported to be absent at home were readily observed at the day-care centre, lending support to Brody's idea of excess disability, i.e. disability not due to disease alone. Furthermore, forms of malignant social psychology existed in the home environment but did not exist in the day-care centre. Excess disability and its absence coincided with the presence and absence of aspects of malignant social psychology. The sufferer's behaviour was found to be affected not only by the extant neuropathology, but also by social relationships.     

Relationship Quality with Parents: Implications for Own and Partner Well‐Being in Middle‐Aged Couples

Relationships with parents have significant implications for well‐being throughout the lifespan. At midlife, these ties are situated within both developmental and family contexts that often involve the adult offspring's spouse. Yet, it is not known how ties with aging parents are related to psychological well‐being within middle‐aged couples. This study examined how middle‐aged wives’ and husbands’ views of the current quality of relationships with their own parents (positive and negative) are linked to their own and their partner's psychological well‐being. Using a sample of 132 middle‐aged couples from Wave 1 of the Family Exchanges Study, we estimated actor–partner interdependence models to evaluate these dyadic associations while controlling for each spouse's marital satisfaction. Both actor and partner effects were observed. With respect to actor effects, wives who reported more negative relationship quality with their own parents had elevated depressive symptoms and lower life satisfaction. Husbands who reported more negative relationship quality with their own parents had lower life satisfaction. In terms of partner effects, husbands had lower depressive symptoms and greater life satisfaction when wives reported more positive relationship quality with their own parents. Finally, the link between wives’ positive ties with parents and husbands’ lower depressive symptoms was intensified when husbands had less positive relationships with their own parents. Findings suggest that relationship quality with wives’ aging parents has implications for both spouses’ well‐being and may serve as a critical social resource for husbands.