Changes In Wives Research Articles

On the Same Page? Newlyweds’ Agreement About Shared Power Predicting Financial Management Behaviors Through Marital Commitment

Although it is typically thought that finances impact a couple’s marriage, research also suggests that the way couples navigate their marriage predicts how they navigate their finances. In this study, we examined whether and how a salient aspect of marriage, marital power, predicts financial management behaviors cross-sectionally and longitudinally among US newlywed dyads (N = 1,215 couples). We found that agreement about the degree of shared power between spouses did not indirectly predict spouses’ financial management behaviors concurrently or across time. However, complete and near agreement of a high degree of shared power between spouses indirectly predicted both husbands’ and wives’ financial management behaviors concurrently through husbands’ marital commitment. Likewise, complete and near agreement of a high degree of shared power between spouses indirectly predicted changes in wives’ financial management behaviors through wives’ marital commitment. We discussed the implications of these findings for theory, future research, and practice.

Communication that is maladaptive for middle-class couples is adaptive for socioeconomically disadvantaged couples.

Demands for change in a relationship, particularly when met by behavioral withdrawal, foreshadow declines in relationship satisfaction. Yet demands can give partners opportunities to voice concerns, and withdrawal can serve to de-escalate conflict, stabilizing satisfaction instead (e.g., Overall, Fletcher, Simpson, & Sibley, 2009). We aim to reconcile these competing possibilities by arguing that withdrawal in response to requests for change will be detrimental among couples who possess the social, educational, and economic capital needed to address these requests, whereas withdrawal in response to partner demands will be constructive among couples with fewer resources for making the requested changes. Study 1 (N = 515 couples; 18-month follow-up) replicates the harmful effects of observed demand/withdraw communication on changes in wives' satisfaction among relatively affluent couples, while documenting benefits of demand/withdraw communication among relatively disadvantaged couples. Using 4 waves of observational data, Study 2 (N = 431 couples; 9-, 18- and 27-month follow-ups) shows that socioeconomic risk moderates the covariation between the demand/withdraw pattern and wives' relationship satisfaction, with higher levels of withdrawal again proving to be beneficial when socioeconomic risk is high. In both studies, behavioral withdrawal by men appears to be maladaptive when couples have resources and capacities to enact desired changes, but may be adaptive when those resources and capacities are lacking. Efforts to change couple communication without appreciating the larger social and economic contexts of those behaviors may be counterproductive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Health and Housework in Later Life: A Longitudinal Study of Retired Couples.

To examine how changes in wives' and husbands' health influenced housework time and domestic outsourcing in retired couples. We estimated fixed-effects models to test hypotheses about the gendered influence of health declines on absolute and relative measures of time spent on routine and nonroutine housework as well as the probability of outsourcing housework. The data were obtained from 23 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, comprising N = 25,119 annual observations of N = 3,889 retired couples aged 60-85 years. Wives' and husbands' housework time declined with health status, but these effects were large only for serious health problems. We found evidence for within-couple compensation of spouses' health declines, a mechanism that was limited to indispensable tasks of routine housework. The probability of getting paid help from outside the household increased with declining health, and this increase was more strongly tied to wives' health declines than to husbands' health declines. The results demonstrate the relevance of health status for the performance of housework in retired couples. The evidence attests to the resilience of couples during later-life stages in which health issues may severely inhibit domestic productivity.

Educational Assortative Mating and Income Dynamics in Couples: A Longitudinal Dyadic Perspective

The question of how educational assortative mating may transform couples' lives and within‐family gender inequality has gained increasing attention. Using 25 waves (1979–2012) of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and longitudinal multilevel dyad models, this study investigated how educational assortative mating shapes income dynamics in couples during the marital life course. Couples were grouped into three categories—educational hypergamy (wives less educated than their husbands), homogamy, and hypogamy (wives more educated than their husbands). Results show that change in husbands' income with marital duration is similar across couples, whereas change in wives' income varies by educational assortative mating, with wives in educational hypogamy exhibiting more positive change in income during the marital life course. The finding that husbands' long‐term economic advancement is less affected than that of wives by educational assortative mating underscores the gender‐asymmetric nature of spousal influence in heterosexual marriages.

