Does a Marriage Ideal Exist? Using Q-Sort Methodology to Compare Young Adults’ and Professional Educators’ Views on Healthy Marriages

This study sought to understand whether young adults and family educators share beliefs about the components of a successful relationship. Young adults viewed successful relationships as having partners who agree on most issues. Educators characterized successful partners as exhibiting positive communication patterns and using relationship maintenance strategies. A third prototype included young adults and educators who described successful relationships in terms of agreement and problem solving behaviors. Implications for researchers and practitioners conclude the article.     

Reconsolidation and memory infidelity in Lymnaea

Lymnaea stagnalis were operantly conditioned to not perform aerial respiratory behaviour in a specific context (i.e. context-1). The memory for this learned response was reactivated 3 days later in context-1. During the 1 h reconsolidation period following memory reactivation, randomly picked snails were either maintained in context-1 or exposed to a new context (i.e. context-2). One hour later in the post-reconsolidation period, snails in context-1 were placed for 1 h in context-2 and vice-versa. In neither the hypoxic reconsolidation nor the post reconsolidation periods did snails receive a reinforcing stimulus when they opened their pneumostome. All snails were blindly tested for memory 24 h later period in context-2. Only those snails that had been exposed to context-2 during the reconsolidation period exhibited 'memory' for context-2. That is, memory infidelity was observed. Snails exposed to context-2 in only the post-reconsolidation period did not show memory for context-2. The immediate cooling of snails after their exposure to the new context in the reconsolidation period blocked the formation the implanted memory. Snails trained in context-1 and exposed to context-2 in the consolidation period only, also did not have memory for context-2. However, the memory for context-1 could still be recalled following successful implantation of the 'new' memory. All data presented here are consistent with the notion that during the reconsolidation process memory can be updated.     

Marital conflict and parental responses to infant negative emotions: Relations with toddler emotional regulation

According to family systems theory, children's emotional development is likely to be influenced by family interactions at multiple levels, including marital, mother–child, and father–child interactions, as well as by interrelations between these levels. The purpose of the present study was to examine parents’ marital conflict and mothers’ and fathers’ distressed responses to their infant's negative emotions, assessed when their child was 8 and 24 months old, in addition to interactions between parents’ marital conflict and their distressed responses, as predictors of their toddler's negative and flat/withdrawn affect at 24 months. Higher marital conflict during infancy and toddlerhood predicted both increased negative and increased flat/withdrawn affect during toddlerhood. In addition, toddlers’ negative (but not flat) affect was related to mothers’ distressed responses, but was only related to father's distressed responses when martial conflict was high. Implications of this study for parent education and family intervention were discussed.     

Examining antecedents of infant attachment security with mothers and fathers: An ecological systems perspective

Taking an ecological systems perspective, early parent–child relationships can be affected by interactions between systems where some are more proximally linked to the child than others. Socioeconomic status, a distal factor, is associated with social functioning during childhood, but research on its association with functioning during infancy, particularly attachment, is scant and inconsistent. Moreover, it is not clear how distal factors affect infant functioning. Other systems such as marital adjustment and parenting may moderate or mediate relations between distal factors and infant attachment. The current longitudinal study (n = 135) examined the role of various systems – parental resources, marital functioning, parental sensitivity and involvement – in early infancy (3-, 5-, 7-months) on infant–mother (12-months) and infant–father (14-months) attachment security. Findings supported moderating processes but in different ways for infant–mother versus infant–father dyads. Implications for future studies and interventions are discussed.     

Assessing postpartum depression: Evidences for the need of multiple methods

IntroductionDifferent methods and instruments are frequently used to measure postpartum depression (PPD) in research, e.g. PPD-specific scales, DSM-based diagnostic interviews and rating scales assessing general depression. However, it is unsure whether these measures would lead to the same results, e.g. in the identification of “depressed” women or in their relations to third variables.Objective(s)We compared different measures of PPD and their relations with a third variable, namely the mothers’ marital satisfaction.MethodWe recruited 65 mothers to take part in a study about the impact of PPD on the development of early family relations. Maternal PPD was assessed with multiple methods (i) a PPD-specific scale, (ii) a DSM-based diagnostic interviews and (iii) a rating scale designed to assess the severity of depressive symptoms. We assessed mothers’ marital satisfaction with the Marital Adjustment Test (MAT).ResultsResults showed weak overlap between PPD-specific scale and DSM-based diagnosis of PPD, and modest correlations between the PPD-specific scale and the general depression rating scale. Only the score on the PPD-specific scale could predict marital satisfaction.ConclusionAs we found discrepancies between different measures of PPD, we suggest being cautious in the choice of measures and using multiple methods to measure PPD in a comprehensive way.     

