Marriage

Marriages used to be practical unions often arranged by families. In the early twentieth century, as life expectancy increased dramatically, we developed the idea that couples should be best friends and lovers for life. During the late twentieth century, with the women’s movement, divorce, rising serial cohabitation rates, and the dramatic increase in unwed motherhood, marriage became deinstitutionalized—less of a standard path in the Western world.

While male-dominated marriage used to be standard in Iran, today divorce is becoming more common, and married women in this nation have more rights than before. Arranged marriages, once the only option in India, are being replaced by the Western practice of marrying for love. Marriage attitudes differ in the West, with Scandinavians seeing unmarried motherhood as fully acceptable, but people in the U.S. caring far more about being married before having children. U.S. marriage has a socioeconomic dimension, with parents often not getting married if they are at the lower ends of the income rungs.

Especially during the first four years after being married, couples can expect a decline in happiness; but, for people who stay together, there may be a U-shaped curve of marital satisfaction, with happiness rising at the empty-nest stage. Ironically, expecting one’s relationship to be perfect may predict becoming especially disenchanted after the honeymoon phase.

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According to Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love, married couples start out with consummate love, but passion and intimacy can decline as partners construct separate lives. To preserve passion and intimacy, share exciting experiences with your mate, be totally committed to the marriage, feel devoted to a partner’s well-being, and take joy in sacrificing for your mate. When they communicate, happy couples make a high ratio of positive to negative comments and don’t get personally hurtful or offer their partners excessive advice.

Divorce, that common adult event, has negative causes and consequences. Still this life event can result in greater well-being, and even a sexual rebirth (for females), especially if couples were very distressed (versus simply feeling “a bit” unfulfilled) with their mates. Although many people do remarry after divorcing, the odds of finding a new mate don’t favor females, and second marriages can be difficult, because it’s hard for stepchildren to get attached to a “new” mom or dad. Attachments are more likely when stepfamilies provide a loving atmosphere, and a stepdad lives with the children for an extended time. Stepchildren give both men and women tremendous joy.

Although many more people can become parents in our twenty-first-century society, a major concern in Europe and Asia is declining fertility rates. Despite our negative stereotypes, childless adults are not more self-centered or unhappy than parents.

The transition to parenthood tends to lessen romance and happiness, for both gay and heterosexual couples, and especially for men who have not married the mother. Gender roles become more traditional. Conflicts centered on marital equity can arise. Still, some couples grow closer after the baby is born. Coping constructively with conflicts before becoming parents predicts how a relationship will fare after the child arrives.

The emotional quality of motherhood is affected by a variety of forces, and this experience, although meaningful, is tailor-made to destroy women’s images of how they thought they would behave. Society conveys a sanitized view of motherhood. We tend to blame mothers for their children’s “deficiencies,” and we sometimes berate women who work for not spending enough time with their children. In contrast to our images of an epidemic of uninvolved mothers, twenty-first-century women spend much more time (especially teaching time) with their children than in the past. Contemporary mothers (and fathers) are giving their children unparalleled attention and love—even while they hold down jobs. Today, we expect men to be breadwinners and nurturer fathers as well as good sex-role models and, sometimes, disciplinarians. In recent decades, dads do far more hands on caregiving, although, statistically speaking, women typically still do more. Fathers play with their children in traditionally male, active ways, and vary in their involvement, depending on their fatherhood attitudes and work schedules. Despite our new nurturer fatherhood ideals, men still vitally care about fulfilling the traditional breadwinner role.

We used to have traditional stable careers. Today, we often have boundaryless careers. Technology, while it offers more flexibility with regard to physically being at an office, has led to a blurring of family and work time. We also work longer hours than in the past, partly because Western adults have less job security than in previous decades.

Among college graduates, high core self-evaluations, measured in high school, predict mid-life career happiness and career success. People who have high self-efficacy and optimistic attitudes seek out challenging work, proactively shape their jobs, and manage to enjoy their jobs even when engaged in less meaningful work. The ideal is to see our career as a calling, fully expressing our life mission.

Career happiness (and seeing our job as a calling) involves working hard at a job and, especially, finding an ideal personality–work fit. People want jobs that offer intrinsic career rewards although extrinsic career rewards, such as pay, become salient when people need to support a family or need a paycheck to economically survive. Role overload (too much work to do) and role conflict (being pulled between family and work) impair career satisfaction. While family–work conflict is endemic, especially during the parenting years, work can also enrich family life.

Traditional gender roles still operate in the world of work. Because they are more apt to periodically leave the workforce to provide family care, women have more erratic careers than men. Occupational segregation also explains (a bit) why females who work full time continue to earn less than males. Society gives priority to married fathers in salaries and expects men to out-earn their wives. Unfortunately, when a wife is the primary breadwinner and the husband engages in most of the housework, a couple’s sexual life may be affected.