Exploratory Study Marital Interdependence and Social Networks

Abstract

In an exploratory study of 25 wives and their husbands we examine the associations of spouses with kin and friends as predictors of four marital qualities: love, maintenance, conflict and ambivalence. For husbands, contact with kin, and especially fathers, is tied to greater marital interdependence and lower conflict. For wives, contact with kin, and especially brothers-in-law, is consistently associated with greater marital distress in the form of lower love for her husband and reports of greater conflict and ambivalence on the part of both spouses. Husbands also report greater conflict and ambivalence when their wives interact frequently with friends. Overall, the findings suggest the effects of kin are heterogeneous, varying substantially by the type of role relation, and that the processes underlying relations with kin are distinctly different for wives and husbands.

Types of Conjugal Networks, Conjugal Conflict and Conjugal Quality

“…Thus, one important result of this study is that contextual unbalance is critical for couple functioning. A likely explanation for this effect is that unicentric networks may increase tensions between spouses in cases of conflict because of unbalanced third parties involvement (Baumgartner, 1993;Burger and Milardo, 1995;Klein and Milardo, 2000).…”

“…Because of these variations, it has been hypothesized that network composition (friends versus relatives) has an effect on conjugal outcomes. In an exploratory study, Burger and Milardo (1995) found, for instance, that husbands report greater marital conflict and ambivalence in conjugal relationships when wives interact frequently with friends rather than with relatives.…”

“…Dyadic relationships of the nuclear family, such as those between husbands and wives, do not exist in a vacuum and scholars have underlined how important it is to take into account the social networks in which they are embedded (Bott, 1957;Burger and Milardo, 1995). Capturing the most central and relevant features of social networks for conjugal functioning is, however, not straightforward.…”

“…Capturing the most central and relevant features of social networks for conjugal functioning is, however, not straightforward. Most research interested in the effects of social networks on conjugal interactions has focused on specific variables, such as network composition (Burger and Milardo, 1995), network interference (Klein and Milardo, 2000), spouses' network overlap (Stein et al, 1992;Bryant and Conger, 1999), network transitivity (Widmer, 1999), or perceived support from the network (Cohen and Wills, 1985).…”

Personality and social network effects on romantic relationships: a dyadic approach

“…This general finding was surprising because based on sociological research (e.g. Blood, 1969;Burger & Milardo, 1995) one might have expected complementarity, for example, between closeness with parents and partners. This kind of complementarity at the very beginning of partner relationships has been sometimes called the Romeo and Juliet effect, especially when parental interference was associated with increased romantic love for the dating couple (Driscoll, Davis, & Lipetz, 1972).…”