Dyadic effects of depressive symptoms on medical morbidity in middle-aged and older couples.

Depressive symptoms in middle and later life are associated with an increased risk of greater medical morbidity (i.e., number of chronic health conditions). Yet little is known about mutual influences that may occur within married couples. This study examined the effects of wives' and husbands' depressive symptoms on their own and their partner's number of chronic health conditions over an 8-year period. It was also determined whether these effects varied by gender. The U.S. sample included 992 heterosexual couples (M = 63.58 years at baseline) drawn from 5 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (2006-2014). Dyadic growth curve models were estimated to evaluate the effects of own and partner baseline depressive symptoms on medical morbidity across time. Models controlled for baseline marital duration and negative marital quality along with age, education, minority status, health-related self-efficacy, body mass index, disability status, alcohol use, smoking, and moderate and vigorous physical activity. Husbands' higher baseline depressive symptoms were significantly linked to their own higher number of chronic conditions. When wives had higher depressive symptoms at baseline, husbands showed significantly greater increases in their number of chronic conditions over time. Own and partner depressive symptoms were not significantly associated with baseline levels or changes in wives' number of chronic conditions. This study demonstrates that depressive symptoms within middle-aged and older couples may have long-term associations with medical morbidity. Findings underscore the value of considering the implications of depressive symptoms for chronic health conditions among individuals and couples. (PsycINFO Database Record

Change in Spousal Human Capital and Housework: A Longitudinal Analysis

We bring a novel, longitudinal, perspective to an ongoing series of influential papers that investigates the relationship between housework, marital bargaining, and spousal resources. For the first time, we believe, in this long debate, we combine a longitudinal perspective with a measure of resources—human capital—that provides an indicator of the likely economic bargaining power of the non-employed, thereby enabling their inclusion in analysis. We use longitudinal fixed-effects models to address the relationship between housework hours and spousal resources based on yearly couples’ data from the nationally representative British Household Panel Study (N = 6,541 couples). Using the measure of human capital, we find change in wives’ own human capital to be the most important factor determining housework for both spouses, and no evidence for gender deviance neutralization. We conclude it is women’s resources that are the critical determining factor in bargaining over housework.

Benefits of Capitalization in Newlyweds: Predicting Marital Satisfaction and Depresion Symptoms

Celebrating good news with others (i.e., capitalization) is associated with positive affect and relationship well-being. However, it remains unclear whether the benefits of capitalization result in enduring changes in personal and relationship well-being, and whether contextual factors (i.e., chronic stress) moderate the value of positive capitalization experiences. We examined contemporaneous and time-lagged associations between capitalization perceptions and marital satisfaction or depression symptoms in 192 newlywed couples over two years. We also examined whether chronic stress moderated the effects of capitalization perceptions on depression symptoms and marital satisfaction. Multilevel analyses indicated that capitalization perceptions predicted contemporaneous and time-lagged changes in marital satisfaction for husbands and wives and contemporaneous and time-lagged changes in wives’, but not husbands’, depression symptoms. In other words, the more positively spouses viewed their partner's responses...

Observed communication in couples two years after integrative and traditional behavioral couple therapy: Outcome and link with five-year follow-up.

To examine changes in observed communication after therapy termination in distressed couples from a randomized clinical trial. A total of 134 distressed couples were randomly assigned to either traditional behavioral couple therapy (TBCT; Jacobson & Margolin, 1979) or integrative behavioral couple therapy (IBCT; Jacobson & Christensen, 1998). Videotaped samples of each couple's interactions were coded from pre-therapy, post-therapy, and 2-year follow-up assessments. At these 3 time points, each partner chose 1 current relationship problem to discuss. Relationship satisfaction was assessed at 2-year follow-up, and clinically significant treatment response and marital status were assessed 5 years after treatment. Observed negativity and withdrawal decreased from therapy termination through the 2-year follow-up as expected, but problem solving did not change, and observed positivity decreased. IBCT produced superior changes from post-therapy to the 2-year follow-up assessment compared with TBCT. Post-therapy levels and changes in communication over follow-up were associated with wife satisfaction at 2-year follow-up; only post-therapy to 2-year follow-up changes in communication were associated with husband satisfaction at 2-year follow-up. Post-therapy levels of problem solving and changes in wives' positivity from pre-therapy to post-therapy were associated with 5-year relationship outcomes. We found some counterintuitive results with positivity, but they were no longer significant after controlling for withdrawal. We found support for improvements in observed communication following treatment termination, with IBCT demonstrating greater maintenance of communication improvement over follow-up. We found limited evidence of associations between communication and relationship outcomes at 5-year follow-up.

