Longitudinal Studies of Marital Satisfaction and Dissolution

Conceptual Approaches to the Study of Marital Satisfaction and Dissolution

To understand how different marriages result in different outcomes, scientists from diverse disciplines have focused on a variety of hypothesized causes, from the broad social and political structure (macroanalytic perspective) to the specific individual characteristics of a spouse (microana-lytic perspective). For example, demographers focused on social and political forces have examined divorce rates in relation to World War II, no-fault divorce laws, women's workforce participation, and gender imbalance in the population. To examine marital satisfaction and divorce, sociologists have examined spouses' sociodemo-graphic characteristics such as age at marriage, race, income, education, premarital cohabitation, gender roles, and attitudes toward divorce. Psychologists focused on spouses' behaviors and thoughts have examined communication skills, cognitive appraisals of relationship events, commitment, spouses' personality characteristics and family background, relationship violence, alcohol consumption, the transition to parenthood, and depressive symptoms.

The different disciplines that examine marriage all have theories—that is, reasoned explanations—for why marriages succeed or fail. This entry highlights psychological theories because they focus on behavioral and cognitive components of marriage that can be changed or improved through intervention to relieve marital distress, a significant source of human suffering. There are various psychological theories of marriage; the three theories highlighted here get at the diverse factors that impinge on marriage—behavior in the here and now, family relationships in the past, and stressors outside the marriage. Behavioral models focus on how spouses talk to each other (i.e., the content of their words and the emotional tone with which they are delivered) when trying to resolve a marital problem (e.g., money, household management) or providing support to one another. Attachment theory focuses on how adult romantic relationships are affected by relationships in childhood, such as the emotional connection with a mother or the quality of the parents' marriage. Crisis theory focuses on how marital outcomes result from a stressful event outside of the marriage, perceptions of the crisis, resources, and coping responses. Each of these perspectives specifies what is likely to be an important aspect of how marriages succeed or fail. Yet there is a growing realization that marital outcomes are multiply determined, suggesting that the most comprehensive approach to understanding marital success or failure will result from examining the interplay among multiple aspects of marriage, rather than just one domain or a string of variables examined in isolation. Thus, informative longitudinal studies will be those recognizing that the outcome of a given marriage is the dynamic product of individual characteristics of the spouse (e.g., history of parental divorce, personality)—how spouses interact with each other (e.g., how they express understanding, resolve disagreements, and allocate chores) as they encounter a broader context of stressful circumstances (e.g., illness, job lay off, dangerous neighborhoods), all within a particular historical cohort. For some couples, the seeds of marital demise will be present in the early months of marriage, even during the newlywed period when satisfaction is at its highest point, whereas for other couples problems emerge later as the product of individual vulnerabilities (e.g., depressed mood, parental divorce), interpersonal deficits (e.g., poor communication skills), and contextual influences (e.g., stressful circumstances).

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