Marriage Work Research Articles

Wives’ Domain‐Specific “Marriage Work” with Friends and Spouses: Links to Marital Quality*

This study examined the friendship experiences of 52 wives and mothers, with particular attention given to wives’ marriage work (discussions about concerns and problems in the marriage) in 10 domains with friends and spouses. A series of within‐subjects repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) indicated that in all but two domains, wives were equally likely to talk to their spouses and their close friends about marital concerns. A series of hierarchical regression analyses tested whether women's marriage work with their spouses moderated the link between marriage work with friends and reports of marital quality. Support for moderation was found for reports of conflict or negativity and satisfaction. Implications for family practitioners and programming are discussed.

The Sisyphean Torture of Housework: Simone de Beauvoir and Inequitable Divisions of Domestic Work in Marriage

This paper examines Simone de Beauvoir's account of marriage in The Second Sex and argues that Beauvoir's dichotomy between transcendence and immanence can provide an illuminating critique of continuing gender inequities in marriage and divisions of domestic work. Beauvoir's existentialist ethics not only establishes a moral wrong in marriages in which wives perform the second shift of household labor but also supports the need to transform existing normative expectations surrounding wives and domestic work.

Marital Quality and Spouses' Marriage Work With Close Friends and Each Other

Through in‐home interviews with 142 married couples, we explored how husbands' and wives' marriage work with close friends and one another was linked to their perceptions of marital quality. Results showed that husbands engaged in more marriage work with their wives than with close friends, whereas wives engaged in similar levels of marriage work with their close friends and husbands. For wives, marriage work with their spouses was found to moderate the relationship between marital quality and marriage work with friends. At low levels of marriage work with their spouses, wives' marriage work with friends was negatively related to their reports of marital love and positively related to reports of ineffective arguing. In contrast, at high levels of marriage work with their husbands, no significant relationship was found between wives' marriage work with friends and marital quality for wives. Findings underscore the role of spouses' friendships and suggest that the strength of spouses' ties to one another is linked to the social context they and their close friends create.

Book Review: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

Book Review: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

Stress at Home, Peace at Work: A Test of the Time Bind Hypothesis

Objective. We test the central thesis of Hochschild’s (1997) The Time Bind: people who are unsatisfied with housework, parenting, or their marriage work more hours, or at a minimum prefer to work more hours, especially if satisfaction with work is high. Methods. Using the data from the 1987–1988 National Survey of Families and Households, we analyzed the influence of work and home satisfaction on the actual and desired work hours of 1,533 respondents who were employed, married to an employed spouse, and had one or more resident children under age 18. Results. We found that people who were more satisfied with work than home or who were dissatisfied with home life in general did not work more hours or even desire to do so. Conclusions. Contrary to Hochschild’s assertions, there was little evidence that working parents dissatisfied with home life worked more hours or desired to spend more time at work.

A consumer theory with competitive markets for work in marriage

The theory presented here aims at explaining individual consumer behavior inside marriage and prior to marriage. It is a New Home Economics (NHE) model in the sense that it assumes the existence of household production. It is an intra-household bargaining model in the sense that it assumes that husbands and wives typically have different economic interests with respect to marriage, and they try to negotiate arrangements that suit them best. The more resources they have, the more they may obtain results that favor them rather than their spouse. It is a market theory similar to standard labor market theory. This theory throws light on gender differences in demand for commercial goods that have home-produced substitutes. This theory leads to an explanation why women are charged more for dry-cleaning. The theory can also explain differences in demand for different products. Predictions include that of a sex ratio effect on consumption. For example, it is predicted that in countries with more emigration of men than women, women will be expected to make higher contributions to newly weds’ costs of housing. It is also predicted that there will be compensating differentials in marriage. For instance, women married to considerably older men are expected to have relatively more control over the use the couple’s income than women married to men who are close to their own age. In contrast to bargaining theory, the insights presented here apply to both married individuals and to those who anticipate being married in the future.

NOTES FROM THE M&A TRENCHES

Deciding to join with another company is easy. The hard part is making the marriage work.

Members of the Regiment: Army Officers' Wives on the Western Frontier, 1865-1890

Preface Introduction The Role of Women in the 19th Century Officers' Wives on the Frontier The Indians Army Rules, Regulations, and Traditions Enlisted Men, Blacks, and Mexicans Making a Home and Family Life Making the Marriage Work Conclusion Appendices Selected Bibliography Index

Title I and Mathematics Instruction: Making the Marriage Work

Mathematics teachers face daily challenges in using scarce resources to address the needs of students, particularly those who are disadvantaged. Federal education resources can be used to support your efforts to improve learning. This article explains how Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which at over $7 billion is the largest federal investment in K–12 education, can support your work. We hope that you will read this article and begin a discussion with principals and administrators about how Title I resources can be used to improve mathematics teaching and learning in your school and district.

