Provider role attitudes, marital satisfaction, role overload, and housework: A dyadic approach.

Abstract

Treating the marital dyad as the unit of analysis, this study examined the within-couple patterning of 272 dual-earner spouses' provider role attitudes and their longitudinal associations with marital satisfaction, role overload, and the division of housework. Based on the congruence of husbands' and wives' provider role attitudes, couples were classified into one of four types: (1) main-secondary, (2) coprovider, (3) ambivalent coprovider, and (4) mismatched couples. Nearly half of all spouses differed in their attitudes about breadwinning. A series of mixed model ANCOVAs revealed significant between-and within-couple differences in human capital characteristics, spouses' perceptions of marital satisfaction and role overload, and the division of housework across 3 years of measurement. Coprovider couples reported higher levels of marital satisfaction and a more equitable division of housework than the other couple groups. Wives in the ambivalent coprovider couples' group reported higher levels of role overload than their husbands to a greater extent than was found in the other couple groups. As the first study to adopt a dyadic approach that considers the meanings that both spouses in dual-earner couples ascribe to paid employment, these findings advance understanding of how dual-earner spouses' provider role attitudes serve as contexts for marital quality, behavior, and role-related stress.

Commitment to life roles and work-family conflict among managers in a post-socialist country

“…Being overloaded at work may not necessarily lead to marital arguments, as managers may view the WFC as a price to pay to achieve success (Bagger and Li, 2012). Another explanation for the non-significant effect might be that dual-career couples report a more equitable division of household work and higher marital satisfaction than single-career couples (Helms et al, 2010). Finally, while time-based FWC was found to exacerbate managers' career satisfaction, the opposite was found relative to strain-based FWC.…”

Spouses’ Gender Role Attitudes, Wives’ Employment Status, and Mexican-Origin Husbands’ Marital Satisfaction

“…Peplau suggested that such discrepancies are more strongly linked to husbands' marital satisfaction than to wives' marital satisfaction, particularly when the role behavior under consideration is wives' employment. Although not always achieved, Peplau and others have suggested that consistency between role ideals and behavior, as well as withincouple consensus about roles, is optimal for marital satisfaction (Helms, Walls, Crouter, & McHale, 2010).…”

“…This finding may be further explained by the meaning spouses ascribe to wives' employment-a factor not examined in the current study. The perceived necessity of wives' employment, husbands' support of wives' employment, spouses' decision-making strategies about wives' employment, spouses' internalized provider-role ideologies, and husbands' attitudinal flexibility to manage changing role behavior demands (Bean et al, 1977;Chavira-Prado, 1992;Fernandez Kelly, 1992;Grzywacz et al, 2009;Helms et al, 2010;Menjivar, 1999) may be particularly important in understanding Mexican-origin husbands' marital satisfaction in the context of both spouses' gender role attitudes and wives' employment.…”

“…Esteinou (2007) husbands' marital satisfaction, including: spouses' psychological distress, aggression, gender role conflict, work-to-family conflict, provider-role ideologies, satisfaction with the division of labor women's work hours and preferences for paid employment, and the strategies couples' employ in decision-making around wives' employment and work hours (Campbell & Snow, 1992;Falconier, 2013;Gonzalez, 2008;Grzywacz et al, 2009;Helms et al, 2010;Minnotte et al, 2010;Ross et al, 1983;Yucel, 2012;Zvonkovic, Schmiege, & Hall, 1994). From a broader contextual perspective, future exploration of this study's key variables and how the interaction between them may be shaped by the extent to which paid employment is normative among low-income women in the sending and receiving communities and couples' social class in Mexico and the US may be beneficial as well (Bush et al, 2005;Santos, Bohon, & Sanchez, 1998;Menjivar, 2003).…”

Sensitivity Analysis of Multiple Informant Models When Data Are Not Missing at Random

“…If multiple models based on different variables are to be estimated, for example, a complete-case approach may result in different, albeit possibly overlapping, samples (e.g., Helms, Walls, Crouter, & McHale, 2010). This can make comparisons among different models difficult and statistical inference complicated if data are not MCAR.…”