Sanctification of couple relationships and communal coping in married and cohabiting African American couples.

Abstract

Throughout history, African Americans have endured much, and their experiences with discrimination and racism continue today. Despite ongoing challenges, African Americans have also shown their resilience. Religion and spirituality are two of the largest resources of resilience that African Americans employ. However, little is known about the role of religion and spirituality within African American couple relationships. Using dyadic data from 292 married and 233 cohabiting African American couples, we examined the impact of sanctification of the couple relationship on communal coping within the Actor Partner Interdependence Model. Significant actor effects were found between relational sanctification and communal coping for both married and cohabiting men and women. There was a significant partner effect between married men's relational sanctification and married women's communal coping. However, no other significant partner effects were found.

Relational sanctification, communal coping, and depression among African American couples

“…Notably, there was a positive association between couple sanctification and couple communal coping, a finding that was relatively large in both models. Previous research examining the association between individual sanctification and communal coping yielded similar results (Russell et al, 2021). Existing literature on communal coping acknowledges the potential relational benefits associated with adopting and addressing a shared stressor (Zajdel et al, 2018).…”

“…The measure uses two 10‐item subscales to assess the presence of God in one's relationship and sacred qualities. References to “marriage” and “spouse” were changed to “relationship” and “partner,” and we based all responses on a 1–100‐point scale (Russell et al, 2021). Example items of the manifestation of God subscale include: “I sense God's presence in my relationship with my spouse/partner,” “My marriage/relationship is a reflection of God's will,” and “I experience God through my marriage/relationship.” This subscale had a Cronbach's alpha of 0.98 for cohabiting men, 0.98 for cohabiting women, 0.98 for married men, and 0.98 for married women.…”

“…Specifically, couples adopting a sacred relational lens view God as an active agent in their relationship, assisting in day‐to‐day and long‐term matters (Lichter & Carmalt, 2009). Similar to the construct of religiosity, women have been found to identify with relational sanctification more closely than men (Koenig et al, 2012; Russell et al, 2021). Sanctification is often noted as a benefit to relational stability and may be especially relevant to African American couples (Marks et al, 2008).…”

“…Giving attention to several factors salient within the Black community (e.g., depression, religion, communal coping), the present study uses communal coping to examine the association between relational sanctification and depressive symptoms among African American couples. Further, this study utilizes married and cohabiting African American couples, since previous research finds significant differences between married and cohabiting individuals on the constructs of depression (Tsang et al, 2023), sanctification, and communal coping (Russell et al, 2021). In examining the aforementioned constructs, specifically within married and cohabiting couples, this study fills a critical gap in understanding the processes associated with addressing depressive symptoms for African Americans in romantic relationships.…”

Dyadic positive and negative religious coping among older Singaporean couples and marital satisfaction.

“…First, although there have been a multitude of studies showing individual level effects of religiosity on marital satisfaction, there is a paucity of research that has taken a dyadic approach, despite Mahoney’s (2010) work highlighting the importance of considering the dyad when examining the religiosity-marriage link. Furthermore, although there have been recent studies that have examined actor and partner effects of religiosity on marital processes, such as sanctification on communal coping (Russell et al, 2021) or religiosity on sexual satisfaction (Dew et al, 2020), few have looked at the combined effects of both partners’ religiosity (e.g., Rauer & Volling, 2015), limiting our ability to examine the interdependent nature of how religiosity affects both members of the couple. Given prior research showing religious homogamy in terms of religious affiliation and/or participation being highly associated with marital outcomes (Myers, 2006), such as marital conflict (Curtis & Ellison, 2002) and sexual frequency (Schafer & Kwon, 2019), utilizing a dyadic approach that also examines the combination of actor and partner religious coping provides nuanced perspectives regarding homogamy, such as whether there are added benefits to marital satisfaction when both partners are similar and religious as compared to being similar and nonreligious.…”