Financial Stress and Marital Quality in Same- and Different-Sex Families

• In Event: 20226 - Marriage, Civil Unions, and Cohabitation

Abstract

Abundant evidence shows that being financially stressed is bad for one’s intimate relationships, especially marital dissolution and quality. Most prior research considers financial strain for individuals yet financial strain is a shared stressor within households, particularly between spouses. Families usually cope with financial stress together in deeply gendered and heteronormative patterns. Therefore, it is likely that the financial stress of one married partner differently influences the other’s assessment of marital quality, depending on the gendered dynamics of household finance. Thus, we analyze dyadic data from a sample of midlife same- and different-sex married couples (N = 838 individuals, 419 couples) to examine how an individual and their spouse’s subjective financial stress influence each spouse’s marital quality. Data from both spouses in same-sex and different-sex marriages allows us to compare the association between spouse’s financial stress and marital quality of men and women in both same- and different-sex relational contexts. Dyadic analyses show that being married to a financially stressed partner is associated with decreased marital quality. Comparisons across couple types indicate that the association is the weakest for men married to women, and the difference is significant from women married to men, men married to men, and women married to women.

Author

• Jaime Hsu, University of Texas-Austin