Changes in Wives' Employment When Husbands Stop Working: A Recession‐Prosperity Comparison

American families are experiencing the effects of the “Great Recession.” Most of the job losses are accruing to men, so families may find it strategic for wives to enter the labor force, or increase their work hours. We consider this possibility using the May 2008 and 2009 Current Population Survey, and compare findings to May 2004 and 2005 data, a time of relative prosperity. We find that wives of husbands who stopped working during the recession were more likely to increase work hours, and more likely to commence or seek work. During the Great Recession years, the effect for wives entering the labor force is significantly greater than during the earlier years of relative prosperity.

Moderators of the link between marital hostility and change in spouses’ depressive symptoms.

This study examined the moderating roles of marital warmth and recent life events in the association between observed marital hostility and changes in spouses' depressive symptoms over 3 years. Using the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM), structural equation models (N = 416 couples) suggested that husbands' marital hostility was significantly related to increases in wives' depressive symptoms. Moderator analyses showed that husbands' warmth and wives' warmth moderate the association between marital hostility and change in wives' depressive symptoms. The association between husbands' hostility and increases in wives' depressive symptoms was stronger under conditions of lower levels of husbands' warmth than under conditions of higher levels of husbands' warmth. This same pattern was found for wives' warmth. Regarding life events, the association between wives' hostility and increases in husbands' depressive symptoms was stronger for couples with more recent life events than for couples with fewer recent life events. Practical and empirical implications are discussed.

Wives’ Employment and Spouses’ Marital Happiness

The authors investigate the direction of the relationship between marital happiness and wives’ full-time employment using the 1987 to 1988 and 1992 to 1994 waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. First, the authors predict change in wives’ employment between the two waves using marital happiness and other Time 1 characteristics. The results show that shifting into full-time employment is more likely for unhappily married than for happily married wives. Second, they examine how changes in wives’ employment between Times 1 and 2 influence marital stability and changes in marital happiness. The authors find that contrary to frequently invoked social and economic theories, wives’ full-time employment is associated with greater marital stability. Nonetheless, changes in wives’ employment have no significant effect on how marital quality changes between Times 1 and 2.

The Impact of Husbands' Retirement on Wives' Marital Quality

ABSTRACT Recent studies view retirement as a family transition that affects others in the close family circle, as well as the retiree, and is a process that occurs over time, and not as a single event. It therefore behooves us to learn more about how husbands' retirement affects the women with whom male retirees share their lives. Furthermore, most previous research has studied the wives of retirees using cross-sectional designs. In general, findings have indicated that husbands' retirement has little effect on wives' marital quality. This study is an advance over much of the previous research in that we use a longitudinal design. We have examined wives' assessments of marital quality including contextual life changes before their husbands' retirements, and have compared the assessments of the same wives following their husbands' retirements. To study these phenomena, we used data from the Normative Aging Study, administering the DAS to 61 wives prior and subsequent to husbands' retirement. We used means of the DAS scores and sub-scale scores at baseline and compared these scores at Time 2 by paired t-test. Positive change in the “cohesion” sub-scale of wives' DAS scores before to after husbands' retirement suggests that shared activities increased after retirement, and that the increase was pleasing to the wives. Multiple regression analysis found that income change, and change in husbands' health contributed most to marital quality change among wives, with changes in wives' employment status also contributing. To specify retirement-context conditions including the subscales of satisfaction, cohesion, consensus and affection, additional multiple regression models indicated continuity in wives' marital quality scores pre-to post-husbands' retirement. Implications of the findings for practice and future research are discussed.

