The nature and predictors of the trajectory of change in marital quality over the first 4 years of marriage for first-married husbands and wives.

Abstract

Both spouses from 198 first-married newlywed couples provided information regarding marital quality and depressive symptoms for at least 2 of 4 annual assessments. Husbands and wives showed equal rates of linear decline in marital quality. For both husbands and wives, decreases in marital quality were accompanied by increases in the severity of depressive symptoms, even with controls for the severity of symptoms not linked to depression. In contrast to previous evidence, plausible longitudinal causal paths between depressive symptoms and marital quality were generally nonsignificant and did not differ between husbands and wives. It is proposed that future studies of marital quality adopt a doubly developmental perspective in which attention is directed to die trajectory of change in risk factors for marital distress, the trajectory of change in marital quality, and the link between these 2 trajectories.