Working Women: Exploring Marital Adjustment

Introduction

Marriage is a significant event in one’s life. Choosing a life partner is an important decision to make. “Marriage and family are not optional; they are necessary. They meet man’s deepest needs.” (Landis, 1954). A happy married life is always a predictor of life satisfaction and
good social and emotional health. Marriage is a pact between two individuals, usually between a man and a woman. Hence, it is a kind of dyadic relationship where interaction between wife and husband determines their marital satisfaction.

It’s a kind of bond built on romance, passion, intimacy, commitment, understanding, trust, and many other factors. Spanier (1976) precisely defined dyadic adjustment as a process that determines the degree of (a) problematic differences in a couple, (b) interpersonal tension and personal anxiety, (c) dyadic satisfaction, (d) dyadic cohesion, and (e) consensus on matters important to dyadic interactions. Dyadic adjustment is a significant predictor of marital satisfaction.

Body

Traditional Gender Roles and Evolving Realities

According to traditional Indian concepts, sex roles are always stereotyped. In a family, men ought to be breadwinners. They will be career oriented and won’t take care of family matters much. Women, on the other hand, are supposed to be involved in various kinds of family needs like rearing children, cooking, cleaning the house, taking care of husbands and law matters, and so on. Women are not encouraged to pursue a career. However, in today’s changing world, even in India, women are entering the professional world. Hence, most families consist of dual-employed couples. But this never made much change in the old-fashioned sex roles. Even if the wife is working and shares an equal role in productivity, husbands are never willing to share family households. They believe it’s solely the duty of women. This creates work-life imbalance and role conflicts in working women, which in turn leads to reduced marital adjustment. New values and formats for marital relationships are developing slowly, causing ‘role-strain,’ the ‘felt difficulty in meeting role demands’ (Goode, 1960: p.483). This, in turn, causes lower marital satisfaction (Bowen& Orthner, 1983). However, in an aggregate sense, dyadic adjustment among single and dual-employed couples depends on several factors. Working women can adjust more if their husband is supportive and have an egalitarian attitude, and shares family duties with them. Sprunt and Howes (2011) found that sharing sex role attitudes and husbands’ approval of wives’ careers lead to more marital satisfaction.

Role Strain and Work-Life Imbalance

The attitude of partners, especially that of husbands, has much influence over marital adjustment. Williams-Evans and Feinauer, Leslie L (1989) studied the relationship between marital adjustment and congruency of couple preference regarding wife employment. The findings reveal that women face marital adjustment when they want to work but are unemployed since their husbands don’t want them to work in the present or future.

However, single-earner couples also face many problems that can lead to dyadic maladjustment. Doumas et al. (2008) did a study on spillover patterns from individual experiences and self-care behaviors to the marital relationship in single-earner couples. They found that for single-earner couples, the spouse’s own and the partner’s self-care behaviors play a significant role.

Conclusion

It is thus clear that marital need and adjustment depend on different factors for both single-earner and dual-earner couples. A clear understanding of these factors and the ability to deal with them leads to marital satisfaction. Netemeyer et al. (1996) acknowledged that the two most significant focal points of adult life are work and family. Hence, both should be given equal significance in one’s life, and balance between them is also necessary for overall life satisfaction.

References

1. Spanier, G. B. (1976). Measuring dyadic adjustment: New scales for assessing the quality of marriage and similar dyads. Journal of Marriage and Family, 38(1), 15-28.

2. Goode, W. J. (1960). A theory of role strain. American Sociological Review, 25(4), 483-496.

3. Bowen, G. L., & Orthner, D. K. (1983). Role-strain and stress in the dual-earner family. Journal of Marriage and Family, 45(1), 169-177.

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