Couples in Middle Age

Conceptualization and Measurement of Marital Quality

Although marriage as a social institution is widespread in the United States, measuring the quality of marriage remains a formidable challenge because researchers have difficulty in achieving a consensus definition of marital quality. Early on, some researchers focused on marital satisfaction or marital adjustment as indicators of the quality of a marriage, while others focused on more negative dimensions such as marital disagreement and marital conflict. Today, marriage researchers widely accept that people routinely experience both positive and negative feelings about their marriage. At a minimum, then, marital quality is a two-dimensional construct incorporating both positive processes (e.g., happiness or satisfaction) and negative processes (e.g., level of disagreement or conflict). Researchers can choose from among several different scales to measure marital quality and its different dimensions. Some of these scales measure specific behaviors that occur in marriage (e.g., “How often do you and your partner quarrel?” or “Do you kiss your spouse?”), whereas others include more global and evaluative items regarding one's marriage (e.g., “All things considered, how happy are you with your marriage?”).

Marital Quality in Middle Adulthood

Studies comparing positive dimensions of marital quality (e.g., marital satisfaction, marital happiness) across young, middle-aged, and older adults have found support for a U-shaped trend with marital satisfaction and happiness lower among middle-aged adults compared to those who are younger or older. However, longitudinal studies spanning extended periods of time have found that marital satisfaction and happiness typically decline after the newlywed years and into middle adulthood and then either stabilize or continue to decline after midlife.

Researchers have tried to uncover underlying reasons for the dip documented in the positive evaluation of marriage during middle adulthood. Some have attributed this dip to having and rearing children, inequities in household responsibilities, and conflicting demands due to multiple roles (e.g., balancing work and family demands, being sandwiched between assisting one's children and one's aging parents). Others have identified strained relationships with one's children and midlife identity issues as contributing to the drop in positive marital processes in middle adulthood. Sexual intimacy and sexual satisfaction also play an important role in positive evaluations of marriage at midlife. Higher sexual satisfaction is related to greater marital satisfaction that, in turn, is related to lower marital instability in both husbands and wives. Women, in particular, experience changes in sexual response and sexual desire at midlife due to the menopause-related physiological changes they undergo. Middle-aged women's marital satisfaction is linked to greater enjoyment of sexual activity with the spouse, higher rated pleasantness of sexual activity, and greater overall satisfaction with the sexual relationship in marriage.

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