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Objective: This study considers how the provision of daily emotion work may affect the psychological well‐being of the emotion worker, and how this linkage may vary for men and women in same‐ and different‐sex marriages. Background: Emotion work–work intended to bolster a spouse's well‐being by reading and managing the spouse's emotional needs—is common within marital relationships and often gendered, with women more aware of and concerned with emotion work than men. Yet, the psychological cost of performing emotion work is largely unexplored. Method: This study relies on 10 days of daily experiences data from spouses in same‐ and different‐sex marriages (n = 756 individuals). Mixed effects multilevel regression modeling is used to examine how the provision of emotion work is associated with the emotion workers' psychological well‐being. Results: Providing emotion work is inversely associated with emotion workers' psychological well‐being, especially when provided for a spouse with elevated depressive symptoms. These estimated effects are generally similar for men and women but greater for those married to a man than for those married to a woman, whether in a same‐ or different‐sex marriage. Conclusion: Emotion work appears to adversely affect the worker's own psychological well‐being, especially when a spouse has elevated depressive symptoms and when one's spouse is a man. These results point to the importance of dyadic approaches and consideration of gendered relationship dynamics of same‐ as well as different‐sex couples in studies of emotion work and other marital processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family ties have wide‐ranging consequences for health, for better and for worse. This decade review uses a life course perspective to frame significant advances in research on the effects of family structure and transitions (e.g., marital status) and family dynamics and quality (e.g., emotional support from family members) on health across the life course. Significant advances include the linking of childhood family experiences to health at older ages, identification of biosocial processes that explain how family ties influence health throughout life, research on social contagion showing how family members influence one another's health, and attention to diversity in family and health dynamics, including gender, sexuality, socioeconomic, and racial diversity. Significant innovations in methods include dyadic and family‐level analysis and causal inference strategies. The review concludes by identifying directions for future research on families and health, advocating for a "family biography" framework to guide future research, and calling for more research specifically designed to assess policies that affect families and their health from childhood into later life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examines the association of marital strain—as reported by each spouse—with psychological distress and considers whether the associations vary for men and women in gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marriages. Background: Prior studies show that marital strain is associated with psychological distress. However, most studies rely on only one spouse's perspective and do not consider how appraisals of strain from both spouses may contribute to distress. Moreover, possible gender differences in these associations have been considered only for heterosexual couples. Method: The analyses are based on 10 days of dyadic diary data from 756 midlife U.S. men and women in 378 gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marriages. Multilevel modeling is used to examine the association of self‐ and spouse‐reported marital strain with psychological distress; actor‐partner interdependence models explore possible gender differences in these associations. Results: Both self‐reports and spousal reports of marital strain are associated with psychological distress, with notable gender differences. The associations of self‐ and spouse‐reported marital strain with distress are stronger for women in different‐sex marriages when compared with men in same‐sex and different‐sex marriages. The association is also stronger for women in different‐sex marriages when compared with women in same‐sex marriages, but for self‐reported strain only. Conclusion: Marital appraisals by both spouses are important for psychological well‐being and may be especially important for the well‐being of women in different‐sex marriages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examines how married straight and lesbian women understand sexual changes in midlife. Background: Sexual satisfaction is key to marital quality, yet marital sex typically diminishes in midlife. Little is known, however, about how married straight and lesbian women make sense of midlife sexuality. Comparing the narratives of lesbian and straight women can reveal how midlife events, relational contexts, and gender norms drive women's experiences of and responses to diminishing sex. Method: Inductive and deductive analyses were performed on interviews with a convenience sample of 16 straight and 16 lesbian mostly high‐status married couples in Massachusetts. Results: Lesbian and straight women suggest that sexual activity and desire diminish over time due to health, aging, and caregiving events, yet lesbian women additionally emphasize the importance of weight gain, caregiving for adult parents, and shared experiences of menopause. Women further describe distress when their sex lives diverge from norms specific to marriage and their sexual identities. Moreover, women report relationship work designed to maintain or reignite sex; when compared with straight women, lesbians describe more work and a stronger sense of duty to keep sex alive and uniquely describe medical providers as unhelpful in addressing sexual challenges. Conclusion: The results suggest that relational contexts and cultural discourses shape straight and lesbian women's experiences of distress and comfort about diminishing sex in marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well established that married heterosexual women do more intergenerational caregiving for