Attachment orientations, marriage, and the transition to parenthood

This study examined how a major life stressor—the transition to parenthood—impacts marital satisfaction and functioning in persons with different romantic attachment orientations. As hypothesized, if highly ambivalent women entered the transition perceiving low levels of spousal support, they experienced significant declines (pre-to-postnatal changes) in perceptions of spousal support and marital satisfaction, and their husbands reported significant declines in support giving and marital satisfaction. Changes in both spouses’ satisfaction were mediated by pre-to-postnatal changes in wives’ perceptions of spousal support. That is, highly ambivalent women who perceived less prenatal support reported significant declines in perceived support over time, which in turn predicted significant declines in their marital satisfaction. These results highlight the critical role that perceptions of support assume when highly ambivalent women encounter a major life stressor.

Changes in the Links between Home and Work after Marriage in the Tokyo Metropolitan Suburbs

This paper examines the factors that make many married women living in the Tokyo metropolitan suburbs quit their jobs after getting married and reenter the workforce after completing child-rearing in terms of labor market segmentation by gender, age, and space. In the Tokyo metropolitan area, the labor market is segmented; it is male and unmarried female full-time workers who work in the central city, and married women take part-time employment in the suburbs. Women working in the central city become housewives in the suburbs after marriage under such circumstances in the labor market. For families with infants living in the suburbs, the proportion of dual-earner households is only one-fifth of the total. Observing the changes in the links between home and work caused by marriage can provide insight into the causal factors. Because existing data cannot be used for this purpose, we made use of a unique data set collected through a questionnaire survey of 301 households in Urawa city, Saitama Prefecture, in the suburbs of Tokyo. This data set includes abundant information regarding places of residence and employment before and after marriage. The first step in the analysis is to examine the impact of long-distance marriage migration on changes in women's working circumstances. Because of the distance between the couples' workplaces before getting married, relationships between the family and the workplace undergo drastic changes. In cases where the distance was 30km or greater in particular, most wives left their jobs or changed their workplaces. The results of the quantitative analysis using Quantification Theory II suggest that the impact of migration after marriage on the changes in wives' working conditions is stronger than that of schooling and the occupation of the couples. This lowers the percentage of employment among married women in the suburbs. The second step in the analysis is to illustrate the commuting patterns of 219 households in which both the wives and husbands lived in the Tokyo metropolitan area before or around the time of their marriage. Although 24% of the wives of those households left their jobs after marriage, 69% became dual-earner households thereafter. Generally in suburban dual-earner households after child-rearing, husbands commute to the central city and wives take up jobs in the neighborhood; however, that commuting pattern accounted for only 12% of the dual-earner households. This originates from the labor market conditions segmented by gender, age and space. In 34% of the dual-earner households, wives and husbands commuted from the suburbs to the center of Tokyo in about 60 minutes. Since this commuting pattern is inconsistent with the housework and child rearing, wives who worked in the center of Tokyo showed a marked tendency to quit their jobs after marriage. These results suggest that the Tokyo metropolitan area needs patriarchal institutions justifying the predominance of men over women to sustain its structure.

Effects of Spouse Support and Hostility on Trajectories of Czech Couples' Marital Satisfaction and Instability

This article examines differences in the role of spouses' hostile and supportive behaviors in predicting level and change in marital satisfaction and marital instability. We propose 2 competing hypotheses. The first hypothesis proposes that hostility is relatively volatile and support is relatively stable, and that change in hostility affects change in marital outcomes over the course of the study, whereas the overall level of support functions to maintain the level of marital outcomes. The second hypothesis argues that change in marital satisfaction is a function of change in support, whereas change in marital instability is a function of change in hostility. We tested the hypotheses by fitting growth curves to 3 waves of panel data collected from 436 Czech couples between 1994 and 1996. The results offer some support for the first hypothesis. However, the dominant pattern was for level and change in spouses' reports of their hostility to affect both wives' and husbands' level and change in marital instability, respectively, and for the level and change in husbands' reports of their support to predict level and change in wives' marital satisfaction. Other variables suggested by previous research in the United States and by the Czech transition to a market economy are examined.

