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

Abstract

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

Mexican Immigrant Wives’ Acculturative Stress and Spouses’ Marital Quality

“…Alternatively, satisfied wives may simply communicate more with their husbands than unsatisfied wives. Although the hypothesized protective effect of wives' marriage work was not supported, the main effect finding for wives' marriage work with husbands aligns with previous work showing that actively seeking out husbands to discuss marital concerns is linked with positive dimensions of marital quality (Helms et al, 2003;Lee, 1988;Proulx et al, 2004). Moreover, this finding is consistent with several studies of social support among Mexican-origin mothers, which emphasized the importance of wives being able to discuss a variety of family concerns with their husbands in the context of immigration in a manner that they may have not found necessary or desirable in Mexico (Bender et al, 1999;Parrado & Flippen, 2005).…”

“…Identified in prior research is a relational process labeled "marriage work" in which wives discussed marital concerns with their close friends or husbands (Helms et al, 2003;Oliker, 1989;Proulx et al, 2004). The term marriage work was derived from Oliker's (1989) in-depth interviews with 17 working-and middle-class wives and three divorced women to describe women's active involvement in one anothers' marriages through regular disclosure about marital concerns.…”

The Role of Religion in Shaping Sexual Frequency and Satisfaction: Evidence from Married and Unmarried Older Adults

“…Social support is often given in the form of “marriage work,” or interactions with friends to achieve or sustain stability in marriage. Marriage work is positively related to marital quality in other studies (Helms, Crouter, & McHale, 2003), which suggests that social support can improve marital quality. Religiosity is also proposed to have a direct effect on sexual frequency and satisfaction.…”

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

“…This latter finding is particularly intriguing as there was no main effect for wives’ hostility on change in husbands’ depressive symptoms in the main effects model. Given that husbands seek much of their support from within their marriages (Helms, Crouter, & McHale, 2003) and are particularly sensitive to stressful events outside of marriage (Repetti, 1989), a greater number of recent life events may place them at risk for being negatively impacted by wives’ marital hostility. Under these conditions, marital hostility from their wives may represent a ‘last straw’ for the amount of stress they can adequately manage.…”