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Middle-Aged Children's Support for Parents-In-Law and Marital Satisfaction.

ABSTRACT: This study investigated the dissimilarity in midlife adults' reports of support they and their spouse provide to their parents-in-law, gender differences in these dissimilarity patterns, and implications of this dissimilarity for marital quality. Middle-aged married participants (n = 164, mean age = 53.96 years) from Wave 2 of the Family Exchanges Study reported on the support they and their spouse provided to at least 1 living parent-in-law. Regression models examined associations of marital satisfaction with support for parents-in-law, evaluations of support for parents-in-law, and spousal dissimilarity in support. Gender differences in own and spousal support for parents-in-law revealed matrilineal focused support among married adults. Spousal dissimilarity in support was negatively associated with marital satisfaction for middle-aged adults. This pattern suggests the importance of a perceived balance in supporting one's spouse's parents for marital quality.

SUBMITTER: Lee JE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10871550 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Middle-Aged Children's Support for Parents-In-Law and Marital Satisfaction.

Lee Jeong Eun JE Kim Kyungmin K Cichy Kelly E KE Fingerman Karen L KL

Gerontology 20200402 4

This study investigated the dissimilarity in midlife adults' reports of support they and their spouse provide to their parents-in-law, gender differences in these dissimilarity patterns, and implications of this dissimilarity for marital quality. Middle-aged married participants (n = 164, mean age = 53.96 years) from Wave 2 of the Family Exchanges Study reported on the support they and their spouse provided to at least 1 living parent-in-law. Regression models examined associations of marital sa ...[more]

PMID: 32241016

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| S-EPMC6281324 | biostudies-literature

Aging Parents' and Middle-Aged Children's Evaluations of Parents' Disability and Life Problems.

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| S-EPMC10977998 | biostudies-literature

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| S-EPMC4542646 | biostudies-literature

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| S-EPMC10477746 | biostudies-literature

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| S-EPMC6744603 | biostudies-literature

Only as happy as the least happy child: multiple grown children's problems and successes and middle-aged parents' well-being.

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Neural synchronization predicts marital satisfaction.

Project description:Marital attachment plays an important role in maintaining intimate personal relationships and sustaining psychological well-being. Mate-selection theories suggest that people are more likely to marry someone with a similar personality and social status, yet evidence for the association between personality-based couple similarity measures and marital satisfaction has been inconsistent. A more direct and useful approach for understanding fundamental processes underlying marital satisfaction is to probe similarity of dynamic brain responses to maritally and socially relevant communicative cues, which may better reflect how married couples process information in real time and make sense of their mates and themselves. Here, we investigate shared neural representations based on intersubject synchronization (ISS) of brain responses during free viewing of marital life-related, and nonmarital, object-related movies. Compared to randomly selected pairs of couples, married couples showed significantly higher levels of ISS during viewing of marital movies and ISS between married couples predicted higher levels of marital satisfaction. ISS in the default mode network emerged as a strong predictor of marital satisfaction and canonical correlation analysis revealed a specific relation between ISS in this network and shared communication and egalitarian components of martial satisfaction. Our findings demonstrate that brain similarities that reflect real-time mental responses to subjective perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about interpersonal and social interactions are strong predictors of marital satisfaction, reflecting shared values and beliefs. Our study advances foundational knowledge of the neurobiological basis of human pair bonding.

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