Title I and Mathematics: Making the Marriage Work

Title I and Mathematics: Making the Marriage Work

"It's Good to Blow Your Top": Women's Magazines and a Discourse of Discontent, 1945-1965

"Irs Good to Blow Your Top": Women's Magazines and a Discourse of Discontent, 1945-1965 Eva Moskowitz Americans of the Cold War years are often remembered for their zealous commitment to domesticity. One prominent source identified with this cult of domesticity is women's magazines. As such, they became targets of feminist criticism. Beginning with The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan condemned women's magazines for their "happy housewife" images. She accused them of representing women as "gaily content in a world of bedroom, kitchen, sex, babies, and home," while women experienced pain, dissatisfaction, and self-loathing.1 Building upon these complaints, radical feminists took direct action against the magazines. In the 1970s, for example, feminists occupied the offices of the Ladies Home Journal.2 To this day, women's magazines of the Cold War era remain symbols of antifeminism.3 Scholarly and popular accounts portray them as containing grossly distorted images of womanhood. They criticize them for "depict[ing] happiness where there was frustration," portraying the "home" as a "haven," and "promulgating a happy-housewife syndrome," in the service of what popular writer Marcia Cohen described as the "all was peach nectar heaven" editorial standard.4 Whether women's magazines relentlessly filled their pages with images of happy women is an important question, not only because these images can tell us much about a powerful ideology directed primarily at white middle-class American women during the Cold War era, but also because they can shed light on the context out of which recent feminism emerged. In accounts of this emergence, Cold War women's magazines occupy a critical place. According to feminist historiography, women's magazines misrepresented women as fulfilled, thereby keeping them in the private world of home and bedroom, in contrast to feminists who presented women with the truth about their condition, encouraging them to free themselves from the bondage of domesticity. Students of women's history emphasize the role of Betty Friedan and feminists in the Civil Rights movement and the New Left in exposing the myth that domesticity fulfills. One historian describes these women as among those "finally willing to say that the emperor had no clothes";5 another as those who "like the proverbial child who points out that the emperor had no clothes" first realized "the discrepancy between myth and reality."6 © 1996 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8 No. 3 (Fall) 1996 EvaMOSKOWTTZ 67 Tltis article reexamines the myths about womanhood that feminists sought to deconstruct and that Cold War era women's magazines promoted , by looking at the three with the largest circulation of the period 1945 to 1965: Ladies Home Journal, McCaIIs, and Cosmopolitan.7 My research suggests that these magazines did not merely promote "the happy housewife" image. Indeed, far from imagining the home as a haven, the women's magazines often rendered it as a deadly battlefield on which women lost their happiness, if not their minds. Images of unhappy, angry, and depressed women figure prominently in these magazines, and this is found to be particularly evident in marital relations. In monthly columns such as "Can This Marriage Be Saved?," "Making Marriage Work," and "Why Marriages Fail," the magazines document women's discontent. This discourse of discontent requires that we rethink the dichotomy between women's magazines as mythmakers and feminists as unveilers. While it is beyond the scope of this essay to theorize the distinctive contribution of recent feminist rhetoric, I would like to suggest that the conceptualization of feminism as a "eureka" moment against a background of the magazines' silence about women's unhappiness is inadequate . Instead, I propose that we recognize women's magazines' discursive contribution to this problem. I also suggest that the rhetorical continuities between women's magazines and recent feminism are worth examining, because the shared use of psychological discourse can help us understand not only the historical context for, but also some of the political limitations of, 1960s and 1970s feminist rhetoric. The Unhappy Housewife Month after month women's magazines reported the difficulties women encountered in realizing the satisfaction that marriage and motherhood supposedly guaranteed. Women, it turned out, did not effortlessly nor easily achieve the domestic ideal...

