Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Age Differences In Marriage: Exploring Predictors Of Marital Quality In Husband-Older, Wife-Older, And Same-Age Marriages, Brandan E. Wheeler

Theses and Dissertations

Using data from a nationally representative sample of 723 married adults, this study explored the association of age differences between spouses at the time of marriage on various aspects of marital quality years into the marriage. Four groups (full sample, husband-older, wife-older, and same-age marriages) were compared to see how marital quality was affected by age difference and several other moderating variables. Spousal interactions increased among wife-older marriages, but not among the other groups. An increased level of husband participation in household labor was linked with an increase in marital happiness and a decrease in marital problems for wife-older marriages. …

Emotional Intimacy, Coparenting, And Family Work: A Latent Class Growth Analysis, Adam Michael Galovan

Theses and Dissertations

From a family systems theoretical view, this paper uses both variable-oriented and person-oriented research approaches to examine parental marriage as a dynamic, interdependent system, and extends the literature by examining parental marriage across a 15 year time span. Employing latent growth curve analysis of 490 mother-father dyads from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, this study considers multiple aspects of the relationship husbands and wives have together as spouses (emotional intimacy), parents (ideas about discipline and a child-centered vs. adult-centered orientation to childrearing), coparents (agreement regarding parenting beliefs and discipline), and household managers (agreement on the …

Commitment, Rituals, And Initiator Tendency In Married Couples, April Bakker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to examine and make explicit the relationships between commitment, rituals, and initiator tendency. Past research and theory suggests that these ideas are related. Two research questions guided the study: (1) How are initiator tendency and the number of rituals a couple participates in related to the commitment style?, and (2) How are initiator tendency and the meaningfulness of rituals related to commitment style?

Data were obtained from 55 couples who completed a questionnaire to measure participation and meaningfulness of rituals, initiator tendency, and commitment. Final analyses were performed with only 39 of these couples …