Changes in Wives' Income: Effects on Marital Happiness, Psychological Well‐Being, and the Risk of Divorce

We investigate the effects of increases in married women's actual income and in their proportion of total family income on marital happiness, psychological well‐being, and the likelihood of divorce. We use data from a sample of 1,047 married individuals (not couples) in medium‐duration marriages, drawn from a five‐wave panel survey begun in 1980 and continuing to 1997. Structural equation modeling is used to assess the impact of increases in married women's absolute and relative income from 1980 to 1988 on the marital happiness and well‐being of married men and women in 1988. Event history analysis is used to determine how these changes affect the risk of divorce between 1988 and 1997. We find that increases in married women's absolute and relative income significantly increase their marital happiness and well‐being. Increases in married women's absolute income generally have nonsignificant effects for married men. However, married men's well‐being is significantly lower when married women's proportional contributions to the total family income are increased. The likelihood of divorce is not significantly affected by increases in married women's income. Nevertheless, increases in married women's income may indirectly lower the risk of divorce by increasing women's marital happiness.

The impact of marital aggression on women's psychological and marital functioning in a newlywed sample

The impact of husband-to-wife physical aggression on changes in wives' personal and marital well-being was examined in a representative sample of newlywed couples. The sample consisted of couples who completed baseline (time of marriage) and first anniversary assessments as part of the Buffalo Newlywed Study (n = 543). After controlling for sociodemographic variables, initial relationship satisfaction, and verbal aggression, wives who experienced physical aggression from their husbands during the first year of marriage reported increased stress and lower marital satisfaction at the first anniversary. Further, they were more likely to report separation from husbands due to marital problems during the first year of marriage. Experiences of partner physical aggression during the premarital period were associated with greater frequency of heavy drinking episodes among wives, although they were not associated with changes in average daily volume of ethanol consumed. Results suggest that among a community sample, experiences of husband-to-wife physical aggression have negative consequences for both women's psychological well-being and marital functioning.

After Farming: Emotional Health Trajectories of Farm, Nonfarm, and Displaced Farm Couples*

Abstract This study links macro social change to emotional health through continuity and change in farming. Families were divided into four groups, depending on whether they were full‐time farmers, part‐time farmers, displaced farm families who had left farming during the 1980s, or nonfarm families. Using four waves of panel data, we estimated initial levels and subsequent changes in per capita family income, stressful life events, and depressive symptoms of wives and husbands. Between 1989 and 1992, full‐time farm families' incomes decreased dramatically, while displaced farm families started 1989 with the lowest average per capita family income but saw the largest average increases in subsequent years. Farm status and changes in income predicted changes in stressful life events; changes in stressful life events, in turn, predicted changes in wives' and husbands' reports of depressive symptoms.

The impact of wives’ earnings on income inequality: Issues and estimates

We estimate the extent to which rising family income inequality can be explained by changes in the earnings of married women. We develop a decomposition equation that separates single persons from married couples (decomposition by population group) and, for married couples, distinguishes the impact of wives' earnings from other sources of income (decomposition by income source). Despite the rising correlation between husbands' and wives' earnings, changes in wives' earnings do not explain a substantial portion of the increase in family income inequality. Our results contradict those of some previous analyses. The inconsistency of recent estimates can be traced to the use of a variety of conceptually different approaches in the previous literature. We clarify these approaches by explicitly distinguishing the conceptual issues, analyzing the empirical components, and providing comprehensive estimates.

“How are they at home?” community, state and servicemen's wives in England, 1939-45

The wives of men in the fighting forces in the Second World War were allocated a status of dependency on the state in place of husbands and a function as potential war workers, but also bore the weight of society's fears about sexual laxity and family instability. Rhetoric and a system of financial support helped maintain fidelity and homes but also shepherded many working-class servicemen's wives into the factories. While public opinion and many men in the British Army were alarmed and outraged by stereotypes of weak-willed wives seduced by Home Front opportunities, wives' place in wartime localised urban communities is an alternative lens through which to study their Home Front experiences. Strong gendered ideologies of domestic and work structures survived intact among servicemen's wives and their communities in cities like Birmingham and Coventry, and despite the upheaval of bombing and war production, provided little basis for longer-term post-war changes in wives' statuses and roles.