Female Victims of Spousal Violence: Factors Influencing Their Level of Fearfulness

This study employed data from the 1985 National Family Violence Survey to explore the predictors of fear about future abuse among 356 married or cohabiting women whose partners had previously abused them. We found that fear was higher among women whose partners had initiated the violence or who had subjected them to forced sex, or women who felt that their own use of violence would result in disastrous consequences for them. Unexpectedly, having enlisted the help of shelters, lawyers, or therapists was related to greater fear. Accounting for fear at more than one point in time may explain these findings. One of the more insidious aspects of family violence is the climate of fear that is created for those who are victimized by it. Regardless of whether the violence has been relatively minor, or more severe, relatively infrequent or more routine, the fear that it will reoccur is an ever-present reality. Because of their relative inability to ef fectively defend themselves against assault, women who have been the victims of past assaults are more likely than their male counterparts to feel fearful about their continued safety in a violent home. Despite a plethora of research on family violence in the last two decades or so, very few studies have focused on fearfulness as an outcome in its own right. However, this topic should command our attention for two reasons. First, pervasive fear is stressful and, therefore, psychologically debilitating. Second, although a certain amount of fear often motivates victims to take steps to reduce or end the violence, excessive fear may instead immobilize the victim. Fearful of retribution from their batterers, women may expose themselves to greater danger by failing to take the appropriate actions. This study explored the factors that affect the fear of future assault among a sample of women from the 1985 National Family Violence Survey who had been abused at least once by their intimate partners. Specifically, drawing upon selfefficacy theory, we tested a set of hypotheses concerning the impact on fearfulness of six different factors: whether forced sexual relations occurred in conjunction with the physical assault; whether the husband or the wife was the initiator of violence; the socioeconomic resources of the wife; the immediate actions taken by the wife; the longterm help sought by the wife; and the degree to which her own use of violence (whether defensive or not) would have negative consequences for her. The study included both married women and unmarried women currently living with an intimate partner. Following others' terminology (DeMaris & Longmore, in press; Straus & Gelles, 1986), we have used the terms husband and wife throughout the article to indicate an intimate partner, regardless of official marital status. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The Consequences of Fearfulness Several previous studies of family violence attest to the negative consequences of fear. Persistent fearfulness is synonymous with heightened anxiety, itself a form of mental disorder (Langner, 1962). However, whereas anxiety disorders often have no external referent, fear of future violence involves anxiety about a very real possibility in an abused woman's life: being battered by an intimate partner. Fear can also lead to feelings of victimization on a par with those felt by victims of violent crimes. Indeed, the trauma of a woman assaulted by an intimate partner may even be more severe than if she were attacked by a stranger (Frieze & Browne, 1988). Additional pressure from children and relatives to make the marriage work can add to the stress of living with an abusive partner (Stets & Straus, 1990). Fear has also been found to have an effect on the types of actions a battered woman engages in to stop her partner's assaults (Browne, 1987). Whether or not she leaves an abusive relationship may depend upon her level of fear. A woman can be afraid that if she does not leave her abuser, the violence will continue. …

The Effect of Marriage, Family, and Religious Ties on African American Suicide Ideology

Work on the incidence of suicide, and more generally crime and deviant behavior, has tended to neglect racially disaggregated empirical research (e.g., Peterson & Krivco, 1993; Sampson, 1987). As noted by Wilson and Aponte (1985), up to the 1980s, sociologists tended to shy away from race as a point of departure for research. With respect to the field of suicidology, race has been perhaps the most understudied basic demographic variable (for reviews, see Lester, 1992; Stack, 1982). For example, a recent book on suicide risk factors lacked a chapter on race (Maris, Berman, Maltsberger, & Yufit, 1992). A recurrent issue in theoretical work in deviant behavior is to what extent, if any, theories that were built on the experience of the White male majority will replicate for other groups (e.g., Peterson & Krivco, 1993; Smith & Paternoster, 1987). Often there is a dearth of systematic research on these issues due to considerations such as the unavailability of race-specific data. The present study explores the link between marriage and family ties and suicide beliefs or ideology among African Americans. While these ties have been used extensively to explain suicide and suicide beliefs among Whites (e.g., Stack, 1990; Stack & Wasserman, 1992; see review in Stack, 1992; Trovato & Vos, 1990), it is not clear if they are as applicable to African Americans. While marriage and family ties have often been alleged to be key aspects of the African American against racism-a strategy that can offer protection against suicide (e.g., Davis, 1980a; Swanson & Breed, 1976)--there is little empirical work testing this assertion. The existing work on the influence of marriage and family ties on suicide among African Americans has been restricted largely to marital, but not family, ties. Further, it has been marked by conflicting results (e.g., Davis, 1980a; Davis & Short, 1979). In addition, it has tended not to control for a key covariate of marriage and family ties, religiosity (Stack, 1985). The present study contributes to the literature on marital factors and suicide by testing the extant theory with national data on African Americans, employing both measures of marital and family ties, and by including a control for religiosity levels. The present study employs data on suicide beliefs or ideology. It does not use actual mortality data on completed suicides. In this sense, the findings need to be taken with some caution before generalizing them to the correlates of completed suicide. However, research indicates that the same variables that predict completed suicide also tend to predict suicide beliefs or ideology (e.g., Stack & Wasserman, 1992). RACE, MARRIAGE, FAMILY, RELIGION, AND SUICIDE Considerable work in the 1960s and 1970s documented a rise in Black suicide (e.g., Davis 1980a; Peck & Litman, 1973; Seiden, 1972; Woodford, 1965). However, the ratio of the suicide rate of African Americans relative to White Americans has remained largely the same. The most systematic analysis of trends in suicide by race concluded that no significant change in racial differences has occurred since the 1950s, or is likely in the near future. Any reduction in the gap between racial groups that has occurred is more the result of a reduction in rates among Whites than an increase in rates among Blacks (McIntosh, 1989). While there was an increase in the suicide rates of young African Americans (e.g., Davis, 1980a), overall the ratio has stayed the same. A common explanation of relatively low rates of suicide among African Americans is overt racism. Racism produces both stress and a kind of solidarity among African Americans (Davis 1980a, p. 57; King 1974; Woodford, 1965). Sometimes part of this survival strategy involves lower occupational aspirations, a social factor that can protect persons from the anomie associated with failure in the occupational system (Swanson & Breed, 1976, p. …