aging parents and parents-in-law than married heterosexual men do. However, gay men and lesbian women's recent access to marriage presents new questions about the gendered marital dynamics of intergenerational caregiving. We use dyadic data with gay, lesbian, and heterosexual spouses to examine the marital dynamics of intergenerational caregivers. Results show that gay and lesbian spouses provided intensive time and emotional support for an intergenerational caregiver. In contrast, heterosexual women described their intergenerational caregiving as rarely supported and at times even undermined by their spouse. Dyadic data on heterosexual men corroborate women's accounts; heterosexual men rarely reported providing intergenerational caregiving, and thus heterosexual women rarely described providing spousal support. These findings provide new insight into the intermingled roles of 'greedy' marriages and 'needy' parents, wherein marital negotiations around caregiving vary by gender for gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marital dyads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge about how gender shapes intimacy is dominated by a heteronormative focus on relationships involving a man and a woman. In this study, the authors shifted the focus to consider gendered meanings and experiences of intimacy in same-sex and different-sex relationships. They merged the gender-as-relational perspective-that gender is co-constructed and enacted within relationships-with theoretical perspectives on emotion work and intimacy to frame an analysis of in-depth interviews with 15 lesbian, 15 gay, and 20 heterosexual couples. They found that emotion work directed toward minimizing and maintaining boundaries between partners is key to understanding intimacy in long-term relationships. Moreover, these dynamics, including the type and division of emotion work, vary for men and women depending on whether they are in a same-sex or different-sex relationship. These findings push thinking about diversity in long-term relationships beyond a focus on gender difference and toward gendered relational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on same-sex relationships has informed policy debates and legal decisions that greatly affect American families, yet the data and methods available to scholars studying same-sex relationships have been limited. In this article the authors review current approaches to studying same-sex relationships and significant challenges for this research. After exploring how researchers have dealt with these challenges in prior studies, the authors discuss promising strategies and methods to advance future research on same-sex relationships, with particular attention given to gendered contexts and dyadic research designs, quasi-experimental designs, and a relationship biography approach. Innovation and advances in the study of same-sex relationships will further theoretical and empirical knowledge in family studies more broadly and increase understanding of different-sex as well as same-sex relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work on social control-the direct and indirect regulation of an individual's health behaviors by others-suggests that parent-child relationships promote healthy diet and exercise. Yet parenthood is associated with less healthy diet and exercise patterns. The authors investigated this paradox by examining social control processes in 40 in-depth interviews with mothers and fathers. They found that parenthood involves social control processes that both promote and compromise healthy behavior, contributing to contradictory perceived effects of parenthood on health behavior. Moreover, the dynamics of social control appear to unfold in different ways for mothers and fathers and depend on the child's gender and life stage, suggesting that gender and age dyads are central to understanding the seemingly contradictory consequences of parenthood at the population level. These articulations of gendered social control processes provide new insight into the consequences of the gendered organization of parenthood for diet and exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors integrate theoretical work on the performance of gender with a life course perspective to frame an analysis of in-depth interviews with 17 long-term married couples. The findings indicated that couples' sexual experiences are characterized by change over time, yet that change is shaped by the intersection of gender and age. Midlife couples (ages 50-69) were distressed by changes in their sex lives likely because they impede couples from performing gendered sexuality. The source of this distress stems from age-related physical changes; however, it manifests in different ways for husbands and wives. In contrast, later life couples (ages 70-86) were more likely to emphasize the importance of emotional intimacy over sex as they age. Marital sex is a source of conflict for many midlife couples because of husbands' and wives' incongruent experiences, but later life husbands and wives tend to have more congruent experiences of marital sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We work from a life-course perspective to explore how relationships with parents affect adult children's marital quality. We further ask whether the effects of parents on adult children's marital quality depend on the adult child's gender, age, marital duration, and childhood family experiences. Growth-curve analysis of national, longitudinal data (Americans' Changing Lives) indicated that relationships with fathers (n = 336) and mothers (n = 520) differentially affected the marital quality of adult children over time. Findings suggest that the effects of the parent-adult child relationship on adult children's marriages depend on age, marital duration, and levels of family stress experienced in childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews recent research (1999–2009) on the effects of parenthood on well-being. We use a life course framework to consider how parenting and childlessness influence well-being throughout the adult life course. We place particular emphasis on social contexts and how the impact of parenthood on well-being depends on marital status, gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. We also consider how recent demographic shifts lead to new family arrangements that have implications for parenthood and well-being. These include stepparenting, parenting of grandchildren, and childlessness across the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We work from a stress and life course perspective to consider how stress affects trajectories of change in marital quality over time. Specifically, we ask whether stress is more likely to undermine the quality of marital experiences at different points in the life course. In addition, we ask whether the effects of adult stress on marital quality depend on childhood family stress experiences. Growth curve analysis of data from a national longitudinal survey (Americans’ Changing Lives, N = 1,059 married individuals) reveals no evidence of age differences in the effects of adult stress on subsequent trajectories of change in marital experiences. Our results, however, suggest that the effects of adult stress on marital quality may depend on childhood stress exposure. Stress in adulthood appears to take a cumulative toll on marriage over time—but this toll is paid primarily by individuals who report a more stressful childhood. This toll does not depend on the timing of stress in the adult life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw on the burgeoning masculinities literature to develop a framework for understanding how emotional reactions to stress may be associated with domestic violence. We conducted a daily diary study of 22 men with a history of domestic violence and a matched comparison group of 23 men with no known history of domestic violence. Each day, respondents completed a daily diary questionnaire on relationship dynamics, stress, and emotion state. This research design allowed us to examine relationship dynamics and emotion state as they unfolded over a 14-day period. We find a difference between the two groups in the links between stress, relationship dynamics, and emotion state: Nonviolent men are more emotionally reactive to stress and relationship dynamics than are violent men. Among men with a history of domestic violence, it is as if the link between personal circumstances and emotion state has been disconnected. These findings support the idea that the demonstration of masculinity through repression of emotion and violent behavior may be linked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers how domestic violence is related to personal control. Explanation of the term `personal control' as a belief that one's behaviors can impose control over one's environment; The victims of domestic violence; The perpetrators of domestic violence; Why some victims remain in abusive relationships; A discussion of gender, violence, and control; Impact of violence on a person's well-being; Impact of the loss of personal control on the psychological and emotional well-being of a victim.

The article investigates the effect of a parent's recent death on adult children's marital relationships. It informs that quantitative data are from a national two-wave panel survey of individuals who were age 24 and older at the first interview in 1986 and who were re-interviewed in 1989. The sub-sample analyzed for this study includes 123 continuously married or cohabiting individuals who experienced the death of a biological parent between 1986 and 1989 and 679 individuals who comprise the comparison group. The death of a family member often affects the health and well-being of other individuals in the family. A death in the family also affects the structure and dynamics of families live behaviors. The relationships of individuals who recently experienced a father's death are characterized by a decline in relationship harmony and an increase in relationship strain and frequency of conflict. It informs that results from the in-depth interview study reveal several possible reasons for the decline in marital quality following the death of a parent.

This article develops a theoretical framework to explain how parent/adult child relationships affect adult children's and parents' psychological distress levels. Data from a 1986 national survey (n = 3,618) are analyzed to test hypotheses derived from this framework. Results show that (a) the quality of intergenerational relationships appears to be influenced by the structural circumstances of parents and adult children--especially as defined by divorced status, gender, and age; (b) the negative aspects of intergenerational relationships are more strongly associated with psychological distress of parents and adult children than are the positive aspects; and (c) the estimated effects of intergenerational relationships on distress levels sometimes depend on the structural circumstances of parents and children. A basic premise of this study is that the parent-child relationship is important to children and parents throughout the life course. This is indicated by the empirical evidence and by theoretical traditions that emphasize the importance of parent/child relationships.

Research on the effects of parenting on parents' psychological well-being typically focuses on the effects of parenthood versus childlessness or family composition variables such as number or living arrangements of children. These studies yield inconsistent results. Effects that are significant are typically small in magnitude. Previous research has not considered the content of parent-child relationships and how that content affects parents' well-being. This study focuses on two features of relational content--the quality of parent-child relationships and the level of demands placed by children on parents. The strongest predictors of relational quality are age of parent and divorced status of parent, with the former positively related to quality and the latter negatively related to quality. The strongest predictors of relational demands are sex and age of parents, with higher levels of demands for mothers than fathers, and an inverse relationship of age with demands. In turn, relational quality and, to a lesser extent, the demands of parenting are strongly related to parents 'psychological well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]