Neighborhood Collective Efficacy Moderates the Association between Maternal Adverse Childhood Experiences and Marital Conflict

In a socio‐demographically diverse sample of 501 caregivers participating in a longitudinal birth cohort study during the childbearing years, we examined whether neighborhood collective efficacy moderated the association between maternal adverse childhood experience (ACEs) and marital conflict. Maternal ACEs were assessed via retrospective reports. Neighborhood collective efficacy was measured via maternal and paternal reports at 2 months, and maternal reports of marital conflict were collected at infant age 2 and 18 months. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that maternal ACEs were associated with increased marital conflict. Neighborhood collective efficacy moderated the association between early maternal ACEs and marital conflict, such that mothers experiencing ACEs had lower levels of marital conflict when exposed to high levels of neighborhood collective efficacy. Results suggest that extra‐familial sources of social support and control, such as feelings of security, trust, order, and connectedness with others, may buffer the effects of early adversity on marital discord.     

Discrepancies Between Explicit and Implicit Self-Esteem: Implications for Mate Retention Strategies and Perceived Infidelity

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the association between explicit self-esteem and relationship outcomes was moderated by implicit self-esteem. This was accomplished by asking 210 undergraduates who were currently involved in romantic relationships to complete measures of their explicit self-esteem, implicit self-esteem, mate retention strategies, and likelihood of future infidelity. Implicit self-esteem was found to moderate the association between high explicit self-esteem and relationship outcomes for male participants such that men with discrepant high self-esteem (i.e., high explicit self-esteem but low implicit self-esteem) reported less use of mate retention strategies and perceived a greater likelihood of future infidelity in their relationships during the next year. These findings provide additional support for the idea that fragile self-esteem may have consequences for the manner in which individuals perceive their relationships.     

Job Stress and Dyadic Synchrony in Police Marriages: A Preliminary Investigation

Despite reports documenting adverse effects of stress on police marriages, few empirical studies focus on actual emotional behaviors of officers and spouses. In this preliminary investigation, 17 male police officers and their nonpolice wives completed daily stress diaries for 1 week and then participated in a laboratory‐based discussion about their respective days. Conversations were video‐recorded and coded for specific emotional behaviors reflecting hostility and affection, which are strong predictors of marital outcomes. We examined associations between officers' job stress (per diaries and the Police Stress Survey) and couples' emotional behavior (mean levels and behavioral synchrony) using a dyadic repeated measures design capitalizing on the large number of observations available for each couple (1020 observations). When officers reported more job stress, they showed less hostility, less synchrony with their wives' hostility, and more synchrony with their wives' affection; their wives showed greater synchrony with officers' hostility and less synchrony with officers' affection. Therefore, for officers, greater job stress was associated with less behavioral negativity, potentially less attunement to wives' negativity, but potentially greater attunement to wives' affection—perhaps a compensatory strategy or attempt to buffer their marriage from stress. These attempts may be less effective, however, if, as our synchrony findings may suggest, wives are focusing on officers' hostility rather than affection. Although it will be important to replicate these results given the small sample, our findings reveal that patterns of behavioral synchrony may be a key means to better understand how job stress exacts a toll on police marriages.     

Wives' and Husbands' Cortisol Reactivity to Proximal and Distal Dimensions of Couple Conflict

Poor marital quality has been linked repeatedly to spouses' health problems, with alterations to physiological stress response systems, such as the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenocortical (HPA) axis, as one putative mechanism. This study assessed wives' and husbands' HPA axis (i.e., cortisol) reactivity to marital criticism during laboratory‐based conflict discussions, in the context of marital aggression experienced during the previous year. Ninety‐five couples provided one saliva sample prior to—and three samples following—a triadic family conflict discussion involving their teenage child. Marital criticism during the conflict discussion was related to heightened HPA reactivity for husbands only. For wives, an interaction emerged between criticism during the conflict and previous‐year marital aggression: only those wives who had experienced high levels of marital aggression demonstrated a positive association between criticism and cortisol output. Husbands thus appeared to be more physiologically reactive to the in‐the‐moment critical behaviors, whereas wives' responses to proximal conflict were related to previous and perhaps more chronic experiences of marital aggression. These findings shed light on ways in which within‐couple processes during family conflicts involving children contribute to individual physiological functioning, enhancing our understanding of the role of family relationships in physical health outcomes.