Life Review in Family Psychotherapy

A number of theorists and clinicians have recognized the value of life review as a therapeutic tool in waking with the elderly. Few, however, have used review in marriage and family psychotherapy. This paper provides a brief overview of life review and explores possible ways of expanding its application in marriage and family work. in addition to summarizing the central characteristics of life review, this paper also identifies possible outcomes and limitations, and then, through case example, explores the relevance of life review for maniage and family psychotherapy.

American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era.

Introduction: Toward a History of American Manhood Community to Individual: The Transformation of Manhood at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century Boy Culture Male Youth Culture Youth and Male Intimacy The Development of Mens Attitudes toward Women Love, Sex, and Courtship Marriage Work and Identity The Male Culture of the Workplace Passionate Manhood: A Changing Standard of Masculinity Roots of Change: The Women Without and the Woman Within Epilogue: Manhood in the Twentieth Century

Family Therapy and Medicine: Can This Marriage Work?

Family Therapy and Medicine: Can This Marriage Work?

Marriage, social policy and social work

Abstract This article argues that the response to marital/couple problems by social work agencies and the application of therapeutic concepts outside specialist marital agencies must locate marriage and social work in the context of recent changes in social policy. We therefore discuss the family, marriage and divorce in the 1980s and related changes in social policy in particular, two key developments: the Children Act 1989 and recent proposals of the Law Commission for reform of the divorce law The impact of developments in social policy on social work in the 1990s are then discussed with particular reference to the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1989. The implications of the reconstruction of the role of social workers as case managers and the issue of the relationship between the statutory and the independent sectors are considered. We argue from this the importance of retaining provision for direct help to couples by statutory agencies in view of the limited resources of specialist ag...

In her own write: twentieth-century women's fiction

The feminine and fiction sexuality and marriage work and brilliant careers mothers and children alternatives to marriage politics and war beyond racial stereotypes. Appendix: 101 suggestions for lively reading scholarly and not so scholarly works.

Gender in Families: Women and Men in Marriage, Work, and Parenthood

The authors review the research on gender by focusing on 3 domains of family life - marriage work (both wage and family work) and parenthood. Regarding marriage they consider intimacy communication and conflict and wife-battering. Regarding wage work they consider women and men as providers and resistance to wives as co-providers. Regarding family work they consider the nature of family work and resistance to sharing housework and child care. Regarding parenthood they consider the images of motherhood and fatherhood activities and experiences of mothering and fathering and the gender differentiation that accompanies parenting. The authors conclude that gender specialization in families persists across the domains of marriage work and parenthood. Everyday and ultimate responsibility for marriage housework and parenthood usually remains with women. Responsibility for breadwinning usually remains with men. Most women help men with provision and many men help women with family work and parenting although partners collude to sustain the belief that men are primary providers but parenting is shared. Partners tend to view mens minimal help with raising children as substantial and womens substantial help with provision as minimal. Though a growing number of women are bothered by this lopsided arrangement most men and women do not consider family life unfair. (authors modified)

From Carney to Cleveland… to Chinkapook and Cottles Bridge or Lawyer and Social Worker… Can the Marriage Work?

From Carney to Cleveland… to Chinkapook and Cottles Bridge or Lawyer and Social Worker… Can the Marriage Work?