Couples in Later Life

General Influences on Couples' Relationships

In all types of relationships, persons strive to balance their needs for love, companionship, sex, and emotional and financial security with needs for autonomy and independence. Their ability to do so is influenced by social inequalities, such as gender relations. The term gender relations refers to inequalities of wealth, authority, labor, and esteem, supported by ideologies that justify men's greater privilege in most settings. Among today's older couples, for example, men tend to control finances and decisions (except mundane ones), and women tend to maintain social networks and provide domestic labor, including care work. Gender inequality is lessened over time, however. Gender relations combine with inequalities of race/ethnicity and sexual [Page 338]orientation to shape couples' experiences in later life. In addition, persons' past and present circumstances influence their choices to pursue particular intimate relationships.

Marriage

Among those age 65 and over, marital status has changed little since the 1970s. The percentage of women married has risen slightly due to longer life expectancy for all, and more recently for men. Asians/Pacific Islanders and then Whites are the most likely to be married, followed by Hispanics, Native Americans, and Blacks. Men of all races are more likely to be married than are women of any race.

Most couples in long-term marriages have relatively high marital satisfaction, regardless of whether they share interests and values or lead more independent lives. Some, however, have emotionally distant independent relationships and low marital satisfaction. Overall, older men are more satisfied with their marriages than older women are. Older wives, but not older husbands, are more satisfied with marriage when they share decision making equally. Both husbands and wives mention leisure activities and intimacy (sex and communication) as areas of disagreement. Women are more likely than men to mention personal habits and health matters; men are more likely to mention financial matters or to say their relationship has no problems. Finally, older Blacks report more marital conflict than do older Whites, and older Black women report lower marital satisfaction than do White women (partly because of greater financial strain).

Experiences common to later life, such as retirement or caregiving, do not seem to make late-life marriages more equal. For instance, despite White women's increased labor force participation, the division of domestic labor among retired persons remains traditional. Men who increase their domestic labor usually do more stereotypically masculine tasks, unless their wives are disabled. Even when men choose to perform such traditionally feminine tasks as cooking, their wives retain ultimate responsibility. Notably, while both Black and White wives do more domestic labor than their husbands, African Americans divide domestic labor more equally and flexibly over the life course.

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