This proposal describes a five year, three wave, panel study designed to investigate the processes through which couples are socialized into marital roles and the influence of these processes on the quality of the couple relationship (i.e., marital commitment, stability, and happiness) as well as the mental and physical health of each spouse. A sample of 200 newly, first married couples will be studied by means of face to face interviewers, daily diaries and videotaped couple interactions. The research tests a four phase general process model. In the first phase, the model stipulates structural, cultural, and family experience variables that effect the formation of the specific gender and marital role identities and commitments that the partners bring into the marriage. The second phase tests the influence of gender and marital role identities, self-efficacy, and problem solving orientations, combined with indicators of power/dependence balance on the couple's marital role negotiations. Early role negotiations are hypothesized to affect the couple role structure and subsequent marital interaction patterns (phase three). The role structure and interaction patterns, in turn, are hypothesized to affect how the couple copes and/or problem solves when faced with crises or stressful life events. The fourth phase links these determinants of family functioning with the individual spouse's mental and physical health and the couples' marital commitment, stability and happiness. The model also directs attention to the influences of the final outcome variables back on phases two, three and four. Thus, over the three waves of the study we can explore the effects of marital quality and mental and physical health on changing role expectations, role structures and problem solving capacities. We anticipate that approximately twenty percent of the sample will have a child during the course of the study and another twenty percent will become divorced. This research provides us with the opportunity to explore the antecedent conditions leading to divorce as well as to particular child-rearing orientations.
| Cast, Alicia D; Schweingruber, David; Berns, Nancy (2006) Childhood physical punishment and problem solving in marriage. J Interpers Violence 21:244-61 |
| Stets, J E (1995) Job autonomy and control over one's spouse: a compensatory process. J Health Soc Behav 